Bury Your Dead

TWENTY–THREE

When the Chief Inspector and Émile Comeau arrived at the Literary and Historical Society, Elizabeth, Porter Wilson, tiny Winnie the librarian and Mr. Blake were assembled in the entrance hall, waiting.

“What’s going on?” Porter launched right into it before Gamache and Émile had even closed the door behind them. “The Chief Archeologist is back with some technicians and that Inspector Langlois is also there. He’s ordered us to stay away from our own basement.”

“Had you planned to go down there?” Gamache asked, taking off his coat.

“Well, no.”

“Do you need to go down there?”

“No, not at all.” The two men stared at each other.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Porter, this is embarrassing,” said Elizabeth. “Let the men do their work. But,” she turned to Armand Gamache, “we would appreciate some information. Whatever you can give us.”

Gamache and Émile exchanged glances. “We think Augustin Renaud might have been right,” said the Chief Inspector.

“About what?” snapped Porter.

“Don’t be a fool,” said Mr. Blake. “About Champlain, what else?” When Gamache nodded Mr. Blake frowned. “You believe Samuel de Champlain is in our basement and has been all this time?”

“For the last 140 years anyway, yes. Pardon.”

The men squeezed past the gathering and made their way through the now familiar halls to the trap door into the first basement, then down another steep metal ladder to the final level.

Through the floorboards of the level above they could see glaring light, as though the sun was imprisoned down there. But once down they recognized it for what it was, a series of brilliant industrial lamps trained, once again, on the dirt and stone basement.

The Chief Archeologist was standing in the center of the room, his long arms hugging his chest perhaps trying, unsuccessfully, to contain his anger. The same two technicians who’d accompanied him before were there again, as was Inspector Langlois, who immediately took Gamache aside.

“I can explain,” Gamache began before being interrupted.

“I know you can, it’s not that. Let Croix stew for a while, he’s an asshole anyway. Have you heard?”

Langlois searched the Chief Inspector’s face.

“About the video? Oui. But I haven’t seen it.” Now it was Gamache’s turn to examine his companion. “Have you?”

“Yes. Everyone has.”

It was, of course, an exaggeration but not, perhaps, by much. He continued to examine Langlois’s face for clues. Was there a hint of pity?

“I’m sorry this has happened, sir.”

“Thank you. I’ll be watching it later this afternoon.”

Langlois paused, as though he wanted to say something, but didn’t. Instead he turned swiftly to look back at the Chief Archeologist.

“What’s this all about, patron?”

“I’ll tell you,” smiled Gamache, touching the man on the arm and guiding him back to the larger room and the gathering. He spoke to Serge Croix.

“You were here almost a week ago, I know, to see if maybe Augustin Renaud’s wasn’t the only body in this basement. To see if the man you considered a menace might actually have been right, that Champlain was buried here. Not surprisingly, you found nothing.”

“We found root vegetables,” said Croix to the snickers of the technicians behind him.

“I’d like you to look again,” said the Chief, smiling too, and staring at the archeologist. “For Champlain.”

“Not here I’m not. It’s a waste of time.”

“If you don’t, I will.” Gamache reached for a shovel. “And you must know, I’m even less of an archeologist than Renaud.”

He took his cardigan off and handed it to Émile then, rolling up his sleeves, he looked around the basement. It was pocked with fresh-turned earth, where holes had been dug and filled back in.

“Maybe I’ll start here.” He put the shovel in the earth and his boot on it.

“Wait,” said Croix. “This is absurd. We searched this basement. What makes you think Champlain would be here?”

“That does.”

Gamache nodded to Émile, who opened the satchel and handed the old bible to Serge Croix. They watched as the Chief Archeologist’s life changed. It began with the tiniest movement. His eyes widened, fractionally, then he blinked, then he exhaled.

“Merde,” he whispered. “Oh, merde.”

Croix looked up from the bible and stared at Gamache. “Where did you find this?”

“Upstairs, hiding where you’d hide a precious old book. Among other old books, in a library no one used. It was almost certainly put there by the murderer. He didn’t want to destroy it, but neither could he keep it himself, so he hid it. But before that it was in Renaud’s possession and before that it belonged to Charles Chiniquy.”

Gamache could see the man’s mind racing. Making connections, through the years, through the centuries. Connecting movements, events, personalities.

“How’d Chiniquy find this?”

“Patrick and O’Mara, those two Irish laborers I told you about, found it and sold it to Chiniquy.”

