Armand Gamache sat in the Paillard bakery on rue St-Jean and stared at Augustin Renaud’s diary. Henri was curled up under the table while outside people were trudging head down through the snow and the cold.
How could Chiniquy, the fallen priest, and Augustin Renaud, the amateur archeologist be connected? Gamache stared at Renaud’s excited markings, the exclamation marks, the swirls around the names of the four men. Chin, JD, Patrick, O’Mara. Swirls of ink so forceful the pen had almost ripped the paper. And below the entry were the catalog numbers.
9-8499
9-8572
Almost certainly the numbers related to books sold by the Literary and Historical Society and, equally certainly, they were from the lot donated by Chiniquy’s housekeeper and left in their boxes in the basement for more than a century.
Until Augustin Renaud had bought them from the secondhand bookseller, Alain Doucet. In two lots. First in the summer, then the last lot just a few weeks ago.
What was in those books?
What did Chiniquy have that excited Augustin Renaud?
Gamache took a sip of hot chocolate.
It had to have something to do with Champlain, and yet the priest had shown absolutely no interest in the founder of Québec.
Chin, Patrick, O’Mara, JD. 18-something.
If Chiniquy was ninety when he died in 1899, that meant he was born in 1809. Could the number be 1809? Or 1899? Maybe. But where did that leave him?
Nowhere.
His eyes narrowed.
He looked at 1809 closely then snapping his notebook shut he drained his drink, put money on the table then he and Henri hurried into the cold. Taking long strides he saw the Basilica getting larger and larger as he approached.
At the corner he paused, in his own world, where snow and biting cold couldn’t touch him. A world where Champlain was recently dead and buried, then reburied.
A world of clues over the centuries, as buried as the body.
He turned and walked briskly up des Jardins, stopping in front of the beautiful old door, with the wrought-iron numerals.
1809.
He rapped and waited. Now he felt the cold and beside him Henri leaned against his legs for warmth and comfort. Gamache was about to turn away when the door opened a crack, then all the way.
“Entrez,” said Sean Patrick, stepping back quickly, out of the way of the biting wind as it invaded his home.
“I’m sorry to bother you again, Monsieur Patrick,” said the Chief Inspector as they stood in the dark, cramped entrance. “But I have a couple of questions. May I?” He motioned toward the interior of the home.
“Fine,” said Patrick, walking reluctantly ahead. “Where to?”
“The living room, please.”
They found themselves in the familiar room, surrounded by censorious Patricks past.
“These are your great-grandparents, correct?” Gamache looked at a couple posing in front of this home. It was a wonderful picture, two stern sepia people in what looked like their Sunday best.
“It is. Taken the year they bought this place.”
“In the late 1800s you told us last time we talked.”
“That’s right.”
“Do you mind?” Gamache reached to take the photo off the wall.
“Please yourself.” It was clear Patrick was curious.
Turning the picture over Gamache found it was sealed at the back with brown paper. There was a photographer’s shop sticker, but no date. And no names.
Gamache put his reading glasses on and peered closely at the photo. And there, poking out from under the frame in the lower right-hand corner was what he was looking for.
A date.
1870.
Replacing the photo, he moved down the wall and stopped in front of another picture of great-grandfather Patrick. In this one he was with a group of other laborers, standing in front of a big hole. The building behind was barely visible.
Great-grandfather Patrick was smiling and so was another man, standing next to him. But everyone else in the photo looked grim. And why not? Their lives, like their fathers’ before them, would have been miserable.
Irish immigrants, they’d come to Canada for a better life only to die of plague in the crowded ships. Those that survived spent their lives in menial labor. Living in squalor in the Basse-Ville, the Lower Town, in the shadow of the cliffs, below the mighty Chateau Frontenac.
It was a life of near despair. So why were these two men smiling? Gamache turned the photo around. It too was sealed.
“I’d like to take this backing off. Do you mind?”
“Why?”
“I think it might help us with the case.”
“How?”
“I can’t tell you, but I promise not to harm the photo.”
“Is this going to get me into trouble?”
Patrick searched Gamache’s face and rested on his thoughtful eyes.
“Not at all. Indeed, I’d consider it a favor.”
After the briefest pause, Patrick nodded.
“Bon, merci. Can you turn on all the lights and get me your sharpest knife?”
Patrick did all that and the two men and a dog leaned over the table, the knife in Gamache’s hand. It shook slightly and Gamache gripped it tighter. Patrick glanced at the Chief Inspector, but said nothing. Gamache lowered the knife and carefully pried the brittle old paper away from the frame. Little by little it came up.
Resisting the temptation to rip it off in one go, they carefully teased it up until it was off and the back of the photograph was exposed to sunlight for the first time since it was sealed more than a century earlier. And there, in precise, careful writing, were the names of the men, including the two who were smiling.
Sean Patrick and Francis O’Mara.
1869.
Gamache stared.
The note in Augustin Renaud’s diary didn’t say 1809. It said 1869.
Chiniquy met with this Patrick and this O’Mara and James Douglas in 1869.
Why?
Gamache looked over at the wall of ancestors standing outside this home. A great distance from the Basse-Ville, a universe away from there. Much further than the distance between Ireland and Canada, this was the unbridgeable gap between Us and Them.
A rough Irish laborer in a fine Upper Town home, in 1870. It should not have been. And yet, it was.
Gamache looked back down at the smiling men in the photograph, standing in front of a building. O’Mara and Patrick. What were they so happy about?
Gamache could guess.