by Louise Penny
“Really?” asked the assistant, who’d made notes but had decided to burn them in case anyone thought he was stoned when he’d taken them down.
Mr. Blake took Winnie’s place.
“Stuart Blake,” the elderly man said, sitting in the chair offered and looking at them with polite interest. He was immaculately dressed, shaved, his face smooth and pink and soft. His eyes bright. He looked at Gamache and smiled.
“Monsieur l’inspecteur,” he inclined his head. “Désolé. I had no idea who you were.”
“You knew what mattered,” said Gamache. “That I was a man in need of this magnificent library. That was enough to know.”
Mr. Blake smiled, folded his hands, and waited. At ease.
“You spend a lot of time in the library, I believe,” said Inspector Langlois.
“I do. For many years, since my retirement.”
“And what was your profession?”
“I was a lawyer.”
“So it’s Maître Blake,” said Langlois.
“No, please, I’ve been retired for years. Plain ‘Mister’ will do.”
“How long have you been involved with the Literary and Historical Society?”
“Oh, all my life in one way or another, and my parents and grandparents before that. It was the first historical society in the country, you know. Pre-dates the national archives. Been around since 1824, though not in this building.”
“This building,” said Gamache, picking up on the opening. “It has an interesting history?”
“Very.” Mr. Blake turned to face the Chief Inspector. “It didn’t become the Literary and Historical Society until 1868. This was originally the Redoubt Royale, a military barracks. It also housed prisoners of war, mostly American. Then it became a regular prison. There were public hangings, you know.”
Gamache said nothing, though he was interested that this refined, cultured, civilized man seemed to get pleasure telling them of such barbarity.
“Hung right out there.” He waved toward the front door. “If you believe in ghosts, this is the place for you.”
“Have you seen any?” Gamache asked, surprising both Langlois and the young officer.
Blake hesitated, then shook his head. “No. But I can feel them sometimes, when no one else is here.”
“Are you often here, when no one else is?” Gamache asked, pleasantly.
“Sometimes. I find it peaceful. I think you do too.”
“C’est la vérité,” agreed the Chief Inspector. “But I don’t have a key to get in after hours. You do. And, I presume, you use it.”
Again, Mr. Blake hesitated. “I do. But not often. Only when I can’t sleep and a question troubles me.”
“Like what?” Gamache asked.
“Like what grasses grow on Rum Island, and when the last coelacanth was caught.”
“And were you troubled by such questions last night?”
The two men looked at each other. Finally Mr. Blake smiled and shook his head.
“I was not. Slept like a child last night. As Shakespeare said, the best way to peace is to have a still and quiet conscience.”
Or none at all, thought Gamache, watching Mr. Blake with interest.
“Can anyone confirm that?” Inspector Langlois asked.
“I’m a widower. Lost my wife eight years ago, so no, I have no witnesses.”
“Désolé,” said Langlois. “Tell me, Mr. Blake, why do you think Augustin Renaud was here last night?”
“Isn’t it obvious? He must have thought Champlain is buried here.”
And there it was. The obvious answer, out in the open.
“And is he?”
Blake smiled. “No, I’m afraid not.”
“Why would he think Champlain was here?” Langlois asked.
“Why did Augustin Renaud think anything? Has anyone ever figured out his logic? Perhaps his digs were more alphabetical than archeological and he’d come to the ‘Ls’. That makes as much sense as any of his reasoning. Poor man,” Blake added. “I imagine you’ll be digging?”
“Right now it’s still a crime scene.”
“Incredible,” said Mr. Blake, almost to himself. “Why would Augustin Renaud be here in the Lit and His?”
“And why would someone murder him?” said Langlois.
“Here,” added Gamache.
Finally Elizabeth MacWhirter entered and sat.
“What is your job, exactly?” Langlois asked.
