Bury Your Dead

THREE

The next morning, Saturday, Gamache took Henri and walked through gently falling snow up rue Ste-Ursule for breakfast at Le Petit Coin Latin. Waiting for his omelette, a bowl of café au lait in front of him, he read the weekend papers and watched the revelers head to the creperies along rue St-Jean. It was fun to be both a part of it and apart from it, warm and toasty in the bistro just off the beaten track with Henri at his side.

After reading Le Soleil and Le Devoir he folded the newspapers and once again took out his correspondence from Three Pines. Gamache could just imagine Gabri, large, voluble, quite magnificent sitting in the bistro he now ran, leaning on the long, polished wooden counter, writing. The fieldstone fireplaces at either end of the beamed room would be lit, roaring, filling the place with light and warmth and welcome.

And even in Gabri’s private censure of the Chief Inspector there was always kindness, concern.

Gamache stroked the envelopes with one finger and almost felt the gentleness. But he felt something else, he felt the man’s conviction.

Olivier didn’t do it. Gabri repeated it over and over in each letter, as though with repetition it would be true.

Why would he move the body?

Gamache’s finger stopped caressing the paper, and he stared out the window, then he picked up his cell phone and made a call.

After breakfast he climbed the steep, slippery street. Turning left, Gamache made his way to the Literary and Historical Society. Every now and then he stepped into a snow bank to let families glide by. Kids were wrapped and bound, mummified, preserved against a bitterly cold Québec winter and heading for Bonhomme’s Ice Palace, or the ice slide, or the cabane à sucre with its warm maple syrup hardening to taffy on snow. The evenings of Carnaval were for university students, drunk and partying but the bright days were for children.

Once again Gamache marveled at the beauty of this old city with its narrow winding streets, the stone buildings, the metal roofs piled with snow and ice. It was like falling into an ancient European town. But Quebec City was more than an attractive anachronism, a pretty theme park. It was a living, vibrant haven, a gracious city that had changed hands many times, but kept its heart. The flurries were falling more heavily now, but without much wind. The city, always lovely, looked even more magical in the winter, with the snow, and the lights, the horse-drawn calèches, the people wrapped brightly against the cold.

At the top of the street he paused to catch his breath. A breath that was easier and easier to catch with each passing day as his health returned thanks to long, quiet walks with Reine-Marie, Émile, or Henri, or sometimes alone.

Though these days he was never alone. He longed for it, for blessed solitude.

Avec le temps, Émile had said. With time. And maybe he was right. His strength was coming back, why not his sanity?

Resuming his walk Gamache noticed activity ahead. Police cars. No doubt trouble with some hung-over university students, come to Québec to discover the official drink of the Winter Carnival, Caribou, a near lethal blend of port and alcohol. Gamache could never prove it, but he was pretty sure Caribou was the reason he’d started losing his hair in his twenties.

As he neared the Literary and Historical Society he noticed more Quebec City police cars and a cordon.

He stopped. Beside him Henri also stopped and sat alert, watching.

This side street was quieter, less traveled, than the main streets. He could see people streaming by twenty feet away, oblivious to the events happening right here.

Officers were standing at the foot of the steps up to the front door of the old library. Others were milling about. A telephone repair truck was parked at the curb and an ambulance had arrived. But there were no flashing lights, no urgency.

That meant one of two things. It had been a false alarm or it hadn’t, but there was no longer any need to rush.

Gamache knew which it was. A few of the cops leaning against the ambulance laughed and poked each other. Across the street Gamache bristled at the hilarity, something he never allowed at crime scenes. There was a place for laughter in life but not in recent, violent, death. And this was a death, he knew that. It wasn’t just instinct, it was all the clues. The number of police, the lack of urgency, the ambulance.

And this was violent death. The cordon told him that.

“Move along, monsieur,” one of the officers, young and officious, came up to him. “No need to stare.”

“I wanted to go in there,” said Gamache. “Do you know what happened?”

The young officer turned his back and walked away but it didn’t upset Gamache. Instead he watched the officers talk among themselves inside the cordon. While he and Henri stood outside.

A man walked down the stone steps, spoke a few words to one of the officers on guard then went to an unmarked car. Pausing there he looked round, then stooped to get into the car. But he didn’t. Instead he stopped and slowly straightening he looked right at Gamache. He stared for ten seconds or more, which, when eating a chocolate cake isn’t much, but when staring, is. Softly, he closed the car door and walking to the police tape he stepped over it. Seeing this, the young officer broke away from his companions and trotted over, falling into step with the plainclothes officer.

