by Louise Penny
Strong enough to grieve.
And when, a few weeks ago, Gamache had marched in the achingly slow cortege behind the flag-draped coffins he had with each halting step remembered his agents and with each step remembered his first Chief. His superior then, his superior now and always.
And when, finally, Gamache could take the pain no longer he and Reine-Marie had come here. Not to be healed, but to be helped.
I need help.
The owner of the bistro brought their breakfasts of omelettes, fresh fruit and a croissant each.
“I respect people who have such passion,” Émile was saying. “I don’t. I have a lot of interests, some I’m passionate about, but not to the exclusion of everything else. I sometimes wonder if that’s necessary for geniuses to accomplish what they must, a singularity of purpose. We mere mortals just get in the way. Relationships are messy, distracting.”
“He travels the fastest who travels alone,” quoted Gamache.
“You sound as though you don’t believe it.”
“It depends where you’re going, but no, I don’t. I think you might go far fast, but eventually you’ll stall. We need other people.”
“What for?”
“Help. Isn’t that what Champlain found? All other explorers failed to create a colony but he succeeded. Why? What was the difference? Père Sébastien told me. Champlain had help. The reason his colony thrived, the reason we’re sitting here today, was exactly because he wasn’t alone. He asked the natives for help and he succeeded.”
“Don’t think they don’t regret it.”
Gamache nodded. It was a terrible loss, a lapse in judgment. Too late the Huron and Algonquin and Cree realized Champlain’s New World was their old one.
“Yes,” said Émile, nodding slowly, his slender fingers toying with the salt and pepper shakers. “We all need help.”
He watched his companion. He’d been heartened by Gamache taking an interest in this case. It was somewhere else to put his mind, other than that scalded spot. But then early that morning, while everyone else slept, he’d heard Armand and Henri, quietly leaving. Again.
“It’s not your fault, you know. So many lives were saved.”
“And lost. I made too many mistakes, Émile.” It was the first time he’d talked about the events to his mentor. “Right from the start.”
“Like what?”
The farmer’s voice, with its broad country accent, played again in Gamache’s head. All the clues were there, right from the start. “I didn’t put things together fast enough.”
“No one else even came close. Jesus, Armand, when I think what might have happened if you hadn’t done what you did.”
Gamache took a deep breath and looked down at the table, his lips tight.
Émile paused. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Armand Gamache looked up. “I can’t. Not yet. But thank you.”
“When you’re ready.” Émile smiled, took a sip of strong, aromatic coffee, and picked up Renaud’s diary again. “I haven’t read it all, of course, but what strikes me immediately is that there seems very little new in this. Certainly nothing we haven’t heard a million times before. The places he’d marked as possible sites for Champlain’s grave are all places we’ve known about. The Café Buade, rue de Trésor. But they’ve all been investigated and nothing’s been found.”
“Then why did he believe Champlain might be there?”
“He also thought Champlain was in the Lit and His, let’s not forget. He saw Champlain everywhere.”
Gamache thought for a moment. “There’re bodies buried all over Québec from hundreds of years ago. How would you even know if you’d found Champlain?”
“That’s a good question. It’s had us worried for a long time. Would the coffin say Samuel de Champlain? Would there be a date, an insignia perhaps? Maybe by his clothes. He apparently wore a quite distinctive metal hat, Renaud always thought that’s how he’d know him.”
“When he opened the coffin he’d see a skeleton in a metal hat and decide it’s the father of Québec?”
“Genius might have its limits,” admitted Émile. “But scholars think there might be a few clues. All the coffins made back then were wood, with a few exceptions. Experts believe Champlain would be an exception. His coffin was almost certainly lined in lead. And it’s easier these days to date remains.”
Gamache looked unconvinced. “Père Sébastien at the Basilica said there were mysteries surrounding Champlain and his birth. That he might be a Huguenot or a spy for the King of France or even his illegitimate son. Was that just romanticizing or is there more to it?”
“It’s partly romantic, the noble bastard son. But a few things feed that rumor. One is his own near maniacal secrecy. For instance, he was married but only mentions his wife of twenty-five years a couple of times, and even then not by name.”
“They didn’t have any children, did they?”
Émile shook his head. “But others were also pretty tight lipped about Champlain. A couple of the Jesuit priests and a Récollet lay brother mention him in their journals, but even then it was nothing personal. Just daily life. Why the secrecy?”
“What’s your theory? You’ve studied the man most of your life.”
“I think it was partly the time, less stress on the individual. There wasn’t quite the culture of ‘me’ that there is now. But I also think there might’ve been something he was trying to hide and it made him a very private person.”
“The unacknowledged son of a king?”
Émile hesitated. “He wrote prolifically, you know, thousands of pages. Buried in all those words, all those pages, was one sentence.”
Gamache was listening closely, imagining Champlain bent over the paper with a quill pen and a pot of ink by candlelight in a Spartan home four hundred years and a few hundred yards away from where they were sitting.