“Well, ‘job’ is a loose term. We’re all volunteer. Used to be paid, but the government’s cut back on library funding, so now any money we get goes in to upkeep. Heating alone is ruinous and we just had the wiring redone. In fact, if it hadn’t been done we might never have found Mr. Renaud.”
“What do you mean?” Langlois asked.
“When we rewired the place we decided to do the phone lines too. Bury them in the basement. If the line hadn’t been cut we’d never have found the body, and he’d have been concreted over.”
“Pardon?” asked Langlois.
“Next week. The concrete people are supposed to come on Monday to put down the forms.”
The men looked at each other.
“You mean, if either Renaud or his murderer hadn’t cut the telephone line while digging last night, the whole floor would have been concreted? Sealed?” asked the Inspector.
Elizabeth nodded.
“Who knew this was going to happen?” Langlois asked.
“Everyone.” She walked over to a table and returned with three pamphlets which she handed out. There, on the front page, was the announcement.
The wiring, telephones and basement were to be redone.
Refolding the pamphlet and leaving it on the table in front of him Chief Inspector Gamache looked at the slim elderly woman.
“It says the work is to be done, but not the timing. The timing seems to me significant.”
“You may be right, Chief Inspector, but we didn’t keep the timing a secret. Many people knew. The board, the volunteers, the construction workers.”
“Where’d you get the money for all this? It must have cost a fortune.”
“It was expensive,” she admitted. “We got grants and donations and sold some books.”
“So the sale of books was fairly recent,” said Langlois. “But we heard from Monsieur Wilson that it wasn’t very successful.”
“Now there’s an understatement,” said Elizabeth. “It was a disaster. We sold a few boxes, books that had been sitting for decades gathering dust. A shame. They should be in someone’s collection, appreciated, not piling up here. And God knows, we need the money. It was a perfect solution. Turn unwanted books into wiring.”
“So what went wrong?” asked Gamache.
“The community went wrong. They decided we were as much a museum as a library and every item ever donated was a treasure. The books became symbolic, I’m afraid.”
“Symbolic of what?” Gamache asked.
“Of the value of the English language. Of the English culture. There was a fear that if even the Lit and His didn’t value the English language, the written word, then there was no hope. They stopped being books and became symbols of the English community. They had to be preserved. Once that happened there was no fighting, no arguing. And certainly, no selling.”
Gamache nodded. She was quite right. The battle was lost at that moment. Best to quit the field.
“And so you stopped the sale?”
“We did. Which is why you see boxes piled in the corridors. If one more elderly Anglo dies, the Literary and Historical Society will explode.” She laughed, but without humor.
“Why do you think Augustin Renaud was here?” Langlois asked.
“For the same reason you do. He must have thought Champlain was here.”
“Why would he think that?”
Elizabeth shrugged, making even that look refined. “Why did he think Champlain was buried under that Chinese restaurant? Or that primary school? Why did Augustin Renaud thi
nk anything?”
“Did he ever come here?”
“Well, he did last night.”
“I mean, did you ever see him here before that?”
Elizabeth MacWhirter hesitated.
“Never inside, as far as I know. But I saw him at the front door. Yesterday morning.”
The young assistant, so shocked something worthwhile had actually been said, almost forgot to write this down. But then his pen whirled into action.
“Go on,” said Langlois.
“He asked to see the Board of Directors.”
“When was this?”
“Around eleven thirty. We’d locked the door as we always do during a board meeting.”
“He just showed up?”
“That’s right.”
“How’d he even know you were meeting?”
“We put the announcement in the paper.”
“Le Soleil?”
“The Québec Chronicle-Telegraph.”
“The what?”
“The Chronicle-Telegraph.” Elizabeth spelled it for the assistant. “It’s the oldest newspaper in North America,” she said by rote.
“Go on. You say he showed up. What happened?” asked the Inspector.
“He rang the bell and Winnie answered it, then came up here with his request. She left him downstairs, outside.”
“And what did you say?”