“You asked me to find out about digging sites in 1869, is this what that was about? They were working at one of the sites?”

Gamache nodded and waited for Croix to make the final connection.

“The Old Homestead?” the Chief Archeologist finally asked, then brought his hand to his forehead and tilted his head back. “Of course. The Old Homestead. We’d always dismissed it because it was outside the range we considered reasonable for the original hallowed ground. But Champlain wouldn’t have been buried in hallowed ground. Not if he was a Huguenot.”

Croix gripped the bible and seemed himself in the grip of something, a great excitement, a sort of fugue.

“There’d been rumors, of course, but that’s the thing with Champlain, so little’s known about the man, there were rumors about everything. This was just one more, and a not very likely one, we thought. Would the King put a Protestant, a Huguenot in charge of the New World? But suppose the King didn’t know? But no, it’s more likely he did and this would explain so much.”

The Chief Archeologist was now like a teenager with his first crush, giddy, almost babbling.

“It would explain why Champlain was never given a royal title, why he was never officially recognized as the Governor of Québec. Why he was never honored for his accomplishments, while others were honored for much less. That’s always been a mystery. And maybe it explains why he was sent here in the first place. It was considered almost a suicide mission and maybe Champlain, being a Huguenot, was expendable.”

“Would the Jesuits have known?” one of the technicians asked. It was a question that had puzzled Gamache as well. The Catholic Church played a powerful role in the establishment of the colony, in converting the natives and keeping the colonists in line.

The Jesuits were not famous for tolerance.

“I don’t know,” admitted Croix, thinking. “They must have. Otherwise they’d have buried him in the Catholic cemetery, not outside it.”

“But surely the Jesuits would never have allowed him to be buried with that.” Gamache pointed to the Huguenot bible, still in Croix’s grip.

“True. But someone must have known,” said Croix. “There’re all sorts of eyewitness accounts of Champlain being buried in the chapel, a chapel he himself had supported. Left half his money to them.”

The Chief Archeologist stopped, but they could see his mind racing.

“Could that be it? Was the money a bribe? Did he leave half his fortune to the church here so they’d give him a public burial in the chapel then later, let him be reburied beyond the Catholic cemetery, in a field? With this?” He held up the bible.

Gamache listened, imagining this great leader dug up in the dead of night, his remains lugged across the cemetery, across hallowed ground, and beyond.

Why? Because he was a Protestant. All his deeds, all his courage, all his vision and determination and achievements finally stood for nothing. In death he was only one thing.

A Huguenot. An outsider, in a country he’d created, a world he’d built. Samuel de Champlain, the humanist, had been lowered into the New World, in ground unblessed, but unblemished too.

Had Champlain come here hoping it would be different? Gamache wondered. Only to find the New World exactly like the Old, only colder.

Samuel de Champlain had lain in his lead-lined coffin with his bible until two Irish workers, living in squalor and despair had dug him up. He’d made their fortune. One, O’Mara, had left the city. The other, Patrick, had left lower Québec, buying a home on des Jardins among the affluent.

Had he been happier there?

“And now you think he’s here?” Serge Croix turned to Gamache.

“I do.” And Gamache told them the rest of the story. Of the meeting with James Douglas, of the payoff.

“So Chiniquy and Douglas buried him here?” Croix asked.

“That’s what I think. Champlain was too powerful a symbol for French Québec, a rallying point. Better never found. 1869 was only two years after Confederation. A lot of French Québec wasn’t happy about joining Canada, there were calls for separation even then. Finding Champlain would do no good to the Canadian cause, and might do a great deal of harm. Chiniquy probably didn’t care greatly, but I suspect Dr. Douglas did. He was aware of the political forces, and a conservative by nature, the less fuss the better.”

“And the remains of Champlain would cause a fuss,” said Inspector Langlois, nodding. “Better to bury the dead, and leave it be.”

“But the dead had a habit of leaving the grave,” said Croix. “Especially around James Douglas. You’re familiar with his activities?”

“As a grave robber?” said Gamache. “Yes.”

“And the mummies,” said Croix.

“Mummies?” Langlois asked.

“Another time,” said the Chief Inspector. “I’ll tell you all about it. Now we have another body to find.”

For the next hour the archeologist and his technicians searched the basement again, finding more tin boxes, more vegetables.

