Bury Your Dead (27 page)

Armand Gamache slid the diary across the wooden table toward Émile Comeau.

“Look what I found last night.”

Émile put on his reading glasses. As he examined the small book Gamache glanced out the window and patted Henri, sleeping beneath the table. They were having breakfast at Le Petit Coin Latin, a tiny restaurant on rue Ste-Ursule. It had been there forever and was a local favorite, with its dark wood interior, the fireplace, the simple tables. It was far enough off the main streets not to be found by accident. People went there on purpose.

The owner put their bowls of
café au lait
on the table and withdrew. Gamache sipped and watched the snow fall. It always seemed to snow in Quebec City. It was as though the New World was actually a particularly beautiful snow globe.

Finally Émile lowered the diary and removed his reading glasses.

“Poor man.”

Gamache nodded. “Not many friends.”

“None, as far as I can tell. The price of greatness.”

“Greatness? You’d consider Augustin Renaud that? I was under the impression you and the other members of the Champlain Society considered him a kook.”

“Aren’t most great people? In fact, I think most of them are both brilliant and demented and almost certainly unfit for polite society. Unlike us.”

Gamache stirred his coffee and watched his mentor.

He considered him a great man, one of the few he’d met. Great not in his singularity of purpose, but in his multiplicity. He’d taught his young protégé how to be a homicide investigator, but he’d taught him more besides.

Gamache remembered being shown into Chief Inspector Comeau’s office his first week on the job, certain he was about to be fired for some mysterious transgression. Instead the wiry, self-contained man had stared at him for a few seconds then invited him to sit and told him the four sentences that lead to wisdom. He’d said them only once, never repeating them. But once had been enough for Gamache.

I’m sorry. I was wrong. I need help. I don’t know.

He’d never forgotten them and when he took over as Chief Inspector, Gamache passed them on to each and every one of his agents. Some took them to heart, some forgot them immediately.

That was their choice.

But those four statements had changed Armand Gamache’s life. Émile Comeau had changed his life.

Émile was a great man because he was a good man, no matter what was happening around him. Gamache had seen cases explode around his Chief, he’d seen accusations thrown, he’d seen internecine politics that would stagger Machiavelli. He’d seen his Chief bury his own beloved wife, five years earlier.

Strong enough to grieve.

And when, a few weeks ago, Gamache had marched in the achingly slow cortege behind the flag-draped coffins he had with each halting step remembered his agents and with each step remembered his first Chief. His superior then, his superior now and always.

And when, finally, Gamache could take the pain no longer he and Reine-Marie had come here. Not to be healed, but to be helped.

I need help.

The owner of the bistro brought their breakfasts of
omelettes,
fresh fruit and a croissant each.

“I respect people who have such passion,” Émile was saying. “I don’t. I have a lot of interests, some I’m passionate about, but not to the exclusion of everything else. I sometimes wonder if that’s necessary for geniuses to accomplish what they must, a singularity of purpose. We mere mortals just get in the way. Relationships are messy, distracting.”

“He travels the fastest who travels alone,”
quoted Gamache.

“You sound as though you don’t believe it.”

“It depends where you’re going, but no, I don’t. I think you might go far fast, but eventually you’ll stall. We need other people.”

“What for?”

“Help. Isn’t that what Champlain found? All other explorers failed to create a colony but he succeeded. Why? What was the difference? Père Sébastien told me. Champlain had help. The reason his colony thrived, the reason we’re sitting here today, was exactly because he wasn’t alone. He asked the natives for help and he succeeded.”

“Don’t think they don’t regret it.”

Gamache nodded. It was a terrible loss, a lapse in judgment. Too late the Huron and Algonquin and Cree realized Champlain’s New World was their old one.

“Yes,” said Émile, nodding slowly, his slender fingers toying with the salt and pepper shakers. “We all need help.”

He watched his companion. He’d been heartened by Gamache taking an interest in this case. It was somewhere else to put his mind, other than that scalded spot. But then early that morning, while everyone else slept, he’d heard Armand and Henri, quietly leaving. Again.

“It’s not your fault, you know. So many lives were saved.”

“And lost. I made too many mistakes, Émile.” It was the first time he’d talked about the events to his mentor. “Right from the start.”

“Like what?”

The farmer’s voice, with its broad country accent, played again in Gamache’s head. All the clues were there, right from the start. “I didn’t put things together fast enough.”

“No one else even came close. Jesus, Armand, when I think what might have happened if you hadn’t done what you did.”

Gamache took a deep breath and looked down at the table, his lips tight.

Émile paused. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Armand Gamache looked up. “I can’t. Not yet. But thank you.”

“When you’re ready.” Émile smiled, took a sip of strong, aromatic coffee, and picked up Renaud’s diary again. “I haven’t read it all, of course, but what strikes me immediately is that there seems very little new in this. Certainly nothing we haven’t heard a million times before.
The places he’d marked as possible sites for Champlain’s grave are all places we’ve known about. The Café Buade, rue de Trésor. But they’ve all been investigated and nothing’s been found.”

“Then why did he believe Champlain might be there?”

“He also thought Champlain was in the Lit and His, let’s not forget. He saw Champlain everywhere.”

Gamache thought for a moment. “There’re bodies buried all over Québec from hundreds of years ago. How would you even know if you’d found Champlain?”

“That’s a good question. It’s had us worried for a long time. Would the coffin say Samuel de Champlain? Would there be a date, an insignia perhaps? Maybe by his clothes. He apparently wore a quite distinctive metal hat, Renaud always thought that’s how he’d know him.”

