TEN
“I beg your pardon?”
It was, by Gamache’s rough count, the millionth time he’d said that, or words to that effect, in the past ten minutes. He leaned even closer, risking toppling headlong off his chair. It didn’t help that Ken Haslam had a very, very large oak desk.
“Excusez?” Gamache felt his chair tip as he strained forward. He leaned back just in time. Across the chasm of the desk Mr. Haslam continued to talk or at least move his lips.
Murmur, murmur, murder, murmur, board. Haslam looked sharply at Chief Inspector Gamache.
“Pardon?”
Normally Gamache concentrated on people’s eyes, but was aware of their entire body. Clues came coded, and how people communicated was one of them. Their words were often the least informative. The vilest, bitterest, nastiest people often said nice things. But there was the sugar the words rode in on, or the little wink, or the insincere smile. Or the tense arm wrapped round the tense chest or legs, or the fingers intertwined tightly, white knuckled.
It was vital for him to be able to pick up on all the signals, and normally he could.
But this man confounded him because the only thing Gamache could see was Haslam’s mouth. He stared at it, desperately trying to lip-read.
Ken Haslam didn’t whisper. A whisper would have been, at this point, a welcome shout. He seemed, instead, to be simply mouthing his words. It was possible, thought Gamache, the man had had an operation. Perhaps his larynx had been removed.
But Gamache didn’t think so. Every now and then a word was intelligible, like “murder.” That word had popped out clearly.
Gamache was straining, physically and intellectually. Reaching to understand. It was exhausting. If only suspects realized, he thought, that screaming and shouting and throwing furniture wouldn’t wear their interrogators down, but whispering would.
“I’m sorry, sir.” Gamache was speaking English with the slight British accent he’d picked up at Cambridge.
Haslam’s office was in the Basse-Ville, the Lower Town. The fastest way to get to the Lower Town was the glass-enclosed elevator called the Funicular that swept up and down the cliff-face from the upper to the lower city. Gamache had paid his two dollars and walked into the Funicular. It dropped over the side and descended. It was a short, very beautiful trip, though the Chief Inspector stayed at the back of the elevator, away from the glass and the sheer drop beyond.
Once there he stepped out into Petit-Champlain, a narrow, charming street closed to traffic and filled with snow and bustling people. Pedestrians ambled along, bundled against the cold, stopping now and then to look into the festive windows at the handmade lace, the art, the blown glass, the pastries.
Gamache continued down to Place Royale, where the first settlement had been built beside the river.
There he found Ken Haslam’s office. Royale Tourists, the sign said. It was well placed, in a graystone building right on the open square. He walked in, spoke to the bright and helpful receptionist, explaining that no, he wasn’t interested in a tour but in speaking to the owner of the company.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked.
“I’m afraid not.” Just at the very moment Beauvoir in Montreal was tempted to reach for his S?reté ID, the Chief felt his hand move toward his breast pocket then stop. “I’d hoped he might be available.”
He smiled at her. Finally she smiled back.
“As a matter of fact, he is in. Let me go in and just see if he has a minute.”
And so, a few minutes later, he found himself in a quite magnificent office overlooking Place Royale and the église Notre-Dame-des-Victoires. The church built to commemorate two great victories over the English.
It had taken Gamache about ten seconds to appreciate the difficulty of the situation. It’s not that he didn’t understand what Ken Haslam was saying, it was just that he couldn’t hear it. Finally, when even lip-reading failed, the Chief interrupted.
“Désolé,” Gamache put up a hand. Haslam’s lips stopped moving. “Can we perhaps move closer together. I’m afraid I’m having some trouble hearing you.”
Haslam looked perplexed but got up and moved to the chair beside the Chief.
“I really just need to know what happened at the board meeting of the Lit and His, the one where Augustin Renaud appeared.”
Mumble, mumble, arrogant, murmur, couldn’t possibly mumble. Haslam looked quite stern. He was a handsome man with steel gray hair, clean shaven, ruddy complexion that looked like it came from the sun and not the bottle. And now that they were closer together Gamache was better able to understand him. While he still spoke below a whisper it was now almost intelligible and the other signals were clearer.
Haslam was annoyed.
Not at Gamache, he thought, but at what had happened. Someone familiar with the Literary and Historical Society had murdered Augustin Renaud. And the fact the lunatic archeologist had asked to see the board on the very day he died, and been refused, cannot be seen as a coincidence.
But Haslam was mouthing again.
Murmur, mumble, Champlain, mumble idiocy, mumble, canoe race.
“Yes, I understand from Mr. Hancock that you and he left early for a practice. You’re entered in the ice canoe race this coming Sunday.”
Haslam smiled and nodded. “It’s a lifelong dream.”
The words were spoken low, but clear. In a gravelly whisper. It was a warm voice and Gamache wondered why he didn’t use it more, especially in his job. Surely this was a financially fatal flaw, being a tour guide who didn’t speak.
“Why enter the race?” Gamache couldn’t help himself. He was dying to know why anyone, never mind someone closing in on seventy, would do this to themselves.
Haslam’s answer surprised him. He’d expected the Everest answer, or something about history, which the man clearly loved, since the canoe races re-created the old mail-runs before ice breaking ships appeared.
Mumble, like, murmur, people.
“You like the people?” Gamache asked.
Mumble, Haslam nodded and smiled.
“Can’t you just join a choir?”
Haslam smiled. “Not quite the same, is it Chief Inspector?” And Haslam’s eyes were warm, searching, intelligent.
He knows, thought Gamache. Somehow this man knows the value of not only friendship but camaraderie. What happens to people thrown together in extreme situations.
Gamache’s right hand began to tremble and he very slowly curled it into a fist but not before those thoughtful eyes across from him dropped to them. Saw the tremor.
And said nothing.