But under the stairs, exactly where the metal steps landed, they found something else. Something dismissed in their first sweep earlier in the week as just the blip from the stairs themselves but now, examined closer, proved to be something else.

Digging carefully but without enthusiasm or conviction, the technicians hit something, something larger than the tin boxes. Something, indeed, not tin at all but wood.

Digging more carefully now, excavating, taking photographs and recording the event, they slowly, painstakingly, uncovered a coffin. The men gathered round and by rote crossed themselves.

The Inspector called his forensics team and within minutes the investigators had arrived. Samples were taken, more photographs, prints.

Cameras recording, the coffin was raised and the Chief Archeologist and his head technician pried up the nails, long and rusty red. With a slow shriek they came out of the wood, reluctant to leave, reluctant to reveal what they’d hidden for so long.

Finally freed of the nails the lid was ready to be lifted. Serge Croix reached out then hesitated. Looking over at Gamache he gestured, beckoning him forward. Gamache declined, but when the Chief Archeologist insisted he agreed.

Armand Gamache stood before the worm-eaten coffin. A simple maple wood, made from the ancient forests hacked down to build Québec four hundred years earlier. Gamache could feel the tremble in his right hand, and knew it showed.

He reached out and touched the coffin, and the tremble stopped. Resting his hands there he considered what was about to happen. After centuries of hunting, after lifetimes spent in the singular search for the Father of Québec, after his own childhood spent reading about it, dreaming about it, reenacting it with friends. A stick in his hand, he’d stood astride rocks in Parc Mont Royal, commanding the great ship, fighting noble battles, surviving terrible storms. Valiant. Along with every other school child in Québec his hero had been Samuel de Champlain.

Exploring, mapping. Creating. Québec.

Gamache looked down at his large hands, resting gently on the old wood.

Samuel de Champlain.

Gamache stepped aside and gestured to Émile to take his place. The elderly man shook his head but Gamache walked over and led him to the coffin then stepped back and smiled at his mentor.

“Merci,” Émile mouthed. Together he and the Chief Archeologist slowly, carefully, raised the heavy, lead-lined lid.

A skeleton lay there. Finally, found.

After a long silence the Chief Archeologist, gazing into the coffin, spoke.

“Unless Champlain had another big secret, this isn’t him.”

“What do you mean?” Gamache asked.

“It’s a woman.”

Something had changed. Jean-Guy Beauvoir could feel it. It was the way people looked at him. It was as though they’d seen him naked, as though they’d seen him in a position so vulnerable, so exposed it was all they could see now.

Not the man he really was. An edited man.

They’d seen the video, all of them. That much was obvious. He was the only one in Three Pines who hadn’t, he and maybe Ruth, who was barely out of the stone ages.

But while the people of Three Pines might know something about him, he knew something about them, something no one else knew. He knew who’d killed the Hermit.

It was late Friday afternoon. The sun had long since set and the bistro was clearing out, people heading home for dinner after a drink.

Beauvoir looked round. Clara, Peter and Myrna were sitting with Old Mundin and The Wife, who held a sleeping Charles. At another table Marc and Dominique Gilbert sipped beer while Marc’s mother, Carole, had a white wine. The Parras were there, Roar and Hanna. Their son Havoc was waiting tables.

Ruth sat alone and Gabri stood behind the bar.

The door opened and someone else blew in, batting snow off his hat and stomping his feet. Vincent Gilbert, the asshole saint, the doctor who’d been so tender with Beauvoir and so cruel with others.

“Am I late?” he asked.

“Late?” said Carole. “For what?”

“Well, I was invited. Weren’t you?”

Everyone turned to Beauvoir then to Clara and Myrna. Old and The Wife had been invited for drinks by the two women, as had the Parras. The Gilberts had come at Beauvoir’s invitation and Ruth was just part of the décor.

“Patron,” said Beauvoir, and Gabri locked the front door then closed the side entrances from the other shops.

“What’s all this about?” Roar Parra asked, looking perplexed but not alarmed. He was short and squat and powerful and Beauvoir was glad he wasn’t alarmed. Yet.

They stared at Beauvoir.

He’d quietly had a word with Gabri earlier and asked him to ask the other patrons to leave, discreetly, so that only these few remained. Outside snow was falling and beginning to blow about, visible in the glow from the homes. The cheery Christmas lights on the three pine trees on the village green bobbed in the wind. They’d be battling a small blizzard by the time they left.