“I am obligated by birth to the King,” said Émile. “Historians for centuries have tried to figure out what that could mean.”
Gamache rolled it around in his head. I am obligated by birth to the King. It was certainly suggestive. Then something occurred to him.
“If Champlain’s body was found, and we knew beyond a doubt it was him, they could do DNA tests.” He was watching Émile as he spoke. His mentor’s eyes were on the table. Was it deliberate? Not wanting to make eye contact? Was it possible?
“But would it matter?” Gamache mused. “Suppose the tests proved he was the son of Henri IV, who cares today?”
Émile raised his eyes. “From a practical point of view it would mean nothing, but symbolically?” Émile shrugged. “Pretty potent stuff, especially for the separatists who already see Champlain as a powerful symbol of Québec independence. It would only add to his luster and the romantic vision of him. He’d be both heroic and tragic. Just how the separatists see themselves.”
Gamache was quiet for a moment. “You’re a separatist, aren’t you Émile?”
They’d never talked about it before. It hadn’t been exactly a dirty little secret, just a private subject they’d never broached. In Québec politics was always dangerous territory.
Émile looked up from his omelette. “I am.”
There was no challenge, just acknowledgment.
“Then you might have some insight,” said Gamache. “Could the separatist movement use this murder?”
Émile was quiet for a moment then put down his fork. “It’s slightly more than a ‘movement’ Armand. It’s a political force. More than half the population say they’re Québec Nationalists. Separatists have formed the government many times.”
“I didn’t mean to belittle it,” smiled Gamache. “I’m sorry. And I’m aware of the political situation.”
“Of course you are, I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t.”
Already the atmosphere was becoming charged.
“I’ve been a separatist all my adult life,” said Émile. “From the late sixties to this very day. Doesn’t mean I don
“As you say, many agree with you, but there’re fanatics on both sides of the debate. Ardent Federalists who fear and distrust the French aspirations—”
“And demented separatists who’d do whatever it took to separate from Canada. Including violence.”
Both men thought about the October Crisis decades earlier when bombs were going off, when Francophones refused to speak English, when a British diplomat was kidnapped and a Québec cabinet minister murdered.
All in the name of Québec independence.
“No one wants to return to those days,” said Émile, looking his companion square in the eye.
“Are you so sure?” asked the Chief Inspector, gently but firmly.
The air bristled between them for a moment, then Émile smiled and picked up his fork. “Who knows what’s hidden below the surface, but I think those days are dead and buried.”
“Je me souviens,” said Gamache. “What was it René Dallaire called Québec? A rowboat society? Moving forward but looking back? Is the past ever really far from sight here?”
Émile stared at him for a moment, then smiled and resumed eating while Gamache gazed out the frosty window, his mind wandering.
If Samuel de Champlain was such a symbol of Québec nationalism, were the members of the Champlain Society all separatists? Perhaps. But did it matter? As Émile said, it was more common in Québec to be one than not, especially among the intelligentsia. Québec separatists had formed the government more than once.
Then another thought occurred to him. Suppose Samuel de Champlain was found and found not to be the son of the King? He would become slightly less romantic, slightly less heroic, a less powerful symbol.
Might the separatists prefer a missing Champlain to one found and flawed? Perhaps they too wanted to stop Augustin Renaud.
“Did you notice the entry from last week?” Gamache decided to change the subject. He opened the diary and pointed. Émile read then looked up.
“Literary and Historical Society? So last Friday wasn’t his first visit there. And it says 1800. The time of the meeting?”
“I was wondering the same thing, but the library would have been closed.”
Émile looked at the page once again. The four names, the blurry, scribbled number. 18-. He squinted closer. “Maybe it’s not 1800.”
“Maybe not. I haven’t found any of the others but I did find an S. Patrick at 1809 rue des Jardins.”
“There’s your answer.” Émile called for the bill and stood up. “Shall we?”
Gamache downed the last of his café au lait and stood. “I called and left a message on Monsieur Patrick’s answering machine, saying we’d be there about noon. Before that I need to go to the Lit and His to ask them about that entry in Renaud’s diary. Could you do something for me while I do that?”
“Absolument.”
Gamache nodded out the window. “See that building?”
“9¾ rue Ste-Ursule?” said Émile, squinting at the building. “Does it really say that? What does a three-quarter apartment look like?”
“Want to see? It’s Augustin Renaud’s.”
The two men paid up and with Henri they walked across the snowy street and into the apartment.
“Good God,” said Émile. “It looks like a bomb went off.”
“Inspector Langlois and I spent much of last night putting it in order. You should have seen it before.” Gamache wound between the piles of research.
“All about Champlain?” Émile picked up a sheet at random and scanned it.
“Everything I’ve found so far is. His diaries were stuffed behind that bookshelf.”
“Hidden?”
“It seems so, but I’m not sure we can read much into that. He was pretty paranoid. Can you go through his papers while I go to the Lit and His?”
“Are you kidding?”
Émile looked like a kid loosed in the toy factory. Gamache left his mentor sitting at the dining table, reaching for a pile of papers.
