Langlois was clearly amazed by the suggestion. “Don’t you think it’s better to downplay this? I mean, really, it’s only Augustin Renaud, not the premier ministre. The man was a bit of a buffoon. No one took him seriously.”
“But they took his search seriously.”
Inspector Langlois stared at Gamache but said nothing.
“You’ll do as you want, of course,” said the Chief Inspector, sympathizing with the man. “But as your consultant that’s my counsel. Tell all and tell it quickly before the militant elements start spreading rumors.”
Gamache looked past the circle of intense light to the dark caverns beyond the main room.
Was Samuel de Champlain here right now? Armand Gamache, a student of Québec history, felt a frisson, an involuntary thrill.
And if he felt that, he thought, what will others feel?
Elizabeth MacWhirter was feeling ill. She turned her back to the window, a window and view that had always given her pleasure, until now. Out of it she still saw the metal roofs, the chimneys, the solid fieldstone buildings, the snow falling thicker now, but she also saw the television trucks and cars with radio station logos stenciled to the sides. She saw men and women she recognized from television, and photos in Le Soleil and La Presse. Journalists. And not the gutter press. Not just Allô Police, though they were there too. But respected news anchors.
They stood in front of the building, artificial lights on them, cameras pointed, they lined up like some game of Red Rover, and told their stories to the province. Elizabeth wondered what they were saying.
But it couldn’t be good, just degrees of bad.
She’d called the members of the library to give them what little information was available. It didn’t take long.
Augustin Renaud was found murdered in the basement. Pass it on.
She glanced out the window again at the quickly gathering reporters and snow, a storm of each, a blizzard, and moaned.
“What is it?” asked Winnie, joining her friend by the window. “Oh.”
Together they watched Porter descend the stairs, approach the swarming reporters and give what amounted to a news conference.
“Jesus,” sighed Winnie. “Do you think I can reach him with this?” She hefted the first volume of the Shorter Dictionary.
“You going to throw the book at him?” smiled Elizabeth.
“Shame no one donated a crossbow to the library.”
Inspector Langlois sat at the head of the polished table in the library of the Literary and Historical Society. It was a room at once intimate and grand. It smelled of the past, of a time before computers, before information was “Googled” and “blogged.” Before laptops and BlackBerries and all the other tools that mistook information for knowledge. It was an old library, filled with old books and dusty old thoughts.
It was calm and comforting.
It had been a long while since Inspector Langlois had been in a library. Not since his school days. A time filled with new experiences and the aromas that would be forever associated with them. Gym socks. Rotting bananas in lockers. Sweat. Old Spice cologne. Herbal Essence shampoo on the hair of girls he kissed, and more. A scent so sweet, so filled with longing his reaction was still physical whenever he smelt it.
And libraries. Quiet. Calm. A harbor from the turmoil of teenage life. When the Herbal Essence girls had pulled away, and mocked, when the gym sock boys had shoved and he’d shoved back, laughing. Rough-housing. Keeping the terror behind savage eyes.
He remembered how it felt to find himself in the library, away from possible attack but surrounded by things far more dangerous than what roamed the school corridors.
For here thoughts were housed.
Young Langlois had sat down and gathered that power to him. The power that came from having information, knowledge, thoughts, and a calm place to collect them.
Inspector Langlois, of the Quebec City homicide squad, looked round the double-height library with its carved wood and old volumes and wondered at the people he was about to interview. People who had access to all these books, all this calm, all this power.
English people.
To his right sat his assistant, taking notes. On his left sat a man he’d only seen at a distance before today. Heard lecture. Seen on television. At trials, at public hearings, on talk shows. And at the funerals, six weeks ago. Close up, Chief Inspector Gamache looked different. Langlois had only ever seen him in a suit, with his trim moustache. Now the man was not only wