Bury Your Dead

O’Mara agreed, then carried the coffin to the basement and left.”

His phone buzzed again. Still Gamache ignored it.

“How do you know all this?” someone asked.

“Because I found this.”

Gamache bent down to his satchel and removed a black leather book. As he held it he looked at Emile who looked surprised, and something else. Was that a small smile? A grin or a grimace?

“It’s Father Chiniquy’s journal for the year 1869. Augustin Renaud found it and recognizing its significance he hid it.”

“Where was it?” Emile asked.

“The library of the Literary and Historical Society,” said Gamache, staring at his mentor.

“Augustin Renaud hid the journal in a library?” asked Rene Dallaire.

“No,” clarified Gamache. “His murderer did.”

“Why’re you telling us all this?” Jean Hamel, slender and contained and sitting next to Rene Dallaire as always, asked.

“I think you know why,” said Gamache, looking the man directly in the eyes until Hamel lowered his.

“Where did you say the Irish workers were digging?” a member asked.

“I didn’t, but I can tell you. It was under the Old Homestead.”

The room grew very quiet. Everyone stared at Gamache.

“You found the other book, didn’t you,” said Emile into the silence.

“I did.”

Gamache reached into the satchel, now on his lap. The satchel he’d spent the last few hours protecting.

“Last year the Literary and Historical Society sold a number of boxes of books, boxes they hadn’t bothered to examine. Augustin Renaud bought some of them. When he went to see what he had he found they were from the collection of Father Charles Chiniquy. Not very promising, for a Champlain scholar—”

The use of the word “scholar” brought some harrumphs.

“—so he didn’t hurry to read them. But eventually, scanning them, he came across something extraordinary. He made mention of it in his own diary, but in true Renaud fashion he was”—Gamache searched for the word —“guarded.”

“Don’t you mean demented?” asked Jean Hamel. “Nothing he said or wrote can be trusted.”

“No, I mean guarded. And he was quite right. What he’d found was staggering.”

Gamache withdrew another black leather book. This one was larger, thicker than the first. Frayed and brittle, but in good condition. It had not seen the sun for hundreds of years then, dug up, it had sat anonymously on the bookshelves of Father Chiniquy’s home for thirty years until his death.

“This,” Gamache held up the book, “was Father Chiniquy’s secret, and in the end the secret had died with him so that when his housekeeper packaged up his books and sent them to the Lit and His more than a century ago, no one knew what treasures they contained.

“In reading Chiniquy’s journals Augustin Renaud found the report of the fateful encounter one July evening in 1869. And among the many religious books, the hymnals, the sermons, the family bibles in the box of used books he found this.”

Gamache laid his large hand on the plain leather cover, barely recognizable for what it was.

Once again his phone buzzed. It was his private line. Few knew the number, but it hadn’t stopped ringing for the past ten minutes.

“May I?” Emile reached out.

“Oui.” Gamache stood and handed the book to his mentor and watched as Emile did exactly what he himself had done an hour earlier. Exactly what he imagined Augustin Renaud had done a month ago. What Father Chiniquy had done a century ago.

Emile opened the simply tooled leather book to the inscription page.

There was a sharp intake of breath then Emile sighed and with the sigh two words escaped. “Bon Dieu.”

“Yes,” said the Chief. “Good God.”

“What is it?” Jean Hamel asked, stepping out from the convenient shadow of his friend Rene. It was clear now who was the real leader of the Societe Champlain.

“They’d found Champlain,” said Emile, staring at Gamache. It wasn’t a question, it was beyond question. “It was Champlain’s coffin the Irish workers found beneath the Old Homestead.”

“Ridiculous,” said the ornery member. “What would Champlain be doing buried under the Old Homestead? We all know he was either buried in the chapel, which burned, or in the cemetery, not hundreds of yards away in a field.”

“Champlain was a Huguenot,” said Emile, his voice barely audible. “A Protestant.” He held out the book. A bible.

“But that’s impossible,” snapped Jean. There was a hubbub of agreement. Hands snatched at the bible and the uproar subsided as it made the rounds and the men saw the evidence.