Bury Your Dead

by Penny, Louise

  Gamache had been coming to this library every day for almost a week and except for whispered conversations with the elderly female librarian as he searched for obscure volumes on the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, he hadn’t spoken to anyone.

  It was a relief to not talk, to not explain, or feel an explanation was desired if not demanded. That would come soon enough. But for now he’d yearned for and found peace in this obscure library.

  Though he’d been visiting his mentor for years, and had come to believe he knew old Québec intimately, he’d never actually been in this building. Never even noticed it among the other lovely homes and churches, convents, schools, hotels and restaurants.

  But here, just up rue St-Stanislas where Émile had his old stone home, Gamache had found sanctuary in an English library, among books. Where else?

  “Would he like water?” the elderly man asked again. He seemed to want to help and though Gamache doubted Henri needed anything he said yes, please. Together they walked out of the library and down the wooden hall, past portraits of former heads of the Literary and Historical Society. It was as though the place was encrusted with its own history.

  It gave it a feeling of calm and certainty. Though much of old Quebec City was like that within the thick walls. The only fortress city in North America, protected from attack.

  It was, these days, more symbolic than practical but Gamache knew symbols were at least as powerful as any bomb. Indeed, while men and women perished, and cities fell, symbols endured, grew.

  Symbols were immortal.

  The elderly man poured water into a bowl and Gamache carried it back to the library, putting it on a towel so as not to get water on the wide, dark floorboards. Henri, of course, ignored it.

  The two men settled back into their seats. Gamache noticed the man was reading a heavy horticultural reference book. He himself went back to the correspondence. A selection of letters Isabelle Lacoste had thought he might like to see. Most from sympathetic colleagues around the world, others from citizens who also wanted to let him know how they felt. He read them all, responded to them all, grateful Agent Lacoste sent only a sampling.

  At the very end he read the letter he knew was there. Was always there. Every day. It was in a now familiar hand, dashed off, almost illegible but Gamache had grown used to it and could now decode the scrawl.

  Cher Armand,

  This brings my thoughts, and prayers that you’re feeling better. We speak of you often and hope you’ll visit. Ruth says to bring Reine-Marie, since she doesn’t actually like you. But she did ask me to say hello, and fuck off.

  Gamache smiled. It was one of the kinder things Ruth Zardo said to people. Almost an endearment. Almost.

  I do, however, have one question. Why would Olivier move the body? It doesn’t make sense. He didn’t do it, you know.

  Love,

  Gabri

  Inside, as always, Gabri had put a licorice pipe. Gamache took it out, hesitated, then offered the treat to the man across the way.

  “Licorice?”

  The man looked up at Gamache then down at the offering.

  “Are you offering candy to a stranger? Hope I won’t have to call the police.”

  Gamache felt himself tense. Had the man recognized him? Was this a veiled message? But the man’s faded blue eyes were without artifice, and he was smiling. Reaching out the elderly man broke the pipe in half and handed the larger portion back to his companion. The part with the candy flame, the biggest and the best part.

  “Merci, vous êtes très gentil.” Thank you, you’re very kind, the man said.

  “C’est moi qui vous remercie.” It is I who thank you, Gamache responded. It was a well-known, but no less sincere, exchange among gracious people. The man had spoken in perfect, educated, cultured French. Perhaps slightly accented, but Gamache knew that might just be his preconception, since he knew the man to be English, while he himself was Francophone.

  They ate their candy and read their books. Henri settled in and by three thirty the librarian, Winnie, was turning on the lamps. The sun was already setting on the walled city and the old library within the walls.

  Gamache was reminded of a nesting doll. The most public face was North America and huddled inside that was Canada and huddled inside Canada was Québec. And inside Québec? An even smaller presence, the tiny English community. And within that?

  This place. The Literary and Historical Society. That held them and all their records, their thoughts, their memories, their symbols. Gamache didn’t have to look at the statue above him to know who it was. This place held their leaders, their language, their culture and achievements. Long forgotten or never known by the Francophone majority outside these walls but kept alive here.

  It was a remarkable place almost no Francophone even knew existed. When he’d told Émile about it his old friend had thought Gamache was joking, making it up, and yet the building was just two blocks from his own home.

  Yes, it was like a nesting doll. Each held within the other until finally at the very core was this little gem. But was it nesting or hiding?

  Gamache watched Winnie make her way around the library with its floor-to-ceiling books, Indian carpets scattered on the hardwood floors, a long wooden table and beside that the sitting area. Two leather wing chairs and the worn leather sofa where Gamache sat, his correspondence and books on the coffee table. Arched windows broke up the bookcases and flooded the room with light, when there was light to catch. But the most striking part of the library was the balcony that curved above it. A wrought iron spiral staircase took patrons to the second story of bookshelves that rose to the plaster ceiling.

  The room was filled with volume and volumes. With light. With peace.

  Gamache couldn’t believe he’d never known it was here, had stumbled over it quite by accident one day while on a walk trying to clear his mind of the images. But more than the flashes that came unbidden, were the sounds. The gunshots, the exploding wood and walls as bullets hit. The shouts, then the screams.

