The church seemed filled with light. It streamed through the bright and cheerful stained glass windows. The thick walls were plastered and painted a cream color, but it was the ceiling he couldn’t help staring at. It was painted a fresh robin’s egg blue and rose above the sweeping, graceful semi-circular balcony.
Something else struck the Chief Inspector. There wasn’t a crucifix in sight.
“Lovely, isn’t it?”
Gamache turned and noticed Elizabeth MacWhirter had slipped in beside him.
“It is,” he whispered. “Has the church been here long?”
“Two hundred and fifty years. We just celebrated the anniversary. Of course, Holy Trinity Anglican is the big church. Most of the English community goes there, but we struggle along.”
“Is it affiliated with the Literary and Historical Society? It seems to be on the same grounds.”
“Only informally. The minister sits on the board, but that’s just coincidence. The Anglican archbishop used to be on the board but he moved a few years ago so we decided to ask the Presbyterian to join us.”
“Do you always get this sort of turnout?” Gamache nodded to the people now needing to stand at the back.
Elizabeth shook her head and smiled. “Normally we could stretch out and sleep in the pews, and don’t think a few of us haven’t done it.”
“It’ll be a good collection today.”
“Better be. The church needs a new roof. But I suspect this lot is only here to gawk. Did you see the article in
The local rag, Gamache knew. He shook his head. “Only
“It didn’t actually say anything, but it did suggest that the English had murdered Renaud to keep our dark secret.”
“And that would be?”
“That Champlain is buried under the Lit and His, of course.”
“And is he?”
It was his impression Elizabeth MacWhirter had been startled by his question. But the organ had begun and the congregation rose and she was spared the need to answer. He knew what she would say.
Of course he isn’t.
He sang “Lord of All Hopefulness” from the hymnal and watched the congregants. Most seemed lost, not even trying to sing, some moved their mouths but he’d be surprised if any sound came out. And about a dozen, he guessed, raised their voices in song.
A young man climbed into the pulpit and the service began.
Gamache turned his attention to the minister. Thomas Hancock. He looked about twenty. His hair was dark blond, his face handsome though not classically so, more the handsome that went with robust health. Vitality. It was impossible, Gamache had noticed, to be both vital and unattractive. He looked a bit, Gamache thought, like Matt Damon. Intelligent and charming.
They prayed for Augustin Renaud.
Then Thomas Hancock did something Gamache would never have thought possible. While acknowledging that Renaud had been murdered only yards away he didn’t dwell on it, or on the curiosity of God’s Will.
Instead the Reverend Mr. Hancock, in his long blue cassock and his baby face, spoke of passion and purpose. Of Renaud’s obvious delight in life. He connected it to God. As a great gift of God.
The rest of the sermon was about joy.
It was an extremely risky strategy, Gamache knew. The pews were filled with Francophones curious about this subculture unearthed in the very center of their city. English. Most Quebecois probably never even knew they were there, never mind so firmly ensconced.
They were an oddity, and most of the people in the church had come to stare, and come to judge. Including a number of reporters, notebooks out, ready and eager to report on the official reaction of the English community. By concentrating on joy instead of tragedy, the church, the Anglos, might be perceived as uncaring, as trivializing the tragedy of a life stolen. A man murdered a stone’s throw away.
And yet, instead of playing to the crowd, instead of offering a muted apology, of finding appropriately contrite biblical passages, this minister spoke of joy.
Armand Gamache didn’t know how it would sound when written up in tomorrow’s
The service ended with a hymn and the collection followed by a silent prayer, in which Agent Morin told Gamache about his late grandmother, who smoked incessantly without ever removing the cigarette from her mouth.
“Her right eye was always winking because of the smoke,” Morin explained. “And the cigarette just burned down. She never tapped off the ash. It hung there, this long tube of gray. We could watch her for hours. My sister thought she was disgusting but I kinda liked her. She drank too. She could eat and drink without once taking the cigarette out.”
He sounded impressed.
“Once when she was preparing breakfast the whole line of ash fell into the porridge. She just kept stirring. God
