“Oui. She was expected yesterday for lunch. My friend waited a day, hoping she’d show up, then she called me.”
“Did you know the dead woman?”
It was an odd experience, Gamache realized, to be interrogated. For that’s what this was. Gentle. Friendly. But an interrogation.
“Not personally, no.”
Marc Brault opened his mouth to ask another question, then hesitated. He studied Gamache for a moment.
“Not personally, you say. But did you know her any other way? By reputation?”
Gamache could see Brault’s sharp mind working, listening, analyzing.
“Yes. And so did you, I think.” He waited a moment. “She’s Constance Ouellet, Marc.” He repeated the name. He’d tell Brault who she was, if necessary, but he wanted his colleague to come to it himself, if he could.
He saw his friend scan his memory, just as Gamache had done. And he saw Brault’s eyes widen.
He’d found Constance Ouellet. Brault turned and stared out the door, then he left, walking rapidly down the hall. To the bedroom and the body.
* * *
Myrna hadn’t heard anything from Gamache, but she didn’t expect to so soon. No news was good news, she told herself. Over and over.
She called Clara and asked her around for a drink.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” said Myrna, once they had their glasses of Scotch and were sitting by Myrna’s fireplace in her loft.
“What?” asked Clara, leaning toward her friend. She knew Constance was missing, and like Myrna, she was worried.
“It’s about Constance.”
“What?” She steeled herself for bad news.
“About who she really is.”
“What?” asked Clara. Her panic evaporated, replaced by confusion.
“She went by the name of Constance Pineault, but that was her mother’s maiden name. Her real name was Constance Ouellet.”
“Who?”
“Constance Ouellet.”
Myrna watched her friend. By now, after Gamache’s reaction, she was used to that pause. Where people wondered two things. Who Constance Ouellet was, and why Myrna was making such a big deal about it.
Clara’s brow furrowed and she sat back in her chair, crossing her legs. She sipped her Scotch and looked into the distance.
And then Clara gave a slight jerk as the truth hit her.
* * *
Marc Brault returned to the front room, walking slowly this time.
“I told the others,” he said, his voice almost dream-like. “We searched her bedroom. You know, Armand, if you hadn’t told us who she was we wouldn’t have known. Not until we ran her through the system.”
Brault looked around the small front room.
“There’s nothing at all to suggest she was one of the Ouellets. Not here, not in the bedrooms. There might be papers or photographs somewhere, but so far nothing.”
The two men looked around the front room.
There were china figurines and books and CDs and crossword puzzles and worn boxes of jigsaw puzzles. Evidence of a personal life, but not of a past.
“Is she the last one?” Brault asked.
Gamache nodded. “I think so.”
The coroner poked his head in and said they were about to leave with the body, and did the officers want one last look? Brault turned to Gamache, who nodded.
The two men followed the coroner down the narrow corridor, to a bedroom at the very back of the home. There, a Scene of Crime team from the Montréal homicide squad was collecting evidence. When Gamache arrived, they stopped and acknowledged him. Isabelle Lacoste, who’d simply been observing the operation, saw their eyes widen when they realized who he was.
Chief Inspector Gamache, of the Sûreté. The man most Québec cops dreamed of working with. With the exception of the very cops who were now assigned to the Chief’s own homicide division. She stepped around the tape marking Madame Ouellet’s body and joined the two men at the door. The little room was suddenly very crowded.
The bedroom, like the front room, had many personal touches, including her suitcase, open and packed, on the neatly made bed. But also like the front room, there wasn’t a single photograph.
“May I?” Gamache asked the Scene of Crime investigator, who nodded. The Chief knelt beside Constance. She wore a dressing gown, buttoned up. He could see a flannel nightie underneath. She’d clearly been killed in the act of packing the night before leaving for Three Pines.
Chief Inspector Gamache held her cold hand and looked into her eyes. They were wide. Staring. Very blue. Very dead. Not surprised. Not pained. Not fearful.