by Louise Penny
“Perhaps,” Gamache suggested when they were seated and the waiter had taken their orders, “we should also choose a language.”
Elizabeth laughed and nodded.
“How’s English?” he asked. She hadn’t been this close to him before. He was in his mid-fifties, she knew from the reports. He was solid, comfortably built, but it was his eyes that caught her. They were deep brown, and calm.
She hadn’t expected that. She thought they’d be sharp, cold, analytical, eyes that had seen so many dreadful things their soft centers had hardened. But this man’s eyes were thoughtful, kind.
The waiter brought her a cappuccino and him an espresso. The late breakfast crowd was thinning and they’d been placed in a quiet corner.
“You know, of course, what happened this morning?” Elizabeth asked. The coffee was fragrant and delicious. She didn’t often splurge on good coffees, and this was a treat.
“Inspector Langlois told me a body has been found in the basement of the Literary and Historical Society.” Gamache watched her as he spoke. “It wasn’t a natural death.”
She was grateful he hadn’t said murder. It was too shocking a word. She’d been testing it out in the safety of her own head, but wasn’t yet ready to take it out in public.
“When we arrived this morning the phones didn’t work, so Porter called Bell Canada for repairs.”
“The repairman came quickly,” said Gamache.
“We’re known to them. It’s an old building and in need of repairs. The phones are often out, either through some sort of short, or a mouse has eaten through the line. This surprised us, though, since we’d only just redone all the wiring.”
“What time did you arrive?”
“Nine o’clock. Gives us an hour to sort books and do other work before the library opens. We unlock the door at ten every morning, as you know.”
He smiled. “I do. It’s a wonderful library.”
“We’re very proud of it.”
“So you arrived at nine and called Bell right away?”
“He came within twenty minutes. Took him about half an hour to track down the problem. He figured it was a broken wire in the basement. We all thought it was just another mouse.”
She paused.
“When did you realize it wasn’t that?” Gamache asked, recognizing she now needed help telling her story.
“We heard him, actually. The repairman. His feet on the stairs. He’s not a small man and it sounded like a stampede in our direction. He arrived at the office and just stared for a moment. Then he told us. There was a dead man in the basement. He’d dug him up. Poor man. It’ll take him a while to recover, I suspect.”
Gamache agreed. Some got over an experience like that quite quickly, others never did.
“You say he dug the man up. Your basement isn’t concrete?”
“It’s dirt. Used to be a root cellar centuries ago.”
“I thought it was a prison. Were there cells there at one point?”
“No, the cells were in the level above, this was the lowest. Hundreds of years old, of course, used for keeping food cool. When the repairman said he’d found a body I thought he meant a skeleton. They’re dug up in Quebec City all the time. Perhaps this was an executed prisoner. Winnie and I went to look. I didn’t go all the way in, didn’t have to. We could see from the doorway that it wasn’t a skeleton. The man was recently dead.”
“It must have been a shock.”
“It was. I’ve seen bodies before, in a hospital or funeral home. Once a friend died in her sleep and I found her when I went by to take her to bridge. But that’s different.”
Gamache nodded. He understood. There were places dead people should be, and places they shouldn’t. Half buried under a library was where they should not be.
“What did the Inspector tell you?” Elizabeth asked. There was no use being coy with this man, she realized. Might as well come right out with it.
“I’m afraid I didn’t ask much, but he confirmed it was a violent death.”
She looked down at her now empty cup, drunk without even noticing. This rare treat wasted, just a rim of foam left. She was tempted to stick her finger in and scoop it up, but resisted.
The bill had arrived and was sitting on the table. It was time to leave. The Chief Inspector slid it toward him, but made no other move. Instead he continued to watch her. Waiting.
“I came after you to ask a favor.”
“Oui, madame?”
“We need your help. You know the library. I think you like it.” He inclined his head. “You certainly know English, and not just the language. I’m afraid of what this might do to us. We’re a small community and the Literary and Historical Society is precious to us.”
