At the top of the street he paused to catch his breath. A breath that was easier and easier to catch with each passing day as his health returned thanks to long, quiet walks with Reine-Marie, Émile, or Henri, or sometimes alone.
Though these days he was never alone. He longed for it, for blessed solitude.
Avec le temps, Émile had said. With time. And maybe he was right. His strength was coming back, why not his sanity?
Resuming his walk Gamache noticed activity ahead. Police cars. No doubt trouble with some hung-over university students, come to Québec to discover the official drink of the Winter Carnival, Caribou, a near lethal blend of port and alcohol. Gamache could never prove it, but he was pretty sure Caribou was the reason he’d started losing his hair in his twenties.
As he neared the Literary and Historical Society he noticed more Quebec City police cars and a cordon.
He stopped. Beside him Henri also stopped and sat alert, watching.
This side street was quieter, less traveled, than the main streets. He could see people streaming by twenty feet away, oblivious to the events happening right here.
Officers were standing at the foot of the steps up to the front door of the old library. Others were mil ing about. A telephone repair truck was parked at the curb and an ambulance had arrived. But there were no flashing lights, no urgency.
That meant one of two things. It had been a false alarm or it hadn’t, but there was no longer any need to rush.
Gamache knew which it was. A few of the cops leaning against the ambulance laughed and poked each other. Across the street Gamache bristled at the hilarity, something he never al owed at crime scenes.
There was a place for laughter in life but not in recent, violent, death. And this was a death, he knew that. It
wasn’t just instinct, it was al the clues. The number of police, the lack of urgency, the ambulance.
And this was violent death. The cordon told him that.
“Move along, monsieur,” one of the officers, young and officious, came up to him. “No need to stare.”
“I wanted to go in there,” said Gamache. “Do you know what happened?”
The young officer turned his back and walked away but it didn’t upset Gamache. Instead he watched the officers talk among themselves inside the cordon.
While he and Henri stood outside.
A man walked down the stone steps, spoke a few words to one of the officers on guard then went to an unmarked car. Pausing there he looked round, then stooped to get into the car. But he didn’t. Instead he stopped and slowly straightening he looked right at Gamache. He stared for ten seconds or more, which, when eating a chocolate cake isn’t much, but when staring, is. Softly, he closed the car door and walking to the police tape he stepped over it. Seeing this, the young officer broke away from his companions and trotted over, fal ing into step with the plainclothes officer.
“I already told him to leave.”
“Did you now.”
“Oui. Do you want me to insist?”
“No. I want you to come with me.”
Watched by the others, the two men crossed the snowy street and walked right up to Gamache. There was a pause, as the three men stared at each other.
Then the plainclothes officer stepped back and saluted. Astonished, the young cop beside him stared at the large man in the parka and scarf and toque, with the German shepherd dog. He looked more closely. At the trim, graying beard, the thoughtful brown eyes, and the scar.
Blanching, he stepped back and saluted as wel .
“Chef,” he said.
Chief Inspector Gamache saluted back and waved them to drop the formalities. These men weren’t even members of his force. He was with the Sûreté du Québec and they were with the local Quebec City police. Indeed, he recognized the plainclothes officer from crime conferences they’d both attended.
“I didn’t know you were visiting Québec, sir,” said the senior officer, obviously perplexed. Why was the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec standing just outside a crime scene?
“It’s Inspector Langlois, isn’t it? I’m on leave, as you might know.”
Both men gave curt nods. Everyone knew.
“I’m just here visiting a friend and doing some personal research in the library. What’s happened?”
“A body was found this morning by a telephone repairman. In the basement.”
“Homicide?”
“Definitely. An effort had been made to bury him, but when the repairman dug for a broken cable he found the body.”
Gamache looked at the building. It had been the original courthouse and jail, hundreds of years before.
Prisoners had been executed, hanged from the window above the front door. It was a place that knew violent death and the people who committed it, on either side of the law. Now there’d been another.
As he watched the door opened and a figure appeared on the top step. It was hard to tel with the distance and the winter clothing, but he thought he recognized her as one of the library volunteers. An older woman, she glanced in their direction and hesitated.
“The coroner’s just arrived but it doesn’t look as though the victim’s been there long. Hours perhaps, but not days.”
“He hasn’t begun smel ing yet,” said the young officer. “Those make me want to puke.”
Gamache took a breath and exhaled, his breath freezing as soon as it hit the air. But he said nothing.
This officer wasn’t his to train in the etiquette of the recently dead, in the respect necessary when in their presence. In the empathy necessary to see the victim as a person, and the murderer as a person. It wasn’t with cynicism and sarcasm, with dark humor and crass comments a kil er was caught. He was caught by seeing and thinking and feeling. Crude comments didn’t make the path clearer or the interpretation of evidence easier. Indeed, they obscured the truth, with fear.
But this wasn’t the Chief Inspector’s trainee, nor was it his case.
Shifting his eyes from the young man he noticed the elderly woman had disappeared. Since she hadn’t had time to walk out of sight he presumed she’d gone back inside.
It was an odd thing to do. To get al dressed for the cold, then not to actual y leave.
But, he reminded himself again, this wasn’t his
case, wasn’t his business.
“Would you like to come in, sir?” Inspector Langlois asked.
Gamache smiled. “I was just reminding myself this wasn’t my case, Inspector. Thank you for your courtesy, but I’m fine out here.”
Langlois shot a glance at the officer beside him then took Gamache’s elbow and steered him out of hearing range.
“I wasn’t asking just to be kind. My English isn’t very good. It’s OK, but you should hear the head librarian speak French. At least, I think she’s speaking French.
She clearly thinks she is. But I can’t understand a word. In the entire interview she spoke French and I spoke English. It was like something out of a cartoon.
She must think I’m a moron. So far al I’ve done is grinned and nodded and I think I might have asked whether she’s descended from the lower orders.”