How the Light Gets In: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel Read online

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As with all my books, How the Light Gets In would not have been written without the help and support of Michael, my husband. No Michael, no books. It’s simple and true, and I will be grateful to him through this life and into the next.

  There are, in fact, many people who helped with this quite complex book. My friend Susan McKenzie and I spent two days at Hovey Manor, beside a lake in Québec, in a classic journalists’ “story meeting” … hashing out ideas, thoughts, connections. Tossing out ideas, some crazy, some too sane and safe. Picking them up, examining each, taking out the best bits and building on them. When you find someone good at it, it’s a magical process. But it demands being creative and constructive. Not finding flaws, but finding that hidden gem, recognizing a step to the better idea. It demands being an active and respectful listener. Susan is all those things. We’re a great team and she helped make this book so much better.

  I was also helped in many of the technical issues by Cassie Galante, Jeanne-Marie Hudson, Paul Hochman, and Denis Dufour. Merci, mille fois.

  Lise Page, my assistant, is invaluable. She’s an early reader, a constant cheerleader, a tireless workmate, a creative soul. I know my books and my career would not be where they are without Lise—and they sure wouldn’t be as much fun!

  My brother Doug is also an early reader, a gentle critic, and a wonderful support. You know, after a while in a career filled with blessings, it’s difficult to keep calling up friends with more and more great news. I know without a doubt they’re happy for me, but it can slip over into what might feel like (and might very well be) bragging. But still, when great things happen, I want to talk about them. Doug is the person I call. A man always happy for me (or kind enough not to tell me to be quiet and go away).

  Linda Lyall designs and manages my website and newsletter and puts in long hours making sure the public face of the series does Gamache et al. justice. Thank you, Linda!

  My agents, Teresa Chris and Patricia Moosbrugger, have shepherded the Gamache books over the sometimes rocky, and deeply unpredictable, terrain of today’s publishing world. They’ve been sure and courageous and chosen their battles wisely … which allowed me to concentrate on my only real job. To write a book I’d be proud of.

  I have no children. These Gamache books are not trivial to me. They’re not a pastime, they’re not cash cows. They are my dream come true. My legacy. My offspring. They are precious to me, and I put them into the hands of the great people at Minotaur Books and St. Martin’s Press. Hope Dellon, my longtime editor and friend, who never fails to make the books far better. Andrew Martin, the publisher, who took a tiny book set in a little Québec village, and put it on the New York Times list. Sarah Melnyk, my publicist at Minotaur, who knows the books, knows me, and has been a ferocious and effective promoter of Chief Inspector Gamache.

  Thank you!

  And thank you to Jamie Broadhurst, Dan Wagstaff, and the people at Raincoast Books in Canada, who’ve put Gamache on bestseller lists in my own country. So exciting.

  And thanks to David Shelley, the publisher of Little, Brown UK, for taking over the series. I know the books are in good hands with him.

  Finally, I’d like to thank Leonard Cohen. The book is named after an excerpt from his poem/song—“Anthem.”

  Ring the bells that still can ring,

  Forget your perfect offering,

  There’s a crack in everything.

  That’s how the light gets in.

  I first used that stanza in my second book. When I contacted him to ask permission and find out what I’d have to pay for it, he got back through his agent to say he would give it to me for free.

  Free.

  I’d paid handsomely for other poetry excerpts, and rightly so. I’d expected to pay for this, especially given that at the time, six years ago, Mr. Cohen had just had most of his savings stolen by a trusted member of his team.

  Instead of asking for thousands—he asked for nothing.

  I cannot begin to imagine the light that floods into that man.

  And now you’re holding my imperfect offering. It was written with great love and gratitude and awareness of how very lucky I am.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Author’s Note

  Also by Louise Penny

  About the Author

  Copyright

  ONE

  Audrey Villeneuve knew what she imagined could not possibly be happening. She was a grown woman and could tell the difference between real and imagined. But each morning as she drove through the Ville-Marie Tunnel from her home in east-end Montréal to her office, she could see it. Hear it. Feel it happening.

  The first sign would be a blast of red as drivers hit their brakes. The truck ahead would veer, skidding, slamming sideways. An unholy shriek would bounce off the hard walls and race toward her, all-consuming. Horns, alarms, brakes, people screaming.

  And then Audrey would see huge blocks of concrete peeling from the ceiling, dragging with them a tangle of metal veins and sinews. The tunnel spilling its guts. That held the structure up. That held the city of Montréal up.

  Until today.

  And then, and then … the oval of daylight, the end of the tunnel, would close. Like an eye.

  And then, darkness.

  And the long, long wait. To be crushed.