“I understand. But you’re in good hands with Inspector Langlois. He’ll treat you with respect.”
She watched him then plunged ahead. “Can you just come and take a look, maybe ask some questions? You have no idea what a disaster this is. For the victim, of course, but also for us.” She hurried on before he could refuse. “I know what an imposition this is. I really do.”
Gamache knew she was sincere but doubted she did know. He looked down at his hands, loose fists on the table. He was silent, and into that silence, as always, crept the young voice. More familiar now than those of his own children.
“And then at Christmas, we visit both Suzanne’s family and my own. We go to hers for réveillon and mine for Mass on Christmas morning.” The voice went on and on about trivial, minute, mundane events. The things that made up an average life. A voice that was no longer tinny in his ears, but living now in his brain, his mind. Always there, talking. Ad infinitum.
“I’m sorry, madame, I can’t help you.”
He watched the older woman across the table. Mid-seventies, he guessed. Slim, with beautiful bone structure. She wore little makeup, just some around the eyes, and lipstick. If less was more, she had a great deal. She was the image of cultured restraint. Her suit wasn’t the latest fashion, but it was classic and would never be out of style.
She’d introduced herself as Elizabeth MacWhirter and even Gamache, not a native of Quebec City, knew that name. The MacWhirter Shipyards. MacWhirter paper mills in the north of the province.
“Please. We need your help.”
He could tell this plea had cost her, because she knew what a position it put him in. And still, she’d done it. He hadn’t quite appreciated how desperate she must be. Her keen blue eyes never left his.
“Désolé,” he said, softly but firmly. “It gives me no pleasure to say that. And if I could help, I would. But . . .” He didn’t finish. He didn’t even know what would come after the “but.”
She smiled. “I’m so sorry, Chief Inspector. I should never have asked. Forgive me. I’m afraid my own needs blinded me. I’m sure you’re right and Inspector Langlois will be just fine.”
“I understand that the night is a strawberry,” said Gamache, smiling slightly.
“Oh, you heard about that, did you?” Elizabeth smiled. “Poor Winnie. No ear for languages. Reads French perfectly, you know. Always the highest marks in school, but can’t seem to speak it. Her accent would stop a train.”
“Inspector Langlois might have thrown her off by asking about her birth.”
“That didn’t help,” Elizabeth admitted. Her mirth disappeared, to be replaced by worry once again.
“You have no need for concern,” he reassured her.
“But you don’t know everything, I think. You don’t know who the dead man is.”
She’d lowered her voice and was whispering now. She sounded as Reine-Marie did when reading their infant granddaughters a fairy tale. It was the voice she used not for the fairy godmother, but the wicked witch.
“Who is it?” he asked, lowering his own voice.
“Augustin Renaud,” she whispered.
Gamache sat back and stared. Augustin Renaud. Dead. Murdered in the Literary and Historical Society. Now he knew why El
And he knew she had reason to be.
FOUR
Gabri sat in the worn armchair by the roaring fire. Around him in the bistro he now ran he heard the familiar hubbub of the lunch crowd. People laughing, chatting. At some tables people were quietly reading the Saturday paper or a book, some had come in for breakfast and stayed through lunch, and might very well be there for dinner.
It was a lazy Saturday in February, the dead of winter, and the bistro was mumbling along with conversation and the clinking of silverware on china. His friends Peter and Clara Morrow were with him, as was Myrna, who ran the new and used bookstore next door. Ruth had promised to join them, which generally meant she wouldn’t be there.
Through the window he could see the village of Three Pines covered in snow, and more falling. It wouldn’t be a blizzard, not enough driving wind for that, but he’d be surprised if they got less than a foot by the time it was finished. That was the thing with a Québec winter, he knew. It might look gentle, beautiful even, but it could take you by surprise.