“When he opened the coffin he’d see a skeleton in a metal hat and decide it’s the father of Québec?”

“Genius might have its limits,” admitted Émile. “But scholars think there might be a few clues. All the coffins made back then were wood, with a few exceptions. Experts believe Champlain would be an exception. His coffin was almost certainly lined in lead. And it’s easier these days to date remains.”

Gamache looked unconvinced. “Père Sébastien at the Basilica said there were mysteries surrounding Champlain and his birth. That he might be a Huguenot or a spy for the King of France or even his illegitimate son. Was that just romanticizing or is there more to it?”

“It’s partly romantic, the noble bastard son. But a few things feed that rumor. One is his own near maniacal secrecy. For instance, he was married but only mentions his wife of twenty-five years a couple of times, and even then not by name.”

“They didn’t have any children, did they?”

Émile shook his head. “But others were also pretty tight lipped about Champlain. A couple of the Jesuit priests and a Récollet lay brother mention him in their journals, but even then it was nothing personal. Just daily life. Why the secrecy?”

“What’s your theory? You’ve studied the man most of your life.”

“I think it was partly the time, less stress on the individual. There wasn’t quite the culture of ‘me’ that there is now. But I also think there
might’ve been something he was trying to hide and it made him a very private person.”

“The unacknowledged son of a king?”

Émile hesitated. “He wrote prolifically, you know, thousands of pages. Buried in all those words, all those pages, was one sentence.”

Gamache was listening closely, imagining Champlain bent over the paper with a quill pen and a pot of ink by candlelight in a Spartan home four hundred years and a few hundred yards away from where they were sitting.

“
I am obligated by birth to the King,
” said Émile. “Historians for centuries have tried to figure out what that could mean.”

Gamache rolled it around in his head.
I am obligated by birth to the King.
It was certainly suggestive. Then something occurred to him.

“If Champlain’s body was found, and we knew beyond a doubt it was him, they could do DNA tests.” He was watching Émile as he spoke. His mentor’s eyes were on the table. Was it deliberate? Not wanting to make eye contact? Was it possible?

“But would it matter?” Gamache mused. “Suppose the tests proved he was the son of Henri IV, who cares today?”

Émile raised his eyes. “From a practical point of view it would mean nothing, but symbolically?” Émile shrugged. “Pretty potent stuff, especially for the separatists who already see Champlain as a powerful symbol of Québec independence. It would only add to his luster and the romantic vision of him. He’d be both heroic and tragic. Just how the separatists see themselves.”

Gamache was quiet for a moment. “You’re a separatist, aren’t you Émile?”

They’d never talked about it before. It hadn’t been exactly a dirty little secret, just a private subject they’d never broached. In Québec politics was always dangerous territory.

Émile looked up from his
omelette
. “I am.”

There was no challenge, just acknowledgment.

“Then you might have some insight,” said Gamache. “Could the separatist movement use this murder?”

Émile was quiet for a moment then put down his fork. “It’s slightly more than a ‘movement’ Armand. It’s a political force. More than half
the population say they’re Québec Nationalists. Separatists have formed the government many times.”

“I didn’t mean to belittle it,” smiled Gamache. “I’m sorry. And I’m aware of the political situation.”

“Of course you are, I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t.”

Already the atmosphere was becoming charged.

“I’ve been a separatist all my adult life,” said Émile. “From the late sixties to this very day. Doesn’t mean I don’t love Canada. I do. Who couldn’t love a country that allows such diversity of thought, of expression? But I want my own country.”

“As you say, many agree with you, but there’re fanatics on both sides of the debate. Ardent Federalists who fear and distrust the French aspirations—”

“And demented separatists who’d do whatever it took to separate from Canada. Including violence.”

Both men thought about the October Crisis decades earlier when bombs were going off, when Francophones refused to speak English, when a British diplomat was kidnapped and a Québec cabinet minister murdered.

All in the name of Québec independence.

“No one wants to return to those days,” said Émile, looking his companion square in the eye.

“Are you so sure?” asked the Chief Inspector, gently but firmly.

The air bristled between them for a moment, then Émile smiled and picked up his fork. “Who knows what’s hidden below the surface, but I think those days are dead and buried.”

“Je me souviens,”
said Gamache. “What was it René Dallaire called Québec? A rowboat society? Moving forward but looking back? Is the past ever really far from sight here?”

Émile stared at him for a moment, then smiled and resumed eating while Gamache gazed out the frosty window, his mind wandering.

If Samuel de Champlain was such a symbol of Québec nationalism, were the members of the Champlain Society all separatists? Perhaps. But did it matter? As Émile said, it was more common in Québec to be one than not, especially among the
intelligentsia
. Québec separatists had formed the government more than once.

Then another thought occurred to him. Suppose Samuel de Champlain was found and found not to be the son of the King? He would become slightly less romantic, slightly less heroic, a less powerful symbol.

Might the separatists prefer a missing Champlain to one found and flawed? Perhaps they too wanted to stop Augustin Renaud.

“Did you notice the entry from last week?” Gamache decided to change the subject. He opened the diary and pointed. Émile read then looked up.

“Literary and Historical Society? So last Friday wasn’t his first visit there. And it says 1800. The time of the meeting?”

“I was wondering the same thing, but the library would have been closed.”

Émile looked at the page once again. The four names, the blurry, scribbled number. 18-. He squinted closer. “Maybe it’s not 1800.”

“Maybe not. I haven’t found any of the others but I did find an S. Patrick at 1809 rue des Jardins.”

“There’s your answer.” Émile called for the bill and stood up. “Shall we?”