“I know you from the library, don’t I?” he said. “What can I do for you?”
They were at the busy corner of St-Louis and Ste-Ursule. Families were trying to squeeze by. It didn’t take much to clog the narrow artery.
She hesitated. Gamache looked round and motioned down the street, against the river of people.
“Would you like a coffee? I suspect you could use something.”
She smiled for the first time that day, and sighed.
They fought their way a block down, finally stopping in front of the smallest building on the street. It was whitewashed, with a brilliant red metal roof and above it a sign.
“It’s a bit of a tourist trap but at this time of day it might be quiet,” he said in English, opening the door. They found themselves in the not unusual situation in Quebec where, to be polite, the French person was speaking English and, to be polite, the English spoke French. They stepped into the dark, intimate restaurant, the oldest in the province with its low ceiling and stone walls and original beams.
“Perhaps,” Gamache suggested when they were seated and the waiter had taken their orders, “we should also choose a language.”
Elizabeth laughed and nodded.
“How’s English?” he asked. She hadn’t been this close to him before. He was in his mid-fifties, she knew from the reports. He was solid, comfortably built, but it was his eyes that caught her. They were deep brown, and calm.
She hadn’t expected that. She thought they’d be sharp, cold, analytical, eyes that had seen so many dreadful things their soft centers had hardened. But this man’s eyes were thoughtful, kind.
The waiter brought her a cappuccino and him an espresso. The late breakfast crowd was thinning and they’d been placed in a quiet corner.
“You know, of course, what happened this morning?” Elizabeth asked. The coffee was fragrant and delicious. She didn’t often splurge on good coffees, and this was a treat.
“Inspector Langlois told me a body has been found in the basement of the Literary and Historical Society.” Gamache watched her as he spoke. “It wasn’t a natural death.”
She was grateful he hadn’t said murder. It was too shocking a word. She’d been testing it out in the safety of her own head, but wasn’t yet ready to take it out in public.
“When we arrived this morning the phones didn’t work, so Porter called Bell Canada for repairs.”
“The repairman came quickly,” said Gamache.
“We’re known to them. It’s an old building and in need of repairs. The phones are often out, either through some sort of short, or a mouse has eaten through the line. This surprised us, though, since we’d only just redone all the wiring.”
“What time did you arrive?”
“Nine o’clock. Gives us an hour to sort books and do other work before the library opens. We unlock the door at ten every morning, as you know.”
He smiled. “I do. It’s a wonderful library.”
“We’re very proud of it.”
“So you arrived at nine and called Bell right away?”
“He came within twenty minutes. Took him about half an hour to track down the problem. He figured it was a broken wire in the basement. We all thought it was just another mouse.”
She paused.
“When did you realize it wasn’t that?” Gamache asked, recognizing she now needed help telling her story.
“We heard him, actually. The repairman. His feet on the stairs. He’s not a small man and it sounded like a stampede in our direction. He arrived at the office and just stared for a moment. Then he told us. There was a dead man in the basement. He’d dug him up. Poor man. It’ll take him a while to recover, I suspect.”
Gamache agreed. Some got over an experience like that quite quickly, others never did.
“You say he dug the man up. Your basement isn’t concrete?”
“It’s dirt. Used to be a root cellar centuries ago.”
“I thought it was a prison. Were there cells there at one point?”
“No, the cells were in the level above, this was the lowest. Hundreds of years old, of course, used for keeping food cool. When the repairman said he’d found a body I thought he meant a skeleton. They’re dug up in Quebec City all the time. Perhaps this was an executed prisoner. Winnie and I went to look. I didn’t go all the way in, didn’t have to. We could see from the doorway that it wasn’t a skeleton. The man was recently dead.”
“It must have been a shock.”
“It was. I’ve seen bodies before, in a hospital or funeral home. Once a friend died in her sleep and I found her when I went by to take her to bridge. But that’s different.”
Gamache nodded. He understood. There were places dead people should be, and places they shouldn’t. Half buried under a library was where they should not be.
“What did the Inspector tell you?” Elizabeth asked. There was no use being coy with this man, she realized. Might as well come right out with it.