  Every morning and each evening, as Audrey Villeneuve drove through the engineering marvel that linked one end of the city with another, it collapsed.

  “It’ll be all right.” She laughed to herself. At herself. “It’ll be all right.”

  She cranked the music louder and sang loudly to herself.

  But still her hands on the steering wheel tingled, then grew cold and numb, and her heart pounded. A wave of slush whacked her windshield. The wipers swept it away, leaving a half moon of streaky visibility.

  Traffic slowed. Then stopped.

  Audrey’s eyes widened. This had never happened before. Moving through the tunnel was bad enough. Stopped in it was inconceivable. Her brain froze.

  “It’ll be all right.” But she couldn’t hear her
voice, so thin was her breath and so great the howl in her head.

  She locked the door with her elbow. Not to keep anyone out, but to keep herself in. A feeble attempt to stop herself from flinging open the door and running, running, screaming out of the tunnel. She gripped the wheel. Tight. Tight. Tighter.

  Her eyes darted to the slush-spattered wall, the ceiling, the far wall.

  The cracks.

  Dear God, cracks.

  And the half-hearted attempts to plaster over them.

  Not to repair them, but hide them.

  That doesn’t mean the tunnel will collapse, she assured herself.

  But the cracks widened and consumed her reason. All the monsters of her imagination became real and were squeezing out, reaching out, from between those faults.

  She turned the music off so she could concentrate, hyper-vigilant. The car ahead inched forward. Then stopped.

  “Go, go, go,” she pleaded.

  But Audrey Villeneuve was trapped and terrified. With nowhere to go. The tunnel was bad, but what waited for her in the gray December sunlight was worse.

  For days, weeks, months—even years, if she was being honest—she’d known. Monsters existed. They lived in cracks in tunnels, and in dark alleys, and in neat row houses. They had names like Frankenstein and Dracula, and Martha and David and Pierre. And you almost always found them where you least expected.

  She glanced into the rearview mirror and met two frightened brown eyes. But in the reflection she also saw her salvation. Her silver bullet. Her wooden stake.

  It was a pretty party dress.

  She’d spent hours sewing it. Time she could have, should have, spent wrapping Christmas gifts for her husband and daughters. Time she could have, should have, spent baking shortbread stars and angels and jolly snowmen, with candy buttons and gumdrop eyes.

  Instead, each night when she got home Audrey Villeneuve went straight to the basement, to her sewing machine. Hunched over the emerald green fabric, she’d stitched into that party dress all her hopes.

  She would put it on that night, walk into the Christmas party, scan the room and feel surprised eyes on her. In her clingy green dress, frumpy Audrey Villeneuve would be the center of attention. But it wasn’t made to get everyone’s attention. Just one man’s. And when she had that, she could relax.

  She’d hand over her burden, and get on with life. The faults would be repaired. The fissures closed. The monsters returned to where they belonged.

  The exit to the Champlain Bridge was in sight. It wasn’t what she normally took, but this was far from a normal day.

  Audrey put on her signal and saw the man in the next car give her a sour look. Where did she think she was going? They were all trapped. But Audrey Villeneuve was more trapped. The man gave her the finger, but she took no offense. In Québec it was as casual as a friendly wave. If the Québécois ever designed a car, the hood ornament would be a middle finger. Normally she’d give him a “friendly wave” back, but she had other things on her mind.

  She edged into the far right lane, toward the exit to the bridge. The wall of the tunnel was just feet away. She could have stuck her fist into one of the holes.

  “It’ll be all right.”

  Audrey Villeneuve knew it would be many things, but all right probably wasn’t one of them.

  TWO

  “Get your own fucking duck,” said Ruth, and held Rosa a little closer. A living eiderdown.

  Constance Pineault smiled and stared ahead. Four days ago it would never have occurred to her to get a duck, but now she actually envied Ruth her Rosa. And not just for the warmth the duck provided on the bitter, biting December day.

  Four days ago it would never have occurred to her to leave her comfortable chair by the bistro fireplace to sit on an icy bench beside a woman who was either drunk or demented. But here she was.

  Four days ago Constance Pineault didn’t know that warmth came in many forms. As did sanity. But now she knew.

  “Deee-fenssssse,” Ruth shouted at the young players on the frozen pond. “For God’s sake, Aimée Patterson, Rosa could do better.”

  Aimée skated past and Constance heard her say something that might have been “duck.” Or “puck.” Or …

  “They adore me,” Ruth said to Constance. Or Rosa. Or the thin air.

  “They’re afraid of you,” said Constance.

  Ruth gave her a sharp assessing glance. “Are you still here? I thought you’d died.”

