by Louise Penny
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, suspi
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.
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