Within minutes the Chief Inspector was at the old library, standing in the deserted hallway.
“May I tuna you?” Winnie asked from the top of the oak staircase.
“I was wondering if I could speak to you and whoever else is here.” He spoke English in hopes the librarian would switch to her mother tongue.
“Meet we maybe in bookstore reunion?”
She hadn’t taken the hint.
“Good idea,” said Gamache.
“Bunny day,” agreed Winnie and disappeared.
Gamache found Mr. Blake in the library and within minutes Winnie, Elizabeth and Porter had joined them.
“I have just a couple of questions,” said the Chief. “We’ve found evidence that Augustin Renaud came here a week before he died.”
He watched them as he spoke. To a person they looked surprised, interested, a little disconcerted, but none of them looked guilty. And yet one of them had almost certainly lied to him. One of them had almost certainly seen, perhaps even met, Renaud here. Let him in.
But why? Why had Renaud wanted to come here? Why had he brought four others?
“What was he doing here?” Gamache asked and watched as they first stared at him, then at each other.
“Augustin Renaud came to the library?” asked Mr. Blake. “But I didn’t see him.”
“Neither did I,” said Winnie, surprised into English.
Elizabeth and Porter each shook their heads.
“He might have come after the library closed,” said Gamache. “At six o’clock.”
“Then he wouldn’t have gotten in,” said Porter. “The place would’ve been locked. You know that.”
“I know you all have keys. I know it would be easy for one of you to let him in.”
“But why would we?” asked Mr. Blake.
“Do the names Chin, JD, Patrick and O’Mara mean anything to you?”
Again they thought and again they shook their heads. Like the Hydra. One body, many heads. But of a mind.
“Members, perhaps?” he pressed.
“I don’t know about JD, but the others aren’t members,” said Winnie. “We have so few I know their names by heart.”
It struck Gamache for the first time what an interesting English expression that was. To commit something to memory was to know it by heart. Memories were kept in the heart, not the head. At least, that’s where the English kept their memories.
“May I have a list of your members?” he asked. Winnie bristled and Porter jumped in.
“That’s confidential.”
“A library membership list? Secret?”
“Not secret, Chief Inspector. Confidential.”
“I still need to see it.”
Porter opened his mouth but Elizabeth jumped in. “We’ll get it for you. Winnie?”
And Winnie, without hesitation, did what Elizabeth asked.
As he left, membership list folded in his breast pocket, Gamache paused on the top step to put his heavy gloves on. From there he looked across to St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church and the rectory facing the old library.
Who would have the easiest time letting someone into the Lit and His, unseen? And, if lights were turned on after closing time, who was most likely to see it?
The minister, Tom Hancock.
After first going to the stone home Gamache found the minister at his office in the church, a cluttered and comfortable back room.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, but I need to know if you saw Augustin Renaud at the Lit and His a week before he died.”
If Tom Hancock was the one who’d let them in he would almost certainly deny it. Gamache wasn’t expecting the truth, only hoping to surprise a fleeting look of guilt.
But he saw none.
“Renaud was there a week before he died? I didn’t know that. How’d you find out?”
Alone among them Hancock hadn’t tried to argue. He was simply, like the Chief, baffled.
“His diary. He was to meet four others there, after hours we think.”
Gamache gave him the names but the minister shook his head. “Sorry, they mean nothing, but I can ask around if you like.” He paused and examined Gamache closely. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Help. I need help. Gamache shook his head, thanked him, and left.
When he got back to 9¾ Ste-Ursule, Émile was still reading.
“Any luck?” He looked up.
Gamache shook his head and took off his coat, brushing snow from it. “You?”
“I was just wondering about these. Did you notice them?”
Gamache walked over to the table and looked down. Émile was pointing to the diary page, the one that mentioned the meeting at the Lit and His with the four men. At the bottom of the page, in very small but legible writing, were two numbers.
9-8499 and 9-8572.
“A bank account? A license plate maybe? They’re not reference numbers,” said Gamache. “At least, not Dewey Decimal numbers. I noticed them too, but he has so many numbers scribbled everywhere. The diary’s littered with them.”
They didn’t seem to be phone numbers, certainly not for Québec. Map coordinates? Not like any he’d ever seen.
Gamache glanced at his watch. “I think it’s time to visit Monsieur Patrick. Will you join me?”
Émile snapped the diary shut and stood, stretching. “It’s amazing, all this paper and yet nothing new. All the research had been done by other people before him. You’d think in all those years Augustin Renaud might have found something new.”
“Maybe he did. People aren’t usually murdered because nothing’s happened. Something happened in his life.”
Gamache locked up and they made their way along the narrow streets with Henri.
“All this was forest in Champlain’s time?” said Gamache, as they walked along Ste-Ursule. Émile nodded.
“The main settlement stopped at about rue des Jardins but it wasn’t all that long after Champlain’s death that the colony expanded. The Ursulines built the convent and more settlers came once they realized it wasn’t going away.”
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