  But louder than all of that was the quiet, trusting, young voice in his head.

  “I believe you, sir.”

  Armand and Henri left the library and did their rounds of the shops, picking up a selection of raw milk cheeses, pâté and lamb from J.A. Moisan, fruit and vegetables from the grocery store across the way, and a fresh, warm baguette from the Paillard bakery on rue St-Jean. Arriving home before Émile he put another log on the fire to warm up the chilly home. It had been built in 1752 and while the stone walls were three feet thick and would easily repel a cannonball, it was defenseless against the winter wind.

  As Armand cooked the home warmed up and by the time Émile arrived the place was toasty warm and smelled of rosemary and garlic and lamb.

  “Salut,” Émile called from the front door, then a moment later arrived in the kitchen carrying a bottle of red wine and reaching for the corkscrew. “Smells terrific.”

  Gamache carried the evening tray of baguette, cheeses and pâté into the living room, placing it on the table before the fire while Émile brought in their wine.

  “Santé.”

  The two men sat facing the fireplace and toasted. When they each had something to eat they discussed their days, Émile describing lunching with friends at the bar in the Château Frontenac and research he was doing for the Société Champlain. Gamache described his quiet hours in the library.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” Émile took a bite of wild boar pâté.

  Gamache shook his head. “It’s in there somewhere. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense. We know the French troops were not more than half a mile from here in 1759, waiting for the English.”

  It was the battle every Québec school child learned about, dreamed about, fought again with wooden muskets and imaginary horses. The dreadful battle that would decide the fate of the city, the territory, the country and the continent. The Battle of Québec that in 1759 would effectively end the Seven Years’ War. Ironic
that after so many years of fighting between the French and the English over New France, the final battle should be so short. But brutal.

  As Gamache spoke the two men imagined the scene. A chilly September day, the forces under Général Montcalm a mix of elite French troops and the Québécois, more used to guerrilla tactics than formal warfare. The French were desperate to lift the siege of Québec, a vicious and cruel starvation. More than fifteen thousand cannonballs had bombarded the tiny community and now, with winter almost upon them, it had to end or they’d all die. Men, women, children. Nurses, nuns, carpenters, teachers. All would perish.

  Général Montcalm and his army would engage the mighty English force in one magnificent battle. Winner take all.

  Montcalm, a brave, experienced soldier, a frontline commander who led by example. A hero to his men.

  And against him? An equally brilliant and brave soldier, General Wolfe.

  Québec was built on a cliff where the river narrowed. It was a huge strategic advantage. No enemy could ever attack it directly, they’d have to scale the cliff and that was impossible.

  But they could attack just upriver, and that’s where Montcalm waited. There was, however, another possibility, an area just slightly further away. Being a cunning commander, Montcalm sent one of his best men there, his own aide-de-camp, Colonel Bougainville.

  And so, in mid-September 1759 he waited.

  But Montcalm had made a mistake. A terrible mistake. Indeed, he’d made several, as Armand Gamache, a student of Québec history, was determined to prove.

  “It’s a fascinating theory, Armand,” said Émile. “And you really think this little library holds the key? An English library?”

  “Where else would it be?”

  Émile Comeau nodded. It was a relief to see his friend so interested. When Armand and Reine-Marie had arrived a week before it took Émile a day to adjust to the changes in Gamache. And not just the beard, and the scars, but he seemed weighed down, leaden and laden by the recent past. Now, Gamache was still thinking of the past, but at least it was someone else’s, not his own. “Did you get to the letters?”

  “I did, and have some to send back,” Gamache retrieved the parcel of correspondence. Hesitating for a moment, he made up his mind and took one out. “I’d like you to read this.”

  Émile sipped his wine and read, then began laughing. He handed the letter back to Gamache.

  “That Ruth clearly has a crush on you.”

  “If I had pigtails she’d be pulling them,” smiled Gamache. “But I think you might know her.

  “Who hurt you, once,

  so far beyond repair

  that you would meet each overture

  with curling lip?”

  Gamache quoted.

  “That Ruth?” asked Émile. “Ruth Zardo? The poet?” And then he finished the astonishing poem, the work now taught in schools across Québec.

  “While we, who knew you well,

  your friends, (the focus of your scorn)

  could see your courage in the face of fear,

  your wit, and thoughtfulness,

  and will remember you

  with something close to love.”

  The two men were quiet for a moment, staring into the mumbling fire, lost in their own thoughts of love and loss, of damage done beyond repair.

  “I thought she was dead,” said Émile at last, spreading pâté on the chewy bread.

  Gamache laughed. “Gabri introduced her to Reine-Marie as something they found when they dug up the basement.”

  Émile reached for the letter again. “Who’s this Gabri? A friend?”

  Gamache hesitated. “Yes. He lives in that little village I told you about. Three Pines.”

  “You’ve been there a few times, I remember. Investigating some murders. I tried to find the village on a map once. Just south of Montreal you said, by the border with Vermont?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well,” Émile continued. “I must have been blind, because I couldn’t see it.”