The roofs of the homes surrounding the village were white and smoke curled from the chimneys. Snow was lying thick on the evergreens and on the three magnificent pines clustered together at the far end of the village green like guardians. The cars parked outside homes had become white lumps, like ancient burial mounds.
“I tell you, I’m going to do it,” Myrna was saying, sipping her hot chocolate.
“No you’re not,” laughed Clara. “Every winter you say you will and you never do. Besides, it’s too late now.”
“Have you seen the last-minute deals? Look.” Myrna handed her friend the Travel section from the weekend Montreal Gazette, pointing to a box.
Clara read, raising her brows. “Actually, it’s not bad. Cuba?”
Myrna nodded. “I could be there in time for dinner tonight. Four star resort. All inclusive.”
“Let me see that,” said Gabri, leaning toward Clara. Somehow Clara had managed to get a bit of jam on the newspaper, though there was no jam around. It was, they all knew, Clara’s particular miracle. She seemed to produce condiments and great works of art. Interestingly, they never found dabs of jam or croissant flakes on her portraits.
Gabri scanned the page then leaned back in his seat. “Nope, not interested. Condé Nast has better ads.”
“Condé Nast has near naked men smothered in olive oil lying on beaches,” said Myrna.
“Now that I would pay for,” said Gabri. “All inclusive.”
Every Saturday they had the same conversation. Comparing travel deals to beaches, choosing Caribbean cruises, debating the Bahamas versus Barbados, San Miguel de Allende versus Cabo San Lucas. Exotic locales far from the falling snow, the endless snow. Deep and crisp and even.
And yet, they never went, no matter how tempting the deals. And Gabri knew why. Myrna, Clara, Peter knew why. And it wasn’t Ruth’s theory.
“You’re all too fucking lazy to move.”
Well, not entirely.
Gabri sipped his café au lait and looked into the leaping flames, listening to the familiar babble of familiar voices. He looked across the bistro with its original beams, wide plank floor, mullioned windows, its mismatched, comfortable antique furniture. And the quiet, gentle village beyond.
No place could ever be warmer than Three Pines.
Out the window he saw a car descend rue du Moulin, past the new inn and spa on the hill, past St. Thomas’s Anglican Church, around the village green. Its progress was slow, and left tire marks in the fresh, fallen snow. As he watched it drew up beside Jane Neal’s old brick home. And stopped.
It was an unfamiliar vehicle. If Gabri had been a mutt he’d have barked. Not a warning, not out of fear, but excitement.
Wasn’t often Three Pines had visitors unless it was people stumbling across the tiny village in the valley by accident, having gone too far astray. Become confused. Lost.
That was how Gabri and his partner Olivier had found Three Pines. Not intending to. They had other, grander, plans for their lives but once they’d laid eyes on the village, with its fieldstone cottages, and clapboard homes, and United Empire Loyalist houses, its perennial beds of roses and delphiniums and sweet peas, its bakery, and general store, well, they’d never left. Instead of taking New York, or Boston or even Toronto by storm they’d settled into this backwater. And never wanted to leave.
Olivier had set up the bistro, furnishing it with finds from the neighborhood, all for sale. Then they’d bought the former stagecoach inn across the way and made it a bed and breakfast. That had been Gabri’s baby.
But now, with Olivier gone, Gabri also ran the bistro. Keeping it open for his friends. And for Olivier.
As Gabri watched a man got out of the car. He was too far away to recognize, and dressed against the snow with a heavy parka, toque, scarves. Indeed, it could have been a woman, could have been anyone. But Gabri rose and his heart leapt ahead of him.
“What is it?” Peter asked. His long legs uncrossing and his tall, slim body leaning forward on the sofa. His handsome face was curious, happy for relief from the vacation conversation. Peter, while an artist himself, wasn’t great at the “what if” conversations. He took them too literally and found himself stressed when Clara pointed out that for only fifteen thousand dollars they could upgrade to a Princess Suite on the Queen Mary 2. It was his cardio exercise for the day. Having had it, he now focused on Gabri, who was focused on the stranger walking very slowly through the snow.