Inside, it was snug and warm and though the wind and snow swirled against the windows it only increased their sense of security. Fires were lit in the hearths and while they could hear the wind outside the sturdy building never even shuddered.

Like the rest of Three Pines, and its residents, it took what was coming and remained standing. And now, together, they stared at him.

With just a touch of pity?

“OK, numb nuts, what’s all this about?” asked Ruth.

Armand Gamache sat in the library of the Literary and Historical Society marveling that a week ago he barely knew it, barely knew the people, and now he felt he knew them well.

The board had assembled one more time.

Tense, suspicious Porter Wilson at the head of the table, even if he wasn’t a natural leader. The real leader sat beside him and had all their lives, quietly running things, picking up pieces dropped and broken by Porter. Elizabeth MacWhirter, heir to the MacWhirter shipyard fortunes, a fortune long faded away until all that remained were appearances.

But appearances mattered, Gamache knew, especially to Elizabeth MacWhirter. Especially to the English community. And the truth was, they were at once stronger and weaker than they appeared.

The English community was certainly small, and diminishing, dying out. A fact lost on the Francophone majority who, despite every evidence, still saw the Anglos, if they saw them at all, as threats.

And why not, really? Many of the Anglos still saw themselves as wielding, and deserving, of power. A manifest destiny, a right conferred on them by birth and fate. By General Wolfe, two hundred years earlier on the field belonging to the farmer Abraham.

Like whites in South Africa or the Southern states who knew that things had changed, who even accepted the changes, but who couldn’t quite shake the certainty deeply, diplomatically, hidden, that they should still be in charge.

There was Winnie, the tiny librarian who loved the library and loved Elizabeth and loved her work among things and ideas no longer relevant.

Mr. Blake was there, in suit and tie. A benign older gentleman, whose home had shrunk from the entire city, to a house, and finally to this one magnificent room. And what, Gamache wondered, would someone do to defend their home?

Tom Hancock sat quietly, watching. Young, vital, wise, but not really one of them. An outsider. But that gave him clarity, he could see what was only visible from a distance.

And finally, Ken Haslam. Whose voice was either silent or shrieking.

No middle ground, a man of extremes, who either sat quietly in his chair or fought his way across a frozen river.

A man whose wife and daughter were buried in Québec but who was not considered a Québécois, as though even more could be expected.

They’d adjourned to the library once the coffin had been removed and the others had gone, leaving Émile, Gamache and the board.

Gamache looked at the board members, resting finally on Porter Wilson. Expecting an outburst, expecting a demand for information, tinged perhaps with a slight accusation of unfairness.

Instead they all simply looked at the Chief Inspector, politely. Something had changed, and Gamache knew what.

It was the damned video. They’d seen it, and he hadn’t. Not yet. They knew something he didn’t, something about himself. But he knew something they didn’t, something they wanted to know.

Well, they’d have to wait.

“You were out practicing this afternoon, I believe,” said Gamache to the Reverend Mr. Tom Hancock.

“We were,” he agreed, surprised by the topic.

“I saw you.” The Chief turned to Ken Haslam.

Haslam smiled and mouthed something Gamache couldn’t make out. There was a nodding of heads. The Chief turned to the others.

“What did Mr. Haslam just say?”

Now several faces blushed. He waited.

“Because,” he finally said, “I didn’t hear a word and I don’t think you did either.” He turned again to the upright, distinguished man. “Why do you whisper? In fact, I don’t think it can even be called a whisper.”

Gamache had spoken respectfully, quietly, without anger or accusation but wanting to know.

Haslam’s lips moved and again no one heard anything.

“He speaks—” began Tom Hancock before Gamache put up a hand and stopped him.

“I think it’s time Mr. Haslam spoke for himself, don’t you? And you, perhaps uniquely, know he can.”

Now it was the Reverend Mr. Hancock’s turn to blush. He looked at Gamache but said nothing.

Gamache leaned forward, toward Haslam. “I heard you out on the ice calling the strokes. No other crew could be heard, no other person. Just you.”

Ken Haslam looked frightened now. He opened his mouth, then shook his head, practically in tears.

“I can’t,” he said, his voice barely registering. “All my life I’ve been told to be quiet.”

“By whom?”

“Mother, Father, brothers. My teachers, everyone. Even my wife, God bless her, asked me to keep my voice down.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

The word was spoken clearly, too clearly. It wasn’t so much piercing as all enveloping, filling the space. It was a voice that carried, boomed, and drove all before it. No other voice could exist, but that one. An English voice, drowning out all others.