  Constance laughed, a puff of humor that floated over the village green and joined the wood smoke from the chimneys.

  Four days ago she thought she’d had her last laugh. But ankle-deep in snow and freezing her bottom off beside Ruth, she’d discovered more. Hidden away. Here in Three Pines. Where laughter was kept.

  The two women watched the activity on the village green in silence, except for the odd quack, which Constance hoped was the duck.

  Though much the same age, the elderly women were opposites. Where Constance was soft, Ruth was hard. Where her hair was silky and long, and done in a neat bun, Ruth’s was coarse and chopped short. Where Constance was rounded, Ruth was sharp. All edges and edgy.

  Rosa stirred and flapped her wings. Then she slid off Ruth’s lap onto the snowy bench and waddled the few paces to Constance. Climbing onto Constance’s lap, Rosa settled.

  Ruth’s eyes narrowed. But she didn’t move.

  It had snowed day and night since Constance had arrived in Three Pines. Having lived in Montréal all her adult life, she’d forgotten snow could be quite so beautiful. Snow, in her experience, was something that needed to be removed. It was a chore that fell from the sky.

  But this was the snow of her childhood. Joyful, playful, bright and clean. The more the merrier. It was a toy.

  It covered the fieldstone homes and clapboard homes and rose brick homes that ringed the village green. It covered the bistro and the bookstore, the boulangerie and the general store. It seemed to Constance that an alchemist was at work, and Three Pines was the result. Conjured from thin air and deposited in this valley. Or perhaps, like the snow, the tiny village had fallen from the sky, to provide a soft landing for those who’d also fallen.

  When Constance had first arrived and parked outside Myrna’s bookstore, she’d been worried when the flurries intensified into a blizzard.

  “Should I move my car?” Constance had asked Myrna before they went up to bed. Myrna had stood at the window of her New and Used Bookstore and considered the question.

  “I think it’s fine where it is.”

  It’s fine where it is.

  And it was. Constance had had a restless night, listening for the sirens from the snow plows. For the warning to dig her car out and move it. The windows of her room had rattled as the wind whipped the snow against it. She could hear the blizzard howl through the trees and past the solid homes. Like something alive and on the hunt. Finally Constance drifted off to sleep, warm under the duvet. When she awoke, the storm had blown by. Constance went to the window, expecting to see her car buried, just a white mound under the foot of new snow. Instead, the road had been plowed and all the cars dug out.

  It’s fine where it is.

  And so, finally, was she.

  For four days and four nights snow had continued to fall, before Billy Williams returned with his plow. And until that happened, the village of Three Pines was snowed in, cut off. But it didn’t matter, since everything they needed was right there.

  Slowly, seventy-seven-year-old Constance Pineault realized she was fine, not because she had a bistro, but because she had Olivier and Gabri’s bistro. There wasn’t just a bookstore, there was Myrna’s bookstore, Sarah’s bakery, and Monsieur Béliveau’s general store.

  She’d arrived a self-sufficient city woman, and now she was covered in snow, sitting on a bench beside a crazy person, and she had a duck on her lap.

  Who was nuts now?

  But Constance Pineault knew, far from being crazy, she’d finally come to her sen
ses.

  “I came to ask if you’d like a drink,” said Constance.

  “For chrissake, old woman, why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Ruth stood and brushed the flakes off her cloth coat.

  Constance also rose and handed Rosa back to Ruth, saying, “Duck off.”

  Ruth snorted and accepted the duck, and the words.

  Olivier and Gabri were walking over from the B and B, and met them on the road.

  “It’s a gay blizzard,” said Ruth.

  “I used to be as pure as the driven snow,” Gabri confided in Constance. “Then I drifted.”

  Olivier and Constance laughed.

  “Channeling Mae West?” said Ruth. “Won’t Ethel Merman be jealous?”

  “Plenty of room in there for everyone,” said Olivier, eyeing his large partner.

  Constance had had no dealings with homosexuals before this, at least not that she knew of. All she knew about them was that they were “they.” Not “us.” And “they” were unnatural. At her most charitable, she’d considered homosexuals defective. Diseased.

  But mostly, if she thought of them at all, it was with disapproval. Even disgust.

  Until four days ago. Until the snow began to fall, and the little village in the valley was cut off. Until she’d discovered that Olivier, the man she’d been cool to, had dug her car out. Unasked. Without comment.

  Until she’d seen, from her bedroom window in Myrna’s loft above the bookstore, Gabri trudging, head bent against the blowing snow, carrying coffee and warm croissants for villagers who couldn’t make it to the bistro for breakfast.