“Nothing,” said Gabri. He would never admit what he was now thinking, what he thought every time the phone rang, every time there was a knock on the door or an unfamiliar car arrived.
Gabri looked down at the coffee table, with their drinks and a plate of chocolate chip cookies and the thick Diane de Poitiers writing paper with its partly finished message. The same one he wrote every day and mailed, along with a licorice pipe.
Why would Olivier move the body? he’d written. Then added, Olivier didn’t do it. He would mail it that afternoon, and tomorrow he’d write another one to Chief Inspector Gamache.
But now a man was walking, almost creeping, toward the bistro out of the thickly falling snow. In just the twenty yards from his car snow had already gathered on his hat, his scarf, his slender shoulders. Olivier had slender shoulders.
The snowman arrived at the bistro and opened the door. The outside world blew in and people looked over, then went back to their meals, their conversations, their lives. Slowly the man unveiled himself. His scarf, his boots, then he shook his coat, the snow falling to the wooden floor and melting. He put on a pair of slippers, kept in a basket by the door for people to grab.
Gabri’s heart thudded. Behind him Myrna and Clara were continuing to discuss whether, for a few thousand more, it might be worth upgrading all the way, to the Queen Suites.
He knew it couldn’t be Olivier. Not really. But, well, maybe Gamache had been convinced by all the letters, maybe he’d let him out. Maybe it had been last-minute, like the travel deals, a last-minute escape that instead of taking him away had brought Olivier home.
Gabri stepped forward, unable to help himself now.
“Gabri?” Peter asked, standing up.
Gabri got halfway across the bistro.
The man had taken off his hat and turned into the room. Slowly, as recognition dawned, the conversation died out.
It wasn’t Olivier. It was one of the men who’d taken him away, arrested Olivier, put him in prison for murder.
Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir surveyed the room and smiled, uncertainly.
When the phone call had come that morning from the Chief Inspector, Beauvoir had been in his basement making a bookcase. He didn’t read but his wife Enid did, and so he was making it for her. She was upstairs, singing. Not loudly and not well. He could hear her cleaning up the breakfast dishes.
“You okay down there?” she’d called.
He wanted to tell her he wasn’t. He was bored stupid. He hated woodwork, hated the damned crossword puzzles she shoved on him. Hated the books she’d piled up next to the sofa, hated the pillows and blankets that followed him around, in her arms as though he was an invalid. Hated how much he owed her. Hated how much she loved him.
“I’m fine,” he called up.
“If you need anything, just call.”
“I will.”
He walked over to the workbench, pausing for breath at the counter. He’d done his exercises for the day, his physio. He hadn’t been very disciplined until the doctor had pointed out that the more he did them the sooner he could get out from under Enid’s crushing concern.
The doctor didn’t exactly put it that way, but that’s what Beauvoir heard and it had been motivation enough. Morning, noon and night he did his exercises to regain his strength. Not too much. He could tell when he did too much. But sometimes he felt it was worth it. He’d rather die trying to escape than be trapped much longer.
“Cookie?” she sang down.
“Yes, Cupcake?” he replied. It was their little joke. He heard her laugh and wondered how much it would hurt to cut his hand off with the jigsaw. But not his gun hand, he might need that later.
“No, do you want a cookie? I thought I’d do a batch.”
“Sounds great. Merci.”
Beauvoir had never particularly wanted children, but now he was desperate for them. Maybe then Enid would transfer her love to them. The kids would save him. He felt momentarily bad for them, being dragged under by her unconditional, undying, unrelenting love, but, well, sauve qui peut.
Then the phone rang.
And his heart stopped. He’d thought, hoped, with time it would stop doing that. It was inconvenient having a heart that halted every time there was a call. Especially annoying when it was a wrong number. But instead of going away it seemed to be getting worse. He heard Enid hurrying to answer it and he knew she was running because she knew how much the sound upset him.
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