“And so you learned to be silent?” asked Gamache.

“If I wanted friends,” said Haslam, his words slamming into them. Was it some quirk of palate and brainpan and voice box so that the sound waves were magnified? “If I wanted to belong, yes, I learned never to raise my voice.”

“But that meant you could never speak at all, never be heard,” said Gamache.

“And what would you choose?” Haslam asked, his loud voice turning a rational question into an attack. “To speak up but chase people away, or to be quiet in company?”

Armand Gamache was silent then, looking down the long table at the solemn faces, and he knew Ken Haslam wasn’t the only one who’d faced that question, and made the same choice.

To be silent. In hopes of not offending, in hopes of being accepted.

But what happened to people who never spoke, never raised their voices? Kept everything inside?

Gamache knew what happened. Everything they swallowed, every word, thought, feeling rattled around inside, hollowing the person out. And into that chasm they stuffed their words, their rage.

“Perhaps you could explain the coffin in our basement,” Elizabeth broke the silence.

It seemed a reasonable request.

“As you know I came here to recover from my wounds.” Beauvoir wouldn’t let them think he didn’t know what they knew. A few villagers lowered their eyes, a few blushed as though Beauvoir had dropped his pants, but most continued to look at him, interested.

“But there was another reason. Chief Inspector Gamache asked me to look into the murder of the Hermit.”

That caused a stir. They looked at each other. Gabri, alone among them, stood up.

“He sent you? He believed me?”

“Hasn’t that case been solved?” said Hanna. “Haven’t you caused enough harm?”

“The Chief wasn’t satisfied,” said Beauvoir. “At first I thought he was wrong, that perhaps he’d been persuaded by the wishful thinking of Gabri here, who every day since Olivier was arrested sent the Chief a letter, containing the same question. Why did Olivier move the body?”

Gabri turned to Clara. “It was my query letter.”

“And we all know you’re quite a query,” said Ruth.

Gabri was bursting, beaming. No one else was.

“The more I investigated the more I began to think Olivier might not have killed the Hermit. But if not Olivier, then who?”

He stood with his hands on the back of a wing chair for support. Almost there. “We believed the motive had to do with the treasure. It seemed obvious. And yet, if it was the motive, why hadn’t the murderer taken it? So I decided to take a different tack. Suppose the treasure had very little to do with the killing of the Hermit? Except for one crucial feature. It led the murderer here, to Three Pines.”

They all stared at him, even Clara and Myrna. He hadn’t shared his conclusions with them. This close to trapping the killer he couldn’t risk it.

“If he hid all those things in his cabin, how could they lead anyone to Three Pines?” Old Mundin asked from the back of the room.

“They didn’t stay hidden,” Beauvoir explained. “Not all of them. The Hermit began to give some to Olivier in exchange for food and company and Olivier, knowing what he had, sold them. Through eBay, but also through an antique shop in Montreal on rue Notre-Dame.”

He turned to the Gilberts. “I understand you bought some things on rue Notre-Dame.”

“It’s a long street, Inspector,” said Dominique. “A lot of stores.”

“True, but like butchers and bakers, most people develop a loyalty for a specific antique shop, they go back to the same one. Am I right?”

He looked around. Everyone, except Gabri, dropped their eyes.

“Well, not to worry. I’m sure the owner will recognize your photographs.”

“All right, we used the Temps Perdu,” said Carole.

“Les Temps Perdu. Popular place. It happens to be where Olivier sold the Hermit’s things.” Beauvoir wasn’t surprised. He’d already spoken to the owner about the Gilberts.

“We didn’t know that’s where he went,” said Dominique, her voice sounding squeezed, sharp. “It just had nice things. Lots of people go there.”

“Besides,” said Marc. “We only bought the home here in the last year. We didn’t need antiques before that.”

“You might have gone in to look. People window-shop up and down rue Notre-Dame all the time.”

“But,” said Hanna Parra, “you said the Hermit wasn’t killed for his treasure. Then why was he killed?”

“Exactly,” said Beauvoir. “Why? Once I set aside the treasure other things took on more importance, mostly two things. The word ‘Woo,’ and the repetition of another word. ‘Charlotte.’ There was Charlotte’s Web, Charlotte Brontë, the Amber Room was made for a Charlotte, and the violin’s maker, his wife and muse was named Charlotte. We might, of course, be reading more into it than it deserved, but at the very least it deserved another look.”

