‘She wasn’t a friend or anything. You probably knew her too. That bag lady down by the Berri bus station. You know, the one with all the layers in all weather. She’d been there for years.’
Gamache nodded. ‘Still, it can’t be considered an unsolved case yet. You say she’s only been dead a few days?’
‘She was killed on the twenty-second. And this is strange. She wasn’t at the Berri bus station. She was over on de la Montagne, by Ogilvy’s. That’s a good, what? Ten, fifteen blocks away.’
Gamache resumed his seat and waited, watching Reine-Marie as she read, a few strands of her graying hair falling across her forehead. She was in her early fifties and lovelier than when they’d married. She wore little make-up, comfortable with the face she’d been given.
Gamache could sit all day watching her. He sometimes picked her up at her job at the Bibliothèque nationale, intentionally arriving early so he could watch her going over historic documents, taking notes, head down and eyes serious.
And then she’d look up and see him watching her and her face would break into a smile.
‘She was strangled.’ Reine-Marie lowered the file. ‘Says here her name was Elle. No last name. I can’t believe it. It’s an insult. They can’t even be bothered to find her real name so they call her She.’
‘These things are difficult,’ he said.
‘Which is probably why kindergarten children aren’t homicide detectives.’
He had to laugh as she said it.
‘They didn’t even try, Armand. Look at this.’ She held the dossier up. ‘It’s the thinnest file there. She was just a vagrant to them.’
‘Would you like me to try?’
‘Could you? Even if it’s just to find her name.’
He found the box for Elle’s case, stacked with the others from Brault against one wall of his office. Gamache put on gloves and removed the contents, spreading them on the floor of his office. Before long it was full of rancid, putrid clothing, and a smell that put their blue cheese to shame.
Old newspapers, curling and filthy, sat next to the clothing. Used for insulation, Gamache suspected, against the brutal Montreal winter. Words could do many things, he knew, but they couldn’t halt the weather. Reine-Marie joined him and together they sifted through the box.
‘She seems to have literally surrounded herself with words,’ said Reine-Marie, picking up a book. ‘Those papers for insulation and even a book.’