Bury Your Dead

Emile stared at him, then nodded. It was unusual not to identify a murder victim but not unheard of, particularly one who so clearly didn’t want to be identified.

The two men moved into the dining room with its wall of exposed stone, open plan kitchen and aroma of roasting lamb and vegetables. After dinner they bundled up, put Henri on a leash and headed into the bitterly cold night. Their feet crunching on the hard snow, they joined the crowds heading out the great stone archway through the wall, to Place d’Youville and the ceremony opening the Carnaval de Quebec.

In the midst of the festivities, as fiddlers sawed away and kids skated and the fireworks lit the sky over the old city Emile turned to Gamache.

“Why did Olivier move the body, Armand?”

Gamache steeled himself against the thrashing explosions, the bursts of light, the people crowding all around, shoving and shrieking.

Across the abandoned factory he saw Jean-Guy Beauvoir fall, hit. He saw the gunmen above them, shooting, in a place that was supposed to be almost undefended.

He’d made a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake.

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 cafe 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 Quebec winter and heading for Bonhomme’s Ice Palace, or the ice slide, or the cabane a 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 caleches, 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, Emile, or Henri, or sometimes alone.

Though these days he was never alone. He longed for it, for blessed solitude.

Avec le temps, Emile 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 Quebec 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.