“We took a vote and decided not to see him. It was unanimous.”
“Why not?”
Elizabeth thought about this. “We don’t react well to anything different, I’m afraid. Myself included. We’ve created a quiet, uneventful, but very happy life. One based on tradition. We know that every Tuesday there’ll be a bridge club, they’ll serve ginger snaps and orange pekoe tea. We know the cleaner comes on Thursdays, and we know where the paper towels are kept. In the same place my grandmother kept them, when she was secretary to the Lit and His. It’s not an exciting life but it’s deeply meaningful to us.”
She stopped then appealed to Chief Inspector Gamache.
“Augustin Renaud’s visit upset all that,” he said.
She nodded.
“How’d he react when told you wouldn’t see him?” Gamache asked.
“I went down to tell him. He wasn’t pleased but he accepted it, said he’d be back. I didn’t think he meant quite so soon.”
She remembered standing at the thick wooden door, opened a sliver as though she was cloistered and Renaud a sinner. His white hair sticking out from under his fur hat, frost and icicles and angry breath dripping from his black moustache. His blue eyes not just mad, but livid.
“You cannot stop me, madame,” he’d said.
“I have no desire to stop you, Monsieur Renaud,” she’d said in a voice that she hoped sounded reasonable. Friendly even.
But they both knew she was lying. She wanted to stop him almost as badly as he wanted in.
When all the interviews had been completed Gamache returned to the office. There he found them sitting over a pot of tea.
“Welcome to our little lifeboat,” said Elizabeth, getting to her feet and inviting him to join Winnie, Porter and herself. “And this is our fuel.” She indicated the teapot and smiled.
Henri rushed over to greet him.
“I hope he wasn’t too much trouble.” Gamache patted Henri’s flank and taking a seat he accepted a cup of strong tea.
“Never,” said Winnie. “What happens next?”
“In the investigation? They’ll get the coroner’s report and start looking into Augustin Renaud’s movements, friends, family. Who’d want him dead.”
They sat together around the table. Not exactly a huddled mass, but reminiscent of it.
“You said Monsieur Renaud asked to speak to the board,” Gamache turned to Elizabeth.
“You told them that?” Porter asked, his voice more clipped than usual. “Now you’ve done it.”
“She had no choice,” said Gamache. “You all should have told us. You must have known it was important.” He looked at them sternly. “You refused to see him, but would you have listened to him eventually?”
He spoke now to Porter Wilson but noticed everyone looked at Elizabeth, who remained silent.
“Eventually, maybe. But there was no advantage for us, and a whole lot of—” Porter searched for a word. “Inconvenience.”
“Monsieur Renaud could be very persuasive,” said Gamache, remembering the vitriolic campaigns the amateur archeologist had waged against anyone who denied him permission to dig.
“True,” admitted Porter. He seemed tired now, as the full import of what had happened weighed more and more heavily. As horrible as it would have been to have Augustin Renaud dig for Champlain beneath their Lit and His Society, the only thing worse was what had happened.
“May I see your minutes for the meeting?”
“I haven’t done them up yet,” said Elizabeth.
“Your notebook will do.”
He waited. Eventually she handed him her notebook and putting on his half-moon reading glasses he scanned the minutes, noting who was there for the meeting.
“I see Tom Hancock and Ken Haslam were there, but left early. Were they there when Augustin Renaud showed up?”
“Yes,” said Porter. “They left shortly after that. We were all there.”
Gamache continued to scan the minutes then over his glasses he looked at Elizabeth.
“There’s no mention of Monsieur Renaud’s visit.”
Elizabeth MacWhirter stared back. It seemed clear that when she’d asked for his help she hadn’t expected him to ask them quite so many questions, and uncomfortable ones at that.
“I decided not to mention it. He didn’t speak to us, after all. Nothing happened.”
“A great deal happened, madame,” said Gamache. But he’d also noticed that she’d said “I,” not “we.” Was she letting them off the hook? Taking the burden of responsibility herself? Or was it really a unilateral decision?
