by Louise Penny
“Nice neighborhood. Quite a Merchants’ Association.”
Gamache nodded. “It took a while but we eventually found the cabin and the contents and the evidence the Hermit had been killed there. All the forensics confirmed only two people had spent time in the cabin. The Hermit, and Olivier. And then we found items from the cabin hidden in Olivier’s bistro, including the murder weapon. Olivier admitted to stealing them—”
“Foolish man.”
“Greedy man.”
“You arrested him?”
Gamache nodded, remembering that terrible day when he knew the truth and had to act on it. Seeing Olivier’s face, but worse, seeing Gabri’s.
And then the trial, the evidence, the testimony.
The conviction.
Gamache looked down at the pile of letters on the sofa. One every day since Olivier had been sentenced. All cordial, all with the same question.
Why would Olivier move the body?
“You keep calling this man ‘the Hermit.’ Who was he?”
“A Czech immigrant named Jakob, but that’s all we know.”
Émile stared at him, then nodded. It was unusual not to identify a murder victim but not unheard of, particularly one who so clearly didn’t want to be identified.
The two men moved into the dining room with its wall of exposed stone, open plan kitchen and aroma of roasting lamb and vegetables. After dinner they bundled up, put Henri on a leash and headed into the bitterly cold night. Their feet crunching on the hard snow, they joined the crowds heading out the great stone archway through the wall, to Place d’Youville and the ceremony opening the Carnaval de Québec.
In the midst of the festivities, as fiddlers sawed away and kids skated and the fireworks lit the sky over the old city Émile turned to Gamache.
“Why did Olivier move the body, Armand?”
Gamache steeled himself against the thrashing explosions, the bursts of light, the people crowding all around, shoving and shrieking.
Across the abandoned factory he saw Jean-Guy Beauvoir fall, hit. He saw the gunmen above them, shooting, in a place that was supposed to be almost undefended.
He’d made a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake.
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.
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.
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