“And what did you find?” The Wife asked.

“I found the murderer,” said Beauvoir.

Armand Gamache was tired. He wanted to go home to Reine-Marie. But now wasn’t the time to show weakness, now wasn’t the time to flag. Not when he was so close.

He’d told them about Chiniquy, he’d told them about James Douglas. About Patrick and O’Mara. And he showed them the books, the ones they’d unwittingly sold from their collection.

Including perhaps the most valuable volume in Canada today.

An original Huguenot bible belonging to Samuel de Champlain.

That had brought groans from the board members, but no recriminations. They were beginning to band together, to shore up their differences.

Things are strongest when they’re broken, Agent Morin had said, and Armand Gamache knew it to be true. And he knew he was witnessing a broken community, fractured by unkind time and events, and a temperament not, perhaps, best suited to change.

But it was pulling together, mending, and it would be very strong indeed because it was so broken. As Ken Haslam had been broken, by years of hushing. As Elizabeth MacWhirter had been worn down by years of polishing the façade. As Porter Wilson and Winnie and Mr. Blake had been shattered watching family, friends, influence, institutions disappear.

Only young Tom Hancock was unscathed, for now.

“So when Augustin Renaud came to speak to us a week ago he wanted to dig?” asked Mr. Blake.

“I believe so. He was convinced Champlain was buried in your basement, put there by James Douglas and Father Chiniquy.”

“And he was right,” said Porter, all bravado gone. “What’ll they do to us when they find out we’ve been hiding Champlain all these years?”

“We didn’t hide him,” said Winnie. “We didn’t even know he was there.”

“Try convincing the tabloids of that,” said Porter. “And even if most believe us, the fact is, it was still an Anglo conspiracy.”

“A conspiracy of two,” said Mr. Blake. “More than a hundred years ago. Not the whole community.”

“And you think if James Douglas had asked the community they’d have disagreed?” demanded Porter, making a more coherent argument than Gamache had thought him capable of. One thing was certain, he knew his community, as did Mr. Blake, who accepted that Porter, finally, was right.

“This is a disaster,” said Winnie and no one contradicted her, except Gamache.

“Well, not entirely. The coffin was Champlain’s, but the body inside wasn’t.”

Now they gaped at him. Dying men thrown a rope, a slender hope.

They were hushed. And finally Ken Haslam spoke, his voice filling the room, squeezing them all into the corners.

“Who was he?”

“She. The body in the coffin appears to be female.”

“She? What was she doing in Champlain’s coffin?” Haslam shouted.

“We don’t know, but we will.”

Beside him Émile’s eyes slid from Haslam to Elizabeth MacWhirter. She looked sad and frightened. Her veneer cracking. Émile smiled at her slightly. An encouraging look from someone who knew what it felt like to be shattered.

“Things are strongest where they’re broken,” Agent Morin laughed. “Good thing too, since I’m always dropping things. Suzanne’s pretty clumsy too, you know. We’re going to have to put our babies in bubble wrap. Babies bounce, right?”

“Not twice,” said Gamache and Morin laughed again.

“Oh well, I guess we’ll have strong kids.”

“Without a doubt.”

“I started with the assumption that the killer had found one of the Hermit’s treasures in the antique shop,” said Beauvoir, “and traced it back here to Three Pines.”

The only sounds now in the bistro were the crackling of the log fire and snow hitting the windows.

Inside, the fireplaces threw odd shadows against the walls but none of them threatening. Not to Beauvoir, but he suspected at least one person in this room was beginning to find it close, tight, claustrophobic.

“But who could it be? The Gilberts had bought a lot of antiques from that very store. The Parras? They’d inherited a lot of things from their family in the Czech Republic and managed to get them out when the wall came down. By their own admission, they’d sold most of it to pay for their new home. Perhaps they sold the things through Les Temps Perdu. Old Mundin? Well, he restores antiques. Wouldn’t he also be drawn to the terrific shops on rue Notre-Dame?

“It hardly seemed to narrow the suspects, so I looked at another clue. Woo. Olivier had described the Hermit whispering the word when he was particularly distressed. It was upsetting to him. But what did ‘woo’ mean? Was it a name, a nickname?”

He looked over to the Gilbert table. Like the rest they were staring, entranced and guarded.