“I already told him to leave.”

“Did you now.”

“Oui. Do you want me to insist?”

“No. I want you to come with me.”

Watched by the others, the two men crossed the snowy street and walked right up to Gamache. There was a pause, as the three men stared at each other.

Then the plainclothes officer stepped back and saluted. Astonished, the young cop beside him stared at the large man in the parka and scarf and toque, with the German shepherd dog. He looked more closely. At the trim, graying beard, the thoughtful brown eyes, and the scar.

Blanching, he stepped back and saluted as well.

“Chef,” he said.

Chief Inspector Gamache saluted back and waved them to drop the formalities. These men weren’t even members of his force. He was with the Sûreté du Québec and they were with the local Quebec City police. Indeed, he recognized the plainclothes officer from crime conferences they’d both attended.

“I didn’t know you were visiting Québec, sir,” said the senior officer, obviously perplexed. Why was the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec standing just outside a crime scene?

“It’s Inspector Langlois, isn’t it? I’m on leave, as you might know.”

Both men gave curt nods. Everyone knew.

“I’m just here visiting a friend and doing some personal research in the library. What’s happened?”

“A body was found this morning by a telephone repairman. In the basement.”

“Homicide?”

“Definitely. An effort had been made to bury him, but when the repairman dug for a broken cable he found the body.”

Gamache looked at the building. It had been the original courthouse and jail, hundreds of years before. Prisoners had been executed, hanged from the window above the front door. It was a place that knew violent death and the people who committed it, on either side of the law. Now there’d been another.

As he watched the door opened and a figure appeared on the top step. It was hard to tell with the distance and the winter clothing, but he thought he recognized her as one of the library volunteers. An older woman, she glanced in their direction and hesitated.

“The coroner’s just arrived but it doesn’t look as though the victim’s been there long. Hours perhaps, but not days.”

“He hasn’t begun smelling yet,” said the young officer. “Those make me want to puke.”

Gamache took a breath and exhaled, his breath freezing as soon as it hit the air. But he said nothing. This officer wasn’t his to train in the etiquette of the recently dead, in the respect necessary when in their presence. In the empathy necessary to see the victim as a person, and the murderer as a person. It wasn’t with cynicism and sarcasm, with dark humor and crass comments a killer was caught. He was caught by seeing and thinking and feeling. Crude comments didn’t make the path clearer or the interpretation of evidence easier. Indeed, they obscured the truth, with fear.

But this wasn’t the Chief Inspector’s trainee, nor was it his case.

Shifting his eyes from the young man he noticed the elderly woman had disappeared. Since she hadn’t had time to walk out of sight he presumed she’d gone back inside.

It was an odd thing to do. To get all dressed for the cold, then not to actually leave.

But, he reminded himself again, this wasn’t his case, wasn’t his business.

“Would you like to come in, sir?” Inspector Langlois asked.

Gamache smiled. “I was just reminding myself this wasn’t my case, Inspector. Thank you for your courtesy, but I’m fine out here.”

Langlois shot a glance at the officer beside him then took Gamache’s elbow and steered him out of hearing range.

“I wasn’t asking just to be kind. My English isn’t very good. It’s OK, but you should hear the head librarian speak French. At least, I think she’s speaking French. She clearly thinks she is. But I can’t understand a word. In the entire interview she spoke French and I spoke English. It was like something out of a cartoon. She must think I’m a moron. So far all I’ve done is grinned and nodded and I think I might have asked whether she’s descended from the lower orders.”

“Why did you ask that?”

“I didn’t mean to. I wanted to ask if she had access to the basement, but something went wrong,” he smiled ruefully. “I think clarity might be important in a murder case.”

“I think you might be right. What did she say to your question?”

“She got quite upset and said that the night is a strawberry.”

“Oh dear.”

Langlois sighed a puff of frustration. “Will you come in? I know you speak English, I’ve heard you at conferences.”

“But how do you know I wasn’t mangling the language too? Maybe the night is a strawberry.”

“We have other officers whose English is better than mine, and I was just about to call to the station to get them, but then I saw you. We could use your help.”

Gamache hesitated. And felt a tremble in his hand, blessedly hidden by his thick mitts. “Thank you for the invitation.” He met the Inspector’s searching eyes. “But I can’t.”

There was silence. The Inspector, far from being upset, nodded. “I should not have asked. My apologies.”

“Not at all. I’m most grateful you did. Merci.”

Unseen by either man, they were being watched from the second-floor window. The window put in a century ago to replace the door. That led to the platform. That led to execution.

