by Louise Penny
But Agent Nichol had found it. Slight sounds in the silence.
“The premier seems relieved it hasn’t reached the political level, yet,” said Langlois, crossing his legs. “The damage has been contained.”
Seeing Gamache’s blank face he immediately regretted his comment.
“Désolé, I didn’t mean that. I was in the funeral cortege. Far behind you, of course.”
Gamache smiled slightly. “It’s all right, it’s hard to know what to say. I suspect there’s no right thing. Don’t worry about it.”
Langlois nodded then, making up his mind, he leaned forward. “When did you realize what was going on?”
“You don’t really expect me to answer that, do you?” It was said with some humor, just enough to cut the edge off the words.
“I suppose not. Forgive me. I know you’ve given your depositions but as a cop I’m just curious. How did we all miss it? Surely it was obvious? The planned attack was so,” Langlois searched for a word.
“Primitive?” asked Gamache at last.
Langlois nodded. “So simple.”
“And that’s what made it effective,” said Gamache. “We’ve spent years looking for a high-tech threat. The latest bomb. Bio-industrial, genetic, nuclear. We searched the Internet, used telecommunication. Satellites.”
“But the answer was right there all along,” said Langlois, shaking his head in amazement. “And we missed it.”
I’ll find you. I won’t let anything happen to you.
I believe you, sir.
In the brief pauses Gamache provided in his conversation with Paul Morin they’d picked up distant sounds, like the whispers of ghosts deep in the background.
Agent Morin wasn’t alone. The “farmer” hadn’t abandoned him after all. Others were there, speaking softly, softly. Walking softly, softly. Making almost no noise. But some. Enough for the delicate equipment and surprisingly sensitive ears to find.
And the words they’d spoken? It had taken hours, precious hours, but Nichol had finally isolated one crucial phrase.
La Grande.
Over and over she’d played it for Beauvoir, examining each syllable, each letter. The tone, the breath. Until they’d reached a conclusion.
La Grande. The power dam that held back trillions of tons of water. The giant dam that was ten times the size of any other in North America. That provided hydroelectricity for millions, hundreds of millions, of people.
Without it much of Canada and the States would be plunged into a dark age.
The La Grande dam was in the middle of nowhere, near impossible to get to without official permission.
Gamache had looked at his watch at that moment, when Beauvoir and Nichol had written him from the basement. Sent him the sound bite so he could hear what they’d found.
It was three in the morning. Eight hours left. He and Morin had been discussing paint samples and names. Banbury Cream. Nantucket Marine. Mouse Hair.
In a few strides Gamache was over at the huge ordinance map of Québec on his wall. His finger quickly found the La Grande River, and the slash across it that had diverted and dammed the flow, killing thousands of acres of old-growth forest, herds of caribou and deer and moose. Had stirred up mercury and poisoned native communities.
But it had also been a miracle of engineering and continued to provide power decades later. And if it was suddenly removed?
Chief Inspector Gamache’s finger made its dreadful way south, tracing the torrent that would be created when all that water was suddenly released, all that energy suddenly released. It would be like nuclear bombs tumbling down the length of the province.
His finger hit Cree villages then larger and larger towns and cities. Val-d’Or. Rouyn-Noranda.
How far down would the water get before it petered out, before it dissipated? Before all its energy was spent? How many bodies would be swept down with it?
Now Paul Morin was talking about the family cat peeing in his father’s printer.
Had Morin been taken there? Was he being held at the dam?
I’ll find you.
I believe you, sir.
“Sir?”
Gamache looked up into the face of Inspector Langlois.
“Are you all right?”
Gamache smiled. “Just fine. My apologies.”
“What can I do for you?”
“It’s about the Renaud case. Have you found any boxes of books that might have belonged to Renaud that weren’t in his apartment?”
“His ex-wife has some. He’d taken them over to her basement a few weeks ago. What is it?”
