The Chief Inspector touched the rough stone wall, wondering how many men and women, long dead, had touched it too as they’d come down to get root vegetables from the cellars. To keep starving prisoners alive long enough to kill them.
Off the antechamber there was a room. The room with the light.
“After you,” he gestured to the officer, and followed him.
Inside his eyes had to adjust again though this didn’t take so long. Large industrial lamps were positioned to bounce off the vaulted stone ceiling and walls but most were beamed into one corner of the room. And in that corner a handful of men and women worked. Some taking photographs, some collecting samples, some huddled over something Gamache couldn’t quite see but could imagine.
A body.
Inspector Langlois stood and brushing dirt from his knees he approached. “I’m glad you changed your mind.”
They shook hands.
“I needed to think about it. Madame MacWhirter also asked me to come, to act as a sort of honest-broker between them and you.”
Langlois smiled. “She thinks they need one?”
“Well, it’s more or less what you asked, wasn’t it?”
The Inspector nodded. “It’s true. And I’m grateful you’re here, but I wonder if we might keep this on an informal basis. Perhaps we could consider you a consultant?” Langlois looked behind him. “Would you like to see?”
It was a scene familiar to the Chief Inspector. A homicide team in the early stages of collecting evidence that would one day convict a man of murder, or a woman. The coroner was still there, just rising, a young doctor sent over from Hotel-Dieu hospital where the Chief Coroner of Quebec kept an office. This man wasn’t the Chief. Gamache knew him, but he was a doctor and judging by his composure he was experienced.
“He was hit from behind with that shovel there.” The doctor pointed to a partly buried tool beside the body. He was speaking to Inspector Langlois but shooting glances at Gamache. “Fairly straightforward. He was hit a few times. I’ve taken samples and need to get him onto my table, but there doesn’t seem to be any other trauma.”
“How long?” Langlois asked.
“Twelve hours, give or take an hour or so. We’re lucky with the environment. It’s consistent. No rain or snow, no fluctuation in temperature. I’ll tell you more precisely later.” He turned, collected his kit then nodded to Langlois and Gamache. But instead of leaving the coroner hesitated, looking round the cellar.
He seemed reluctant to leave. When Langlois peered at him the young doctor lost some of his composure but rallied.
“Would you like me to stay?”
“Why?” asked Langlois, his voice uninviting.
But still the doctor persevered. “You know.”
Now Inspector Langlois turned to him completely, challenging him to go further.
“Tell me.”
“Well,” the doctor stumbled. “In case you find anything else.”
Beside him Gamache felt the Inspector tense, but Gamache leaned in and whispered, “Perhaps he should stay.”
Langlois nodded once, his face hard, and the coroner stepped away from the pool of light, across the sharp border into darkness. And there he waited.
In case.
Everyone in that room knew “in case” of what.
Chief Inspector Gamache approached the body. The harsh light left nothing to the imagination. It bounced off the man’s dirty clothing, off his stringy, long, white hair, off his face, twisted. Off his hands, clasped closed, over dirt. Off the horrible wounds on his head.
Gamache knelt.
Yes, he was unmistakable. The extravagant black moustache, at odds with the white hair. The long, bushy eyebrows political cartoonists were so fond of caricaturing. The bulbous nose and fierce, almost mad, blue eyes. Intense even in death.
“Augustin Renaud,” said Langlois. “No doubt.”
“And Samuel de Champlain?”
Gamache had said out loud what everyone in that room, everyone in that
“Any sign of him?”
“Not yet,” said Langlois, unhappily.
For where Augustin Renaud was there was always someone else.
Samuel de Champlain. Dead for almost four hundred years, but clinging to Augustin Renaud.
Champlain, who in 1608 had founded Quebec, was long dead and buried.
