Armand Gamache sat in the library of the Literary and Historical Society marveling that a week ago he barely knew it, barely knew the people, and now he felt he knew them well.
The board had assembled one more time.
Tense, suspicious Porter Wilson at the head of the table, even if he wasn’t a natural leader. The real leader sat beside him and had all their lives, quietly running things, picking up pieces dropped and broken by Porter. Elizabeth MacWhirter, heir to the MacWhirter shipyard fortunes, a fortune long faded away until all that remained were appearances.
But appearances mattered, Gamache knew, especially to Elizabeth MacWhirter. Especially to the English community. And the truth was, they were at once stronger and weaker than they appeared.
The English community was certainly small, and diminishing, dying out. A fact lost on the Francophone majority who, despite every evidence, still saw the Anglos, if they saw them at all, as threats.
And why not, really? Many of the Anglos still saw themselves as wielding, and deserving, of power. A manifest destiny, a right conferred on them by birth and fate. By General Wolfe, two hundred years earlier on the field belonging to the farmer Abraham.
Like whites in South Africa or the Southern states who knew that things had changed, who even accepted the changes, but who couldn’t quite shake the certainty deeply, diplomatically, hidden, that they should still be in charge.
There was Winnie, the tiny librarian who loved the library and loved Elizabeth and loved her work among things and ideas no longer relevant.
Mr. Blake was there, in suit and tie. A benign older gentleman, whose home had shrunk from the entire city, to a house, and finally to this one magnificent room. And what, Gamache wondered, would someone do to defend their home?
Tom Hancock sat quietly, watching. Young, vital, wise, but not really one of them. An outsider. But that gave him clarity, he could see what was only visible from a distance.
And finally, Ken Haslam. Whose voice was either silent or shrieking.
No middle ground, a man of extremes, who either sat quietly in his chair or fought his way across a frozen river.
A man whose wife and daughter were buried in Québec but who was not considered a Québécois, as though even more could be expected.
They’d adjourned to the library once the coffin had been removed and the others had gone, leaving émile, Gamache and the board.
Gamache looked at the board members, resting finally on Porter Wilson. Expecting an outburst, expecting a demand for information, tinged perhaps with a slight accusation of unfairness.
Instead they all simply looked at the Chief Inspector, politely. Something had changed, and Gamache knew what.
It was the damned video. They’d seen it, and he hadn’t. Not yet. They knew something he didn’t, something about himself. But he knew something they didn’t, something they wanted to know.
Well, they’d have to wait.
“You were out practicing this afternoon, I believe,” said Gamache to the Reverend Mr. Tom Hancock.
“We were,” he agreed, surprised by the topic.
“I saw you.” The Chief turned to Ken Haslam.
Haslam smiled and mouthed something Gamache couldn’t make out. There was a nodding of heads. The Chief turned to the others.
“What did Mr. Haslam just say?”
Now several faces blushed. He waited.
“Because,” he finally said, “I didn’t hear a word and I don’t think you did either.” He turned again to the upright, distinguished man. “Why do you whisper? In fact, I don’t think it can even be called a whisper.”
Gamache had spoken respectfully, quietly, without anger or accusation but wanting to know.
Haslam’s lips moved and again no one heard anything.
“He speaks—” began Tom Hancock before Gamache put up a hand and stopped him.
“I think it’s time Mr. Haslam spoke for himself, don’t you? And you, perhaps uniquely, know he can.”
Now it was the Reverend Mr. Hancock’s turn to blush. He looked at Gamache but said nothing.
Gamache leaned forward, toward Haslam. “I heard you out on the ice calling the strokes. No other crew could be heard, no other person. Just you.”
Ken Haslam looked frightened now. He opened his mouth, then shook his head, practically in tears.
“I can’t,” he said, his voice barely registering. “All my life I’ve been told to be quiet.”
“By whom?”
“Mother, Father, brothers. My teachers, everyone. Even my wife, God bless her, asked me to keep my voice down.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
The word was spoken clearly, too clearly. It wasn’t so much piercing as all enveloping, filling the space. It was a voice that carried, boomed, and drove all before it. No other voice could exist, but that one. An English voice, drowning out all others.
“And so you learned to be silent?” asked Gamache.
“If I wanted friends,” said Haslam, his words slamming into them. Was it some quirk of palate and brainpan and voice box so that the sound waves were magnified? “If I wanted to belong, yes, I learned never to raise my voice.”
“But that meant you could never speak at all, never be heard,” said Gamache.
“And what would you choose?” Haslam asked, his loud voice turning a rational question into an attack. “To speak up but chase people away, or to be quiet in company?”
Armand Gamache was silent then, looking down the long table at the solemn faces, and he knew Ken Haslam wasn’t the only one who’d faced that question, and made the same choice.
To be silent. In hopes of not offending, in hopes of being accepted.
But what happened to people who never spoke, never raised their voices? Kept everything inside?
Gamache knew what happened. Everything they swallowed, every word, thought, feeling rattled around inside, hollowing the person out. And into that chasm they stuffed their words, their rage.
“Perhaps you could explain the coffin in our basement,” Elizabeth broke the silence.
It seemed a reasonable request.