They might be in a lifeboat, but Gamache now had a clear idea who was captain.
SIX
It was early afternoon and Jean-Guy Beauvoir realized he’d already made a mistake. Not a big one, more an annoyance.
He had to return to Montreal and interview Olivier Brulé. He should have done that first, before coming down to Three Pines. Instead, he’d spent the last hour quietly in the bistro. Everyone had left, but not before making sure he was in the best chair, the big, worn, leather armchair beside the fireplace. He dipped an orange biscotti into his café au lait and looking through the frosty window he could see the snow, falling gently but steadily. Billy Williams had been by once with the plow, but the snow had already filled in behind him.
Beauvoir dropped his gaze to the dossier in his hand and continued reading, snug and warm inside. Half an hour later he glanced at the mariner’s clock on the mantelpiece. One twenty.
Time to go.
But not to Montreal. Not in this weather.
Returning to his room in the B and B, Beauvoir changed into his silk long underwear then layered his clothing strategically, putting on his snowsuit last. He rarely wore it, since he preferred being runway-ready and this suit made him look like the robot from Lost in Space. Indeed, in the winter, Québec looked like the staging area for an alien invasion.
Fortunately the chances of running into the editor of Vogue Hommes in the woods was pretty small.
He walked up the hill, hearing his thighs zinging together and barely able to put his arms flat to his sides. Now he felt a bit like a zombie, clump, clump, clumping up the hill to the inn and spa.
“Oui?”
Carole Gilbert answered the door and looked at the snow-covered zombie. But the older woman showed absolutely no fright, not even surprise. Gracious as ever she took two steps back and let the alien into the inn, run by her son and daughter-in-law.
“May I help you?”
Beauvoir unwrapped himself, now feeling like The Mummy. He was an entire B-grade film
festival. Finally he removed his hat and Carole Gilbert smiled warmly.
“It’s Inspector Beauvoir, non?”
“Oui, madame, comment allez-vous?”
“I’m well, thank you. Have you come to stay? I didn’t see your name on the register.”
She looked behind her into the large, open entrance hall, with its black and white tile floor, gleaming wood desk and fresh flowers, even in the middle of winter. It was inviting and for a moment Beauvoir wished he had booked in. But then he remembered the prices, and remembered why he was there.
Not for massages and gourmet meals, but to find out whether Olivier had actually killed the Hermit.
Why did Olivier move the body?
And the very spot he was standing was where Olivier had dumped the Hermit. Olivier had admitted as much. He’d hauled the dead man through the woods that Labor Day weekend, in the middle of the night. Finding the door unlocked he simply dropped the sad bundle here. Right here.
Beauvoir looked down. He was melting, like the Wicked Witch of the West, his snow-covered boots puddling on the tile floor. But Carole Gilbert didn’t seem to care. She was more concerned for his comfort.
“No, I’m staying at the B and B,” he said.
“Of course.” He searched her face for any sign of professional jealousy, but saw none. And why would he? It seemed inconceivable the owners of this magnificent inn and spa would be jealous of any establishment, especially Gabri’s somewhat weary B and B.
“And what brings you back to us?” she asked, her voice light, conversational. “Is the Chief Inspector with you?”
“No, I’m on vacation. Leave, actually.”
“Of course, I’m sorry.” And she looked it, her face suddenly concerned. “How stupid of me. How are you?”
“I’m well. Better.”
“And Monsieur Gamache?”
“Better also.” He was, it must be admitted, a little tired of answering these kind questions.
“I’m so glad to hear it.” She motioned him into the inn but he held his ground. He was in a hurry and it was his temperament to show it. He consciously tried to slow himself down. He was supposed to be there for a vacation, after all.
“How can I help you?” she asked. “I don’t suppose you’ve come for the hot mud treatment? The Tai Chi class perhaps?”