“Create our own tower.”

“Are you mad?” Jérôme glanced furtively around and dropped his voice. “Those towers go up hundreds of feet. They’re engineering marvels. We can hardly ask the schoolchildren of Three Pines to make one out of Popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners.”

“Not Popsicle sticks perhaps,” said Gamache with a smile. “But you’re close.”

Jérôme downed the last of his cognac, then examined Gamache. “What’re you thinking?”

“Can we talk about it tomorrow? I’d like to run it by Thérèse at the same time. Besides, it’s getting late and I still need to speak with Myrna Landers.”

“Who?”

“She owns the bookstore.” Gamache nodded toward the internal door connecting the bistro with the bookstore. “I popped by while Olivier was getting our drinks. She’s expecting me.”

“Is she going to give you a book on building your tower?” Jérôme asked as he put on his parka.

“She was friends with a woman who was killed yesterday.”

“Oh, oui, I’d forgotten you’re actually here on business. I’m sorry.”

“Not at all. The sad fact is, it’s a perfect cover. If anyone asks, it explains why I’m in Three Pines.”

They said their good nights, and while Jérôme walked back to Emilie Longpré’s and a warm bed next to Thérèse, Armand and Henri entered the bookstore.

“Myrna?” he called, and realized he’d done exactly the same thing, at almost exactly the same time, the night before. But this time he wasn’t bringing news of Constance Ouellet’s murder—this time he came bearing questions, and lots of them.

FIFTEEN

Myrna greeted him at the top of the stairs.

“Welcome back,” she said.

She wore an enormous flannel nightie covered in scenes of skiers and snowshoers, frolicking all over Mont Myrna. The nightie went down to her shins, and thick knitted slippers met it there. A Hudson’s Bay blanket was spread across her shoulders.

“Coffee? Brownie?”

“Non, merci,” he said, and took the comfortable chair she pointed to beside the fire, while she poured herself a mug and brought over a plate of fudge brownies, in case he changed his mind.

Her home smelled of chocolate and coffee, and something else musky and rich and familiar.

“You made the coq au vin?” he asked. He’d presumed it was Olivier or Gabri.

She nodded. “Ruth helped. Rosa, however, was no help at all. It was very nearly canard au vin.”

Gamache laughed. “It was delicious.”

“I thought you could use something comforting,” she said, watching her guest.

He held her eyes. Waiting for the inevitable questions. Why was he here? Why did he bring the elderly couple? Why were they hiding, and who from?

Three Pines had taken them in. Three Pines could, reasonably, expect answers to those questions. But Myrna simply took a brownie and bit into it. And he knew then he really was safe, from prying eyes and prying questions.

Three Pines, he knew, was not immune to dreadful loss. To sorrow and pain. What Three Pines had wasn’t immunity but a rare ability to heal. And that’s what they offered him, and the Brunels. Space and time to heal.

And comfort.

But, like peace, comfort didn’t come from hiding away or running away. Comfort first demanded courage. He picked up one of the brownies and took a bite, then he reached into his pocket for his notebook.

“I thought you’d like to hear what we’ve found so far about Constance.”

“I take it that doesn’t include whoever killed her,” said Myrna.

“Unfortunately not,” he said as he put on his reading glasses and glanced at his notebook. “I spent much of the day researching the Quints—”

“Then you think that had something to do with her death? The fact she was a Ouellet Quintuplet?”

“I don’t really know, but it’s extraordinary, and when someone is murdered we look for the extraordinary, though, to be honest, we often find the killer hiding in the banal.”

Myrna laughed. “Sounds like being a therapist. People normally came into my office because something happened. Someone had died, or betrayed them. Their love wasn’t reciprocated. They’d lost a job. Gotten divorced. Something big. But the truth was, while that might’ve been the catalyst, the problem was almost always tiny and old and hidden.”

Gamache raised his brows in surprise. It did sound exactly like his job. The killing was the catalyst, but it almost always started as something small, invisible to the naked eye. It was often years, decades, old. A slight that rankled and grew and infected the host. Until what had been human became a walking resentment. Covered in skin. Passing as human. Passing as happy.