Gamache sat forward and brought out his notebook. “May I have her address please?”
“Certainly.” He wrote the address down and handed it to the Chief Inspector. “Anything else?”
“No, this is perfect. Merci.” Gamache folded the note, put on his coat, thanked the Inspector and left, his boots echoing with purpose down the long corridor and out the door.
Hopping into a cab he called Émile then had the cab swing by his home and together they drove out the old gates, along Grande-Allée with its merrily lit bars and restaurants. The cab turned right onto Avenue Cartier then right again onto a small side street. Rue Aberdeen.
From the taxi Gamache had called Madame Renaud to make sure she was home. A moment later she opened the door and the two men entered. It was a main-floor flat in the gracious old row houses, each with wrought-iron stairs outside, leading to the apartments above.
Inside, the floors were dark wood and the rooms were generous and beautifully proportioned. Wide original crown molding swept around where the walls met the high ceiling. Each chandelier had a plaster rosette. These were genteel homes in a much sought-after quartier of Québec. Not everyone wanted to live within the walls, where life tended to be cramped and dictated by planners long dead. Here the streets were wider, planted with soaring old trees and each home had a modest front garden, when not buried under feet of snow.
Madame Renaud was short and cheerful. She took their coats and offered them a cup of coffee which both men declined.
“We’re sorry for your loss, madame,” said Gamache, taking a seat in the inviting living room.
“Merci. He was unbearable, of course. A pig-headed man, totally self absorbed. And yet—”
Gamache and Émile waited while she composed herself.
“And yet now that he’s gone life feels emptier, less vibrant. I envied him his passion. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that strongly about anything. And he wasn’t a fool, you know, he knew the price he paid, but he was willing to pay it.”
“And what was that price?” Émile asked.
“He was mocked and ridiculed, but more than that, no one liked him.”
“Except you,” said Gamache.
She said nothing. “He was lonely, you know, in the end. But still he couldn’t stop, couldn’t trade a dead explorer for living friends.”
“When did he bring these books to you?” Gamache asked.
“About three weeks ago. There’re four boxes. He said his apartment was too crowded.”
Émile and Gamache exchanged a quick glance. Renaud’s apartment was certainly cramped, but it was already a disaster, four more boxes would have made no difference.
No. He’d brought them to his wife for another reason. For safekeeping.
“Did he bring you anything else?” Émile asked.
She shook her head. “He was secretive by nature, some might say paranoid,” she smiled. She was a woman of good cheer and Gamache wondered at Augustin Renaud, who’d chosen her as his wife. For a few bright years had he known happiness? Had that been his one shining attempt to change course? And find a place on the shore with this jovial, kind woman? But he couldn’t, of course.
Gamache watched Madame Renaud chat with Émile. She still loved him, despite all that, thought Gamache. Was that a blessing or a curse?
And he wondered if that would go away, with time. Would the voice fade, the feat
Avec le temps. Do we love less?
“Do you mind if we go through the boxes?” Gamache asked.
“Not at all. The other officers took a look but didn’t seem very interested. What are you looking for exactly?”
“Two books,” said Gamache. They’d walked to the back of the apartment, into the large, old-fashioned kitchen. “Unfortunately we don’t know what they are.”
“Well, I hope you find them here.” She opened a door and turned on a light.
Gamache and Émile saw wooden steps going straight down into a dark cellar with a dirt floor. A slight musky aroma met them, and as they headed down the stairs it felt a bit like wading into water. Gamache could feel the cool air creep up his legs until it was at his chest, his head and he was submerged in the dank and the chill.
“Watch your heads,” she called but both men were familiar with these old homes and had already ducked. “The boxes are over by the far wall.”
It took a moment for Gamache’s eyes to adjust, but finally they did and he saw the four cardboard boxes. Walking over he knelt at one while Émile took another.
