“Bonjour,” he said to the girls, and smiled. Not a beam, but a warm smile before turning back to their father. “I wonder if we could speak privately.”
“Go outside and play, girls,” said Monsieur Villeneuve. He asked them kindly. Not an order, but a request, and they obeyed. He closed the door and walked Gamache to a small but cheerful kitchen at the back of the house.
It was tidy, all the dishes clean, and Gamache wondered if Villeneuve had done it, to keep order in the house for the girls, or if the girls had done it, to keep order for their grieving and lost father.
“Coffee?” Monsieur Villeneuve asked. Gamache accepted the offer, and while it was being poured he looked around the kitchen.
Audrey Villeneuve was everywhere. In the aroma of cinnamon and nutmeg for the Christmas cookies she must have baked, and the photos on the fridge, showing a grinning family camping, at a birthday party, at Disney World.
Crayon drawings were framed. Drawings only a parent knew were works of art.
This had been a happy home until a few days ago, when Audrey Villeneuve had left for work, and hadn’t returned.
Villeneuve put the coffees on the table and the two men sat.
“I have some news for you, and some questions,” said Gamache.
“Audrey didn’t kill herself.”
Gamache nodded. “It’s not official, and I might be wrong—”
“But you don’t think so, do you? You think Audrey was killed. Someone did this to her. So do I.”
“Can you think who?” Gamache saw life and purpose creep back to this man. Villeneuve paused for a moment, thinking. Then shook his head.
“Had anything changed? Visitors, phone calls?”
Again Villeneuve shook his head. “Nothing like that. She’d been short-tempered for weeks. She wasn’t normally like that. Something was bothering her, but that last morning she seemed better.”
“Do you know why she was upset?” Gamache asked.
“I was afraid to ask…” He paused and looked down at his coffee. “… in case it was me.”
“Did she keep an office or a desk here at home?”
“Over there.” He nodded to a small desk in the kitchen. “But the other officers took all her papers.”
“Everything?” Gamache asked, getting up and walking over to the desk. “You didn’t find anything she might’ve hidden? May I?”
He motioned to the desk and Villeneuve nodded.“I looked after they left. They searched the whole house.” He watched as Gamache expertly, swiftly rifled the desk, and came up empty-handed.
“Computer?” asked Gamache.
“They took it. Said they’d bring it back, but they haven’t. It didn’t seem normal, for a…” He took a breath. “Suicide.”
“It’s not,” said Gamache, returning to sit at the kitchen table. “She worked with the Ministry of Transport, right? What did she do?”
“She put reports onto the computer. Said it was actually quite interesting. Audrey likes things to be orderly. Organized. When we travel she has plans and backup plans. We used to kid her.”
“Which department was she in?”
“Contracts.”
Gamache said a quiet prayer before asking the next question. “What sort of contracts?”
“Specifications. When a contract was awarded the company had to report progress. Audrey entered that in the files.”
“Was there a geographic area she looked after?”
He nodded. “Because she’s so senior, Audrey looked after repair work in Montréal. The heavy volume area. It always struck me as ironic. I’d kid her all the time.”
“About what?”
“That she worked at Transport, but hated using the highways, especially the tunnel.”
Gamache grew still. “Which tunnel?”
“The Ville-Marie. She had to take it to get to work.”
Gamache felt his heart begin to race. That was it. Audrey Villeneuve was afraid because she knew the repairs on the tunnel hadn’t been done. The Ville-Marie ran under much of Montréal. If it collapsed, it would start a chain reaction in the métro, in the whole underground city. It would take the downtown core with it.
He got up, but was restrained by Gaétan Villeneuve’s hand on his forearm.
“Wait. Who killed her?”
“I can’t tell you that yet.”
“Can you at least tell me why?”
Gamache shook his head. “You might be visited soon by other agents, wondering about my being here.”