THREE
The next morning, Saturday, Gamache took Henri and walked through gently falling snow up rue Ste-Ursule for breakfast at Le Petit Coin Latin. Waiting for his omelette, a bowl of café au lait in front of him, he read the weekend papers and watched the revelers head to the creperies along rue St-Jean. It was fun to be both a part of it and apart from it, warm and toasty in the bistro just off the beaten track with Henri at his side.
After reading Le Soleil and Le Devoir he folded the newspapers and once again took out his correspondence from Three Pines. Gamache could just imagine Gabri, large, voluble, quite magnificent sitting in the bistro he now ran, leaning on the long, polished wooden counter, writing. The fieldstone fireplaces at either end of the beamed room would be lit, roaring, filling the place with light and warmth and welcome.
And even in Gabri’s private censure of the Chief Inspector there was always kindness, concern.
Gamache stroked the envelopes with one finger and almost felt the gentleness. But he felt something else, he felt the man’s conviction.
Olivier didn’t do it. Gabri repeated it over and over in each letter, as though with repetition it would be true.
Why would he move the body?
Gamache’s finger stopped caressing the paper, and he stared out the window, then he picked up his cell phone and made a call.
After breakfast he climbed the steep, slippery street. Turning left, Gamache made his way to the Literary and Historical Society. Every now and then he stepped into a snow bank to let families glide by. Kids were wrapped and bound, mummified, preserved against a bitterly cold Québec winter and heading for Bonhomme’s Ice Palace, or the ice slide, or the cabane à sucre with its warm maple syrup hardening to taffy on snow. The evenings of Carnaval were for university students, drunk and partying but the bright days were for children.
Once again Gamache marveled at the beauty of this old city with its narrow winding streets, the stone buildings, the metal roofs piled with snow and ice. It was like falling into an ancient European town. But Quebec City was more than an attractive anachronism, a pretty theme park. It was a living, vibrant haven, a gracious city that had changed hands many times, but kept its heart. The flurries were falling more heavily now, but without much wind. The city, always lovely, looked even more magical in the winter, with the snow, and the lights, the horse-drawn calèches, the people wrapped brightly against the cold.
At the top of the street he paused to catch his breath. A breath that was easier and easier to catch with each passing day as his health returned thanks to long, quiet walks with Reine-Marie, émile, or Henri, or sometimes alone.
Though these days he was never alone. He longed for it, for blessed solitude.
Avec le temps, émile had said. With time. And maybe he was right. His strength was coming back, why not his sanity?
Resuming his walk Gamache noticed activity ahead. Police cars. No doubt trouble with some hung-over university students, come to Québec to discover the official drink of the Winter Carnival, Caribou, a near lethal blend of port and alcohol. Gamache could never prove it, but he was pretty sure Caribou was the reason he’d started losing his hair in his twenties.
As he neared the Literary and Historical Society he noticed more Quebec City police cars and a cordon.
He stopped. Beside him Henri also stopped and sat alert, watching.
This side street was quieter, less traveled, than the main streets. He could see people streaming by twenty feet away, oblivious to the events happening right here.
Officers were standing at the foot of the steps up to the front door of the old library. Others were milling about. A telephone repair truck was parked at the curb and an ambulance had arrived. But there were no flashing lights, no urgency.
That meant one of two things. It had been a false alarm or it hadn’t, but there was no longer any need to rush.
Gamache knew which it was. A few of the cops leaning against the ambulance laughed and poked each other. Across the street Gamache bristled at the hilarity, something he never allowed at crime scenes. There was a place for laughter in life but not in recent, violent, death. And this was a death, he knew that. It wasn’t just instinct, it was all the clues. The number of police, the lack of urgency, the ambulance.
And this was violent death. The cordon told him that.
“Move along, monsieur,” one of the officers, young and officious, came up to him. “No need to stare.”
“I wanted to go in there,” said Gamache. “Do you know what happened?”
The young officer turned his back and walked away but it didn’t upset Gamache. Instead he watched the officers talk among themselves inside the cordon. While he and Henri stood outside.
A man walked down the stone steps, spoke a few words to one of the officers on guard then went to an unmarked car. Pausing there he looked round, then stooped to get into the car. But he didn’t. Instead he stopped and slowly straightening he looked right at Gamache. He stared for ten seconds or more, which, when eating a chocolate cake isn’t much, but when staring, is. Softly, he closed the car door and walking to the police tape he stepped over it. Seeing this, the young officer broke away from his companions and trotted over, falling into step with the plainclothes officer.
“I already told him to leave.”
“Did you now.”
“Oui. Do you want me to insist?”
“No. I want you to come with me.”
Watched by the others, the two men crossed the snowy street and walked right up to Gamache. There was a pause, as the three men stared at each other.
Then the plainclothes officer stepped back and saluted. Astonished, the young cop beside him stared at the large man in the parka and scarf and toque, with the German shepherd dog. He looked more closely. At the trim, graying beard, the thoughtful brown eyes, and the scar.
Blanching, he stepped back and saluted as well.
“Chef,” he said.
Chief Inspector Gamache saluted back and waved them to drop the formalities. These men weren’t even members of his force. He was with the S?reté du Québec and they were with the local Quebec City police. Indeed, he recognized the plainclothes officer from crime conferences they’d both attended.
“I didn’t know you were visiting Québec, sir,” said the senior officer, obviously perplexed. Why was the head of homicide for the S?reté du Québec standing just outside a crime scene?
“It’s Inspector Langlois, isn’t it? I’m on leave, as you might know.”
Both men gave curt nods. Everyone knew.
“I’m just here visiting a friend and doing some personal research in the library. What’s happened?”
“A body was found this morning by a telephone repairman. In the basement.”
“Homicide?”
“Definitely. An effort had been made to bury him, but when the repairman dug for a broken cable he found the body.”
Gamache looked at the building. It had been the original courthouse and jail, hundreds of years before. Prisoners had been executed, hanged from the window above the front door. It was a place that knew violent death and the people who committed it, on either side of the law. Now there’d been another.
As he watched the door opened and a figure appeared on the top step. It was hard to tell with the distance and the winter clothing, but he thought he recognized her as one of the library volunteers. An older woman, she glanced in their direction and hesitated.
“The coroner’s just arrived but it doesn’t look as though the victim’s been there long. Hours perhaps, but not days.”
“He hasn’t begun smelling yet,” said the young officer. “Those make me want to puke.”
Gamache took a breath and exhaled, his breath freezing as soon as it hit the air. But he said nothing. This officer wasn’t his to train in the etiquette of the recently dead, in the respect necessary when in their presence. In the empathy necessary to see the victim as a person, and the murderer as a person. It wasn’t with cynicism and sarcasm, with dark humor and crass comments a killer was caught. He was caught by seeing and thinking and feeling. Crude comments didn’t make the path clearer or the interpretation of evidence easier. Indeed, they obscured the truth, with fear.
But this wasn’t the Chief Inspector’s trainee, nor was it his case.
Shifting his eyes from the young man he noticed the elderly woman had disappeared. Since she hadn’t had time to walk out of sight he presumed she’d gone back inside.
It was an odd thing to do. To get all dressed for the cold, then not to actually leave.