Gamache’s box contained a variety of books in different sizes. First he checked their catalog numbers. All were from the Literary and Historical Society, a few even had the name Charles Chiniquy written in but none matched the numbers in the diary. He moved to another box.
That box was filled with bound sermons, reference books and old family bibles, some Catholic, some Presbyterian. He opened the first book and checked the number. 9-8495. His heart quickened. This was the box. Opening the next book and the next, the numbers mounted. 9-8496, 8497, 8498. Gamache brought out the next book, a black leather collection of sermons and opened it. 9-8500.
He stared at it, willing the numbers to change, then he carefully, slowly opened again and replaced each of the twenty books in the box. One was indeed missing.
9-8499.
It had sat between that book of sermons and Chiniquy’s confirmation bible.
“Maudits,” Gamache swore under his breath. Why wasn’t it there?
“Any luck?” He turned to Émile.
“Nothing. The damned book should be right here,” Émile shoved a finger between two volumes. “But it’s gone. 9-8572. Do you think someone got here first?”
“Madame Renaud said only Langlois’s team has been.”
“Still, what is here might be helpful,” said Émile.
Gamache peered into the box. It contained a series of black leather volumes, spine out, all the same size. Gamache took one out and examined it. It was a diary. Émile’s box contained the diary and journals of Charles Paschal Télesphore Chiniquy.
“Each book is a year,” said Émile. “The missing one is for 1869.”
Gamache sat back on his haunches and looked at his mentor, who was smiling.
Even in the dim light of the basement Gamache could see Émile’s eyes were bright. “Well, Chief?” said Émile, straightening up. “What next?”
“There’s only one thing to do now, Chief,” smiled Gamache. He picked up the box of Chiniquy journals. “Go for a drink.”
The two men returned upstairs and with Madame Renaud’s permission they left with the box. Just around the corner was the Café Krieghoff and a chilly minute later they were there, sitting at a corner table by the window, away from other patrons. It was six in the evening and the work crowd was just arriving. Civil servants, politicians from the nearby government offices, professors, writers and artists. It was a bohemian hangout, a separatist haunt, and had been for decades.
The waitress, clad in jeans and a sweater, brought them a bowl of nuts and two Scotches. They sipped, nibbled the nuts, and read from Chiniquy’s journals. It was fascinating stuff, insight into a mind both noble and mad. A mind with absolutely no insight into itself, a mind filled with purpose and delusion.
He would save souls and screw his superiors.
Gamache’s phone vibrated and he took the call.
“Chief?”
“Salut Jean-Guy. How are you?”
The question was no longer simply politesse but was asked with sincerity.
“I’m actually doing well. Better.”
And he sounded it. There was an energy to the younger man’s voice Gamache hadn’t heard in months.
“You? Where are you? I hear lots of noise.”
“Café Krieghoff.”
Beauvoir’s laugh came down the telephone line. “Deep into a case, I see.”
“Bien sûr. And you?” He could hear sounds as well.
“The bistro. Research.”
“Of course. Poor one.”
“I need your help,” said Beauvoir. “About the murder of the Hermit.”
TWENTY
It took Chief Inspector Gamache a moment to tear himself away from the 1860s Québec of Charles Chiniquy’s journals to the quaint village of Three Pines today.
And yet, it wasn’t that much of a leap. He suspected Three Pines probably hadn’t changed all that much in the last 150 years. Had Father Chiniquy chosen to visit the tiny hamlet he’d have seen the same old stone houses, the clapboard homes with dormers and smoking chimneys. He’d have walked across the village green to the shops made of faded rose brick, pausing perhaps to admire the trinity of trees at the very center of the community.
Only the people had changed in Three Pines in the past 150 years, with the possible exception of Ruth Zardo. Gamache could only imagine how Ruth would have greeted Father Chiniquy. He smiled at the thought of the drunken mad poet meeting the sober mad minister.
Well, take this then. Ruth had written. Have some more body.
Drink and eat.
You’ll just make yourself sick. Sicker.