  Gamache nodded. “Somehow the mapmakers missed Three Pines.”

  “Then how do people find it?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps it suddenly appears.”

  “I was blind but now I see?” quoted Émile. “Only visible to a wretch like you?”

  Gamache laughed. “The best café au lait and croissants in Québec. I’m a happy wretch.” He got up again and put a stack of letters on the coffee table. “I also wanted to show you these.”

  Émile read through them while Gamache sipped his wine and ate cheese and baguette, relaxing in the room as familiar and comfortable as his own.

  “All from that Gabri man,” said Émile at last, patting the small pile of letters beside him. “How often does he write?”

  “Every day.”

  “Every day? Is he obsessed with you? A threat?” Émile leaned forward, his eyes suddenly keen, all humor gone.

  “No, not at all. He’s a friend.”

  “Why would Olivier move the body?” Émile read from one of the letters. “It doesn’t make sense. He didn’t do it, you know. He says the same thing in each letter.” Émile picked up a few and scanned them. “What does he mean?”

  “It was a case I investigated last autumn, over the Labor Day weekend. A body was found in Olivier’s bistro in Three Pines. The victim had been hit once on the back of the head, killed.”

  “Once?”

  His mentor had immediately picked up on the significance of that. A single, catastrophic blow. It was extremely rare. A person, if hit once, was almost certainly hit often, the murderer in a rage. He’d rain blow after blow on his victim. Almost never did they find just one blow, hard enough to kill. It meant someone was filled with enough rage to power a terrible blow, but enough control to stop there. It was a frightening combination.

  “The victim had no identification, but we finally found a cabin hidden in the woods, where he lived and where he’d been murdered. Émile, you should have seen what was in there.”

  Émile Comeau had a vivid imagination, fed by decades of grisly discoveries. He waited for Gamache to describe the terrible cabin.

  “It was filled with treasure.”

  “Treasure?”

  “I know,” smiled Gamache, seeing Émile’s face. “We weren’t expecting it either. It was unbelievable. Antiques and artifacts. Priceless.”

  He had his mentor’s full attention. Émile sat forward, his lean hands holding each other, relaxed and alert. Once a hunter of killers, always that, and he could smell blood. Everything Gamache knew about homicide he’d learned from this man. And more besides.

  “Go on,” said Comeau.

  “There were signed first editions, ancient pottery, leaded glass thousands of years old. There was a panel from the Amber Room and dinnerware once belonging to Catherine the Great.”

  And a violin. In a breath Gamache was back in that cabin watching Agent Paul Morin. Gangly, awkward, young, picking up the priceless violin, tucking it under his chin and leaning into it. His body suddenly making sense, as though bred to play this instrument. And filling the rustic, log cabin with the most beautiful, haunting Celtic lament.

  “Armand?”

  “Sorry,” Gamache came back to the stone home in Quebec City. “I was just remembering something.”

  His mentor examined him. “All right?”

  Gamache gave a nod and smiled. “A tune.”

  “You found out who killed this recluse though?”

  “We did. The evidence was overwhelming. We found the murder weapon and other things from the cabin in the bistro.”

  “Olivier was the murderer?” Émile lifted the letters and Gamache nodded.

  “It was hard for everyone to believe, hard for me to believe, but it was the truth.”

  Émile watched his companion. He knew Armand well. “You liked him, this Olivier?”

  “He was a friend. Is a friend.”

  Gamache remembered again sitting in the cheery
bistro, holding the evidence that damned his friend. The terrible realization that Olivier was indeed the murderer. He’d taken the man’s treasure from his cabin. But more than that. He’d taken the man’s life.

  “You said the body was found in the bistro, but he was murdered in his own cabin? Is that what Gabri means? Why would Olivier move the body from the cabin to the bistro?”

  Gamache didn’t say anything for a long time, and Émile gave him that time, sipping his wine, thinking his own thoughts, staring into the soft flames and waiting.

  Finally Gamache looked at Émile. “Gabri asks a good question.”

  “Are they partners?”

  Gamache nodded.

  “Well, he just doesn’t want to believe Olivier did it. That’s all.”

  “That’s true, he doesn’t. But the question is still good. If Olivier murdered the Hermit in a remote cabin, why move the body to a place it would be found?”

  “And his own place at that.”

  “Well, no, that’s where it gets complicated. He actually moved it to a nearby inn and spa. He admits to moving the body, to try to ruin the spa. He saw it as a threat.”

  “So you have your answer.”

  “But that’s just it,” said Gamache, turning so that his whole body faced Émile. “Olivier says he found the Hermit already dead and decided to use the body as a kind of weapon, to hurt the competition. But he says if he’d actually murdered the man he’d never have moved the body. He’d have left it there, or taken it into the woods to be eaten by coyotes. Why would a murderer kill someone then make sure the body was found?”

  “But wait a second,” said Émile, trying to piece it together. “You said the body was found in Olivier’s own bistro. How did that happen?”

  “A bit awkward for Olivier that,” said Gamache. “The owner of the inn and spa had the same idea. When he found the body, he moved it to the bistro, to try to ruin Olivier.”