concrete. Boxes of wine and cases of beer were piled in cool corners, broken furniture was stacked in the back rooms.
Like skeletons, but not skeletons. There was no sign that this had ever been anything other than the basement of a dreary restaurant. Gamache thanked her and as she disappeared upstairs and Emile was halfway up, he paused.
“What is it?” Emile asked.
Gamache stood quietly. For all the fluorescent light, for the smell of beer and cardboard and cobwebs, for the weary feel of the place, Gamache wondered.
Could this have been it? Was this where Champlain had been buried?
Emile came back down the stairs. “What is it?” he repeated.
“Can I speak to your Champlain Society?”
“Of course you can. We’re meeting today at one thirty.”
“Wonderful,” said Gamache and headed for the stairs, energized. At the top, just before turning off the lights he looked down into the basement again.
“We meet in the room right beside the St-Laurent Bar, in the Chateau,” Emile said.
“I didn’t know there was such a room.”
“Not many do. We know all the secrets.”
Perhaps not all, thought Gamache as he snapped off the lights.
TWENTY–ONE
The men split up just outside the Old Homestead, with Emile going about his errands and Gamache turning right toward the Presbyterian church. He was tempted to go inside, to be in the calm interior and to speak with the young minister who had more to offer than he realized.
Gamache liked Tom Hancock. In fact, thinking about it as he walked, he liked everyone in this case. All the members of the Literary and Historical Society board, the members of the Champlain Society, he’d even liked, or at least understood, the Chief Archeologist.
And yet, one of them was almost certainly a murderer. One of them had taken a shovel to the back of Augustin Renaud’s head, burying him in the basement in the hopes and expectation the body would be cemented over. If the phone line hadn’t been severed Augustin Renaud might have disappeared as completely as Champlain.
Gamache paused for a moment to contemplate the facade of the Lit and His and think about the case.
Motive and opportunity, Beauvoir had said, and of course, he was right. A murderer had to have both a reason to kill and a chance to do it.
He’d been wrong in the Hermit case, had been blinded by the treasure, had seen just the facade of the case and had failed to see what was hiding beneath it.
Was he making the same mistake with this case? Was Champlain’s grave the big, shiny, obvious motive, that was wrong? Maybe this had nothing to do with the search for the founder of Quebec. But if not, what else was there? Renaud’s life was consumed by only one thing, surely his death was too.
Walking up the steps he tried the door to the Lit and His only to discover it locked. He looked at his watch. It wasn’t yet nine in the morning, of course it’d be locked. Now he was at a loss and, perversely, he felt even more strongly the need to get in.
Pulling out his phone he dialed. After the second ring a woman answered, her voice strong and clear.
“Madame MacWhirter, it’s Armand Gamache.
“Not at all, I was just sitting down to breakfast. What can I do for you?”
Gamache hesitated. “Well, it’s a little embarrassing, but I’m afraid I’ve been overly ambitious with time. I’m outside the Literary and Historical Society but, of course, it’s locked.”
She laughed. “We’ve never had a member so anxious to get in. It’s a novel experience. I have a key—”
“I don’t want to disturb your breakfast.”
“Well, you can’t just stand on the stoop waiting, you’ll freeze to death.”
And Gamache knew that wasn’t just a figure of speech. Every winter scores of people did just that. They were out in the cold too long, had exposed too much of themselves. And it killed them.
“Come over here, have a coffee and we’ll head back together in a few minutes.”
Gamache recognized a command when he heard it. She gave him her address, a home just around the corner on rue d’Auteuil.
When he arrived a couple minutes later he stood outside and marveled. It was as magnificent as he’d expected. In old Quebec City, “magnificent” wasn’t measured in square feet, but in details. The blocks of gray stone, the carving over the doors and windows, the simple, clean lines. It was a gracious and elegant row of homes.
He’d walked up and down rue d’Auteuil many times in the past. It was a particularly beautiful street in a city thick with them. It followed the line of the old stone walls that defended the capital, but was set back, a ribbon of parkland between the street and the walls. And on the other side of the street, these homes.
This was where the first families of Quebec lived, French and English. The
