René paused but his hands were expressive. He opened them wide. The other two men were also silent, eyes down.
“Are you saying they put a building on top of Champlain?” Gamache asked.
The three men looked unhappy but none contradicted him until Jean spoke.
“There is another theory.”
émile sighed. “Not that again. There’s no proof.”
“There’s no proof of any of this,” Jean pointed out. “I agree it’s a guess. You just don’t want to believe it.”
émile was silent. It seemed Jean had made a direct hit. The little man turned to Gamache. “The other theory is that as Quebec City grew there was a huge amount of building work, as René says. But along with it was excavation, digging down beneath the frost line before they put up the new buildings. The city was booming, and things went up in a hurry. They didn’t have time to worry about the dead.”
Gamache was beginning to see where this was going. “So the theory is that they didn’t build on top of Champlain.”
Jean shook his head slowly. “No. They dug him up along with hundreds of others and dumped him in a landfill somewhere. They didn’t mean to, they just didn’t know.”
Gamache was silent, stunned. Would the Americans have done that to Washington? Or the British to Henry the Eighth?
“Could that have happened?” He turned, naturally, to émile Comeau who shrugged, then finally nodded.
“It is possible, but Jean’s right. None of us wants to admit it.”
“To be fair,” said Jean. “It is the least likely of the theories.”
“The point is,” said René, looking at the map again. “This is the limit of the original settlement in 1635.” He twirled his finger over the old map, then swept it aside and found the same place on the modern map. “Pretty much from where we’re sitting now, in the Chateau, to a radius of a few hundred yards. They’d keep it small. Easier to defend.”
“And what would the rest have been?” asked Gamache, beginning to understand what they were saying.
“Nothing,” said Jean. “Forest. Rock.”
“And where the Literary and Historical Society is now?”
“Woods.” René brought the old map out and placed his finger on a big blank space, far from any habitation.
Nothing.
There was no way they’d have buried Champlain that far from civilization.
There was no way the father of Québec could be in the basement of the Lit and His.
“So,” Gamache leaned back. “Why was Augustin Renaud there?”
“Because he was mad?” asked Jean.
“He was you know,” said émile. “Champlain loved Québec, to the exclusion of everything else in his life. It was all he knew, all he lived for. And Renaud loved Champlain with the same devotion. A devotion bordering on madness.”
“Bordering?” asked René. “He was the capital of the state of madness. Augustin Renaud was the Emperor of it. Bordering,” he muttered.
“Maybe,” said émile, staring down at the old map again. “Maybe he wasn’t looking for Champlain. Maybe there was another reason he was there.”
“Like what?”
“Well,” his mentor looked at him. “It is a literary society. Maybe he was looking for a book.”
Gamache smiled. Maybe. He got up and paused as the waiter fetched his coat. Looking down at the modern map he noticed something.
“The old chapel, the one that burned. Where would it have been on this map?”
René put out his finger one more time and pointed.
It landed on the Notre-Dame Basilica, the mighty church where the great and good used to pray. As the waiter helped Gamache into his parka René leaned over and whispered, “Speak to Père Sébastien.”