Myrna stared at the small picture in his hand. “I wonder why.”
* * *
Jérôme Brunel closed his book.
The curtains were drawn and the eiderdown comforter lay on top of them in the large bed. Thérèse had fallen asleep reading. He watched her for a few moments, breathing deeply, evenly. Her chin on her chest, her active mind at rest. At peace. At last.
He put his book on the nightstand and, reaching over, took off her glasses and lifted the book from her hand. Then he kissed her forehead and smelled her night cream. Soft and subtle. When she went away on business trips he would spread some on his hands and go to sleep with them to his face.
“Jérôme?” Thérèse roused. “Is everything all right?”
“Perfect,” he whispered. “I was just going to turn off the lights.”
“Is Armand back?”
“Not yet, but I left the porch lights on and some lamps in the living room.”
She kissed him and rolled over.
Jérôme turned off the bedside lamp, and pulled the duvet up around them. The window was open, letting in cold, fresh air, and making the warm bed all the more welcome.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered into his wife’s ear. “Armand has a plan.”
“I hope it doesn’t involve spaceships or time travel,” she mumbled, half asleep again.
“He has another plan,” said Jérôme, and heard her chuckle before the room fell back into silence, except for the little cracks and groans as the home settled around them.
* * *
Armand Gamache stood at the window of Myrna’s bookstore and saw the light go out in the upstairs bedroom at Emilie’s home.
He’d followed Myrna downstairs into her shop, and now she was standing, baffled, in the middle of an aisle of her bookstore.
“I’m sure it was here.”
“What was?” He turned around, but Myrna had disappeared into the rows of bookshelves.
“The book Dr. Bernard wrote, about the Quints. I had it here, but I can’t find it.”
“I didn’t know he’d written a book,” said Gamache, walking down another aisle, scanning the shelves. “Is it any good?”
“I haven’t read it,” she mumbled, distracted by looking at the spines. “But I can’t believe it was, given what we now know.”
“Well, we know he didn’t deliver them,” said Gamache, “but he still devoted most of his life to them. Probably knew them better than anyone.”
“I doubt it.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I think they barely knew themselves. At best the book might give you an insight into the routine of their days, but not into the girls themselves.”
“Then why’re you looking for it?”
“I thought even that might help.”
“It might,” he agreed. “Why didn’t you read it?”
“Dr. Bernard took what should’ve been private and made it public. He betrayed them at every turn, as did their parents. I wanted no part of that.”
She rested her large hand on a shelf, perplexed.
“Could someone have taken it out?” Gamache suggested, from the next aisle over.
“This isn’t a lending library. They’d have had to buy it from me.” There was silence before Myrna spoke again. “Fucking Ruth.”
It struck Gamache that maybe that was Ruth’s real name. It was certainly her given name. He considered the christening.
“What do you name this child?” the minister asked.
“Fucking Ruth,” her godparents replied. It would have been a prescient choice.
Myrna interrupted his reverie. “She’s the only one who seems to think this’s a library. She takes out books, then returns them and takes out others.”
“At least she returns them,” said Gamache, and got a rude look from Myrna. “You think Ruth took Bernard’s book on the Quints?”
“Who else would have?”
It was a good question.
“I’ll ask her about it tomorrow,” he said, putting on his coat. “You know that poem of Ruth’s you quoted?”
“Who hurt you once? That one?” asked Myrna.
“Do you have it?”
Myrna found the slim volume and Gamache paid for it.
“Why did Constance stop coming to you as a client?” he asked.
“We hit an impasse.”
“How so?”