“Was ‘woo’ short-form for a name that was hard to say, particularly for a child? That’s when most nicknames are given, isn’t it? In childhood. I was at the Mundins’ and heard little Charlie speaking. Shoo, for chaud. Kids do that, trying to get their tongues around hard words. Like Woloshyn. Woo.”

Clara leaned in to Myrna and whispered, “That’s what I was afraid of. As soon as I heard her maiden name was Woloshyn.”

Myrna raised her brows and turned, with the rest of them, to look at Carole Gilbert.

Carole didn’t move but Vincent Gilbert did. He rose to his full height, his towering personality filling the room.

“Enough with these insinuations. If you have something to say come out with it.”

“And you,” Beauvoir rounded on him. “Sir. The magnificent Dr. Gilbert. The great man, the great healer.” As he spoke he knew the Chief Inspector would be handling this differently, would never employ sarcasm, would rarely lose his temper, as Beauvoir could feel himself doing. With an effort he pulled back from the edge. “One of the great mysteries of this case has always been why the murderer didn’t steal the treasure. Who could resist it? Even if it wasn’t the motive for murder, it was just sitting there. Who wouldn’t pick up a trinket? A rare book? A gold candlestick?”

“And what was your brilliant conclusion?” Dr. Gilbert asked, his voice filled with contempt.

“There seemed only one. The killer had no need of it. Did that apply to Olivier? No. He was about as greedy as they come. Marc, your son? Same thing. Greedy, petty. He’d have stripped the cabin.”

He could see Marc Gilbert struggling, wanting to defend himself, but recognizing that these insults actually helped clear him of suspicion.

“The Parras? A landscaper, a waiter? Not exactly rolling in money. Even one of the Hermit’s pieces would make a huge difference in their lives. No, if one of them had killed the Hermit they’d have stolen something. Same with Old Mundin. A carpenter’s income is fine for now, but what happens when Charlie gets older? He’ll need to be provided for. The Mundins would have stolen the treasure if not for themselves then for their son.”

Now he turned back to Vincent Gilbert.

“But one person, sir, didn’t need the treasure. You. You’re already wealthy. Besides, I don’t think money’s important to you. You have another motivation, another master. Money was never the currency that counted. No. It’s compliments you collect. Respect, admiration. You collect the certainty that you’re better than anyone else. A saint, even. It’s your ego, your self-esteem that needs feeding, demands feeding, not your bank account. You alone among all the suspects would have left the treasure, because it meant nothing to you.”

If Dr. Gilbert could have ripped Beauvoir’s life away with a look, the young Inspector would have dropped dead right there. But instead of dying, Inspector Beauvoir smiled and continued his story, his voice suddenly calm, reasonable.

“But there was another mystery. Who was the Hermit? Olivier started off saying he was Czech and his name was Jakob but he’s since admitted he was lying. He had no idea who the man was except that he wasn’t Czech. More likely French or English. He spoke perfect French, but seemed to prefer to read English.”

Beauvoir noticed Roar and Hanna Parra exchange relieved glances.

“The only clue we had led us back to the antiques and antiquities in his cabin. I don’t know antiques, but people who do said these were amazing. He must have had an eye for it. He didn’t pick the stuff up at flea markets and garage sales.”

Beauvoir paused. He’d seen Gamache do this time and again, reeling in the suspect then letting him run, then reeling some more. But doing it subtly, carefully, delicately, without the suspect even realizing it. Doing it steadily, without hesitation.

It would be terrifying for the murderer when it dawned on him what was happening. And that terror was what the Chief counted on. To wear the person down, to grind them down. But it took a strong stomach, and patience.

Beauvoir had never appreciated how difficult this was. To present the facts in such a way so that the murderer would eventually know where it was heading. But not too soon as to be able to wiggle away, and not too late to have time to fight back.

No, the point was to wear the murderer’s nerves wire thin. Then give him the impression he wasn’t a suspect, someone else was. Let him breathe, then move in again when his guard was down.

And do that, over and over. Relentlessly.

It was exhausting. Like landing a huge fish, only one that could eat the boat.

And now Beauvoir moved in again, for the last time. For the kill.

“The truth, for we know it now, is that the treasure played a role. It was the catalyst. But what drove the final blow wasn’t greed for a treasure lost but for something else lost. Something more personal, more valuable even than treasure. This wasn’t about the loss of family heirlooms, but the family itself. Am I right?”

And Beauvoir turned to the murderer.

The killer stood and everyone in the room stared, bewildered.

“He killed my father,” said Old Mundin.