'My place is over there.' Ben nodded at a charming old white clapboard home, with a veranda below and three dormers above. 'But I guess that place up there is also mine.' Ben waved vaguely into the sky. Gamache thought it possible Ben was speaking metaphorically, or even meteorologically. Then his eyes dropped from the puffy clouds and landed on the roof of a home on the side of the hill leading out of Three Pines.
'Been in my family for generations. My mother lived there.'
Gamache didn't quite know what to say. He'd seen homes like that before. Many times. They were what he'd heard referred to during his time at Christ's College, Cambridge as Victorian piles. Quite descriptive, he'd always thought. And Quebec, notably Montreal, boasted its share of piles, built by the Scottish robber barons, of railway, booze and banking money. They were held together with hubris, a short-term binder at best since many of them had long ago been torn down or donated to McGill University, which needed another Victorian monstrosity like it needed the Ebola virus. Ben was looking at the home with great affection.
'Will you move to the big house?'
'Oh yes. But it needs some work. Parts of it are straight out of a horror movie. Gruesome.'
Ben remembered telling Clara about the time he and Peter had played war in the basement as kids and had come across the snake's nest. He'd never seen a person turn green, but Clara had.
'Is the village named after those trees?' Gamache looked at the cluster on the green.
'You don't know the story? Those pines aren't the originals, of course. They're only sixty years old. My mother helped plant them when she was a kid. But there have been pines here since the village was founded, more than two hundred years ago. And always in a group of three. Three Pines.'
'But why?' Gamache leaned forward, curious.
'It's a code. For the United Empire Loyalists. They settled all the land around here, except for the Abenaki, of course.' In a sentence, Gamache noticed, Ben had dismissed a thousand years of native habitation. 'But we're only a couple of kilometers from the border with the States. When the people loyal to the crown during and after the War of Independence were fleeing, they had no way of knowing when they were safe. So a code was designed. Three pines in a cluster meant the loyalists would be welcome.'
'Mon Dieu, c'est incroyable. So elegant. So simple,' said Gamache, genuinely impressed. 'But why haven't I heard of this? I'm a student of Quebec history myself, and yet this is completely unknown to me.'
'Perhaps the English want to keep it a secret, in case we need it again.' Ben at least had the grace to blush as he said this. Gamache turned in his seat and looked at the tall man, slumping as was his nature, his long sensitive fingers loosely holding the leash of a dog who couldn't possibly leave him.
'Are you serious?'
'The last sovereignty referendum was perilously close, as you know. And the campaign was ugly at times. It's not always comfortable being a minority in your own country,' said Ben.
'I appreciate that, but even if Quebec separates from Canada, surely you wouldn't feel threatened? You know your rights would be protected.'
'Do I? Do I have the right to put up a sign in my own language? Or work only in English? No. The language police would get me. The Office de la Langue Francaise. I'm discriminated against. Even the Supreme Court agrees. I want to speak English, Chief Inspector.'
'You are speaking English. And so am I. And so are all my officers. Like it or not, Mr Hadley, the English are respected in Quebec.'
'Not always, and not by everyone.'
'True. Not everyone respects police officers either. That's just life '.
'You're not respected because of your actions, what Quebec police have done in the past. We're not respected just by virtue of being English. It's not the same thing. Do you have any idea how much our lives have changed in the last twenty years ? My mother barely spoke French, but I'm bilingual. We're trying, Inspector, but still the English are the laughing stock. Blamed for everything. The tete carree. No,' Ben Hadley nodded toward the three sturdy pine trees swaying slightly in the wind. 'I'll put my faith in individuals, not the collective.'
It was, reflected Gamache, one of the fundamental differences between anglophone and francophone Quebecers; the English believed in individual rights and the French felt they had to protect collective rights. Protect their language and culture.
It was a familiar and sometimes bitter debate, but one that rarely infected personal relationships. Gamache remembered reading in the Montreal Gazette a few years ago an article by a columnist who observed that Quebec worked in reality, just not on paper.
'Things change, you know, Monsieur Hadley,' Gamache said gently, hoping to lift the tension that had settled on their little park bench. The French-English debate in Quebec was a polarising force. Best, in Gamache's opinion, leave it to politicans and journalists, who had nothing better to do.
'Do they, Chief Inspector? Are we really growing more civilised? More tolerant? Less violent? If things had changed, you wouldn't be here.'
'You're referring to Miss Neal's death. You believe it was murder?' Gamache himself had been wondering just that.
'No, I don't. But I know whoever did that to her intended murder of some sort this morning. At the very least the murder of an innocent deer. That is not a civilised act. No, inspector, people don't change.' Ben dipped his head and fiddled with the leash in his hands. 'I'm probably wrong.' He looked at Gamache and smiled disarmingly.
Gamache shared Ben's feelings about hunting but couldn't have disagreed more about people. Still, it had been a revealing exchange, and that was his job. To get people to reveal themselves.
He'd been busy in the two hours since leaving Beauvoir. He'd walked with Peter Morrow and Ben Hadley to the church, where Peter had broken the news to his wife. Gamache had watched, standing back by the door, needing to see how she reacted, and not wanting to interfere. He'd left them then and he and Mr Hadley had continued down the road into the village.
He'd left Ben Hadley at the entrance to the charming village and made straight for the Bistro. It was easy to spot with its blue and white awnings and round wooden tables and chairs on the sidewalk. A few people were sipping coffee, all eyes on him as he made his way along the Commons.
Once his eyes adjusted to the inside of the Bistro he saw not the one largish room he'd expected but two rooms, each with its own open fireplace, now crackling with cheery fires. The chairs and tables were a comfortable mishmash of antiques. A few tables had armchairs in faded heirloom materials. Each piece looked as though it had been born there. He'd done enough antique hunting in his life to know good from bad, and that diamond point in the corner with the display of glass and tableware was a rare find. At the back of this room the cash register stood on a long wooden bar. Jars of licorice pipes and twists, cinnamon sticks and bright gummy bears shared the counter with small individual boxes of cereal.
Beyond these two rooms French doors opened on to a dining room, no doubt, thought Gamache; the room Ben Hadley had recommended.
'May I help you?' a large young woman with a bad complexion was asking him in perfect French.
'Yes. I'd like to speak with the owner please. Olivier Brule, I believe.'