You won’t be cured.
Would Chiniquy have cured her? Of what? Her drinking, her poetry? Her wounds? Her words?
“How can I help?” he asked Beauvoir, picturing his second in command sitting in the bistro in front of the fire with a micro-brewery beer and a bowl of salty chips.
“If Olivier didn’t kill the Hermit it comes down to five other suspects,” said Beauvoir. “Havoc Parra and his father Roar. Vincent Gilbert and his son Marc or Old Mundin.”
“Go on.” Gamache looked out the window of the Café Krieghoff to the cars crawling along the snowy evening street and the cheerful holiday lights still up. The capital had never looked prettier.
“There are two questions. Who had the opportunity and who had the motive? From what I can see, Roar, Havoc and Marc had the opportunity. Roar was cutting the trails that led right to the Hermit. The cabin was on Marc’s land and he could have walked those trails at any time and found it.”
“C’est vrai,” said the Chief, nodding as though Beauvoir could see him.
“Havoc worked late every Saturday and could have followed Olivier to the cabin.”
Gamache paused, remembering the case, remembering the night the Hermit had been killed. “But it wasn’t just Havoc in the bistro, Old Mundin also came in every Saturday night around closing time to get furniture to repair. He was there the night of the murder.”
“That’s true,” agreed Beauvoir. “Though he mostly went straight home before the bistro was locked up. But, yes, he’s a possibility.”
“So that’s Roar and Havoc Parra, Old Mundin and Marc Gilbert. All could have found the cabin and killed the Hermit. So why is Vincent Gilbert still a suspect? As you say, he doesn’t seem to have had the opportunity to find the cabin.”
Beauvoir paused. “It just seems too pat. His son buys a derelict old home no one wanted. They move here, then the Hermit is murdered and Marc’s estranged father shows up at almost exactly the same moment.”
“But you have no proof,” said Gamache, pushing slightly, “beyond a feeling.”
He could sense his second in command bristle. Jean-Guy Beauvoir had no truck with “feelings,” with “intuition.” Gamache, on the other hand, did.
“But you might be right,” said the Chief. “And what about motive?”
“That’s more difficult. We know why Olivier might have wanted the Hermit dead, but why would anyone else? If the motive was robbery the killer made a pretty poor job of it. From what we can make out, nothing was stolen.”
“What other motives could there be?” asked Gamache.
“Revenge. The Hermit did something terrible and the murderer found him and killed him for it. Might have been hunting him for years. That would also explain why the Hermit was a hermit. He was hiding. Those treasures had to come from somewhere. He almost certainly stole them himself.”
“Then why didn’t the murderer take them after he’d killed the Hermit? Why leave everything there?”
Gamache saw again the home buried in the wilderness. From the outside it seemed just a rustic log cabin, with window boxes of flowers and herbs, a vegetable garden, a fresh stream behind the home. But inside? Signed first editions, ancient pottery, tapestries, a panel from the famous Amber Room, leaded crystal and gold and silver candlesticks. And the violin.
And he saw young Agent Morin standing in the cabin, so awkward, like a wooden puppet, all gangly arms and legs. But as soon as he’d played that priceless violin his body had changed.
The haunting first notes of “Colm Quigley” returned to Gamache.
“There’s another possibility,” said Beauvoir. “The murder wasn’t about the treasure but something else the Hermit had done.”
“Your theory then is that the treasure distracted us. Distracted me.”
“No one who walked into that cabin believed the motive was anything other than the treasure. It seemed so obvious.”
But Gamache knew Beauvoir was being uncharacteristically tactful. He, Gamache, had been in charge of the investigation. He’d assigned the agents and investigators and he’d followed his own instincts, often in the face of strong protests on the part of Inspector Beauvoir who’d insisted all along both the murderer and the motive were in Three Pines.
Gamache now believed Beauvoir was right, and he’d been wrong. And perhaps had put an innocent man in prison.
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