Elizabeth MacWhirter, her scarf still on but her coat now in the closet downstairs, stared at the two men. Earlier she’d looked out the window, anxious to turn her back on the alien activity behind her. She sought solace, peace, in the unchanging view outside the window. From there she could see St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, the presbytery, the sloping, familiar roofs of her city. And the snow drifting gently down to land on them, as though there wasn’t a care in the world.

From that window she’d noticed the man and the dog, standing just outside the cordon, staring. He was, she knew, the same man who’d visited the library every day for a week now sitting quietly with his German shepherd. Reading, sometimes writing, sometimes consulting Winnie on volumes unread in a hundred years or more.

“He’s researching the Battle of the Plains of Abraham,” Winnie had reported one afternoon as they stood on the gallery above the library. “Particularly interested in the correspondence of both James Cook and Louis-Antoine de Bougainville.”

“Why?” Porter had whispered.

“How would I know?” said Winnie. “Those books are so old I don’t think anyone’s ever cataloged them. In fact, they were earmarked for the next sale, before it was canceled.”

Porter had glanced at the large, quiet man on the leather sofa below.

Elizabeth was pretty sure Porter hadn’t recognized him. She was certain Winnie hadn’t. But she had.

And now, as she watched the local police inspector shake hands and walk away she again examined the large man with the dog and remembered the last time she’d seen him on a street.

She’d been watching the CBC along with the rest of the province, indeed the rest of the country. It was even, she’d learned later, broadcast on CNN around the world.

She’d seen him then. In uniform, without the beard, his face bruised, his Sûreté du Québec officer’s hat not quite hiding the ugly scar. His dress coat warm but surely not warm enough to keep out the bitter day. He’d walked slowly, limping slightly, at the head of the long, long solemn column of men and women in uniform. A near endless cortege of officers from Québec, from Canada, from the States and England and France. And at the head, their commander. The man who’d led them, but didn’t follow them all the way. Not into death. Not quite.

And that image that appeared on front pages of newspapers, on covers of magazines from Paris Match to Maclean’s to Newsweek and People.

Of the Chief Inspector, his eyes momentarily closed, his face tipped slightly upward, a grimace, a moment of private agony made public. It was almost too much to bear.

She’d told no one who the quiet man reading in their library was, but that was about to change. Putting her coat on again she walked carefully down the icy steps and along the street to catch him up. He was moving along rue Ste-Anne, the dog on a leash beside him.

“Pardon,” she called. “Excusez-moi.” He was some distance ahead, weaving in and out of the happy tourists and weekend revelers. He turned left onto rue Ste-Ursule. She picked up her pace. At the corner she saw him half a block ahead. “Bonjour.” She raised her voice and waved but his back was to her, and if he heard he would very probably think she was calling to someone else.

He was nearing rue St-Louis and the throng heading to the Ice Palace. She’d almost certainly lose him among the thousands of people.

“Chief Inspector.”

It wasn’t said as loudly as all her other cries but it stopped the large man dead in his tracks. His back was to her, and she noticed some people giving him nasty looks as they suddenly had to swing around to avoid him on the narrow sidewalk.

He turned back. She was afraid he would look annoyed, but instead his face was mild, inquisitive. He quickly scanned the faces and came to rest on her standing stock-still half a block away. He smiled and together they closed the gap.

“Désolé,” she said, reaching out to him. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

“Not at all.”

There was an awkward silence. He didn’t comment on the fact she knew who he was. That much was obvious and like her, he clearly felt no need to waste time with the obvious.

“I know you from the library, don’t I?” he said. “What can I do for you?”

They were at the busy corner of St-Louis and Ste-Ursule. Families were trying to squeeze by. It didn’t take much to clog the narrow artery.

She hesitated. Gamache looked round and motioned down the street, against the river of people.

“Would you like a coffee? I suspect you could use something.”

She smiled for the first time that day, and sighed. “Oui, s’il vous plaît.”

They fought their way a block down, finally stopping in front of the smallest building on the street. It was whitewashed, with a brilliant red metal roof and above it a sign. Aux Anciens Canadienes.

“It’s a bit of a tourist trap but at this time of day it might be quiet,” he said in English, opening the door. They found themselves in the not unusual situation in Québec where, to be polite, the French person was speaking English and, to be polite, the English spoke French. They stepped into the dark, intimate restaurant, the oldest in the province with its low ceiling and stone walls and original beams.

“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 Elizabeth MacWhirter was so desperate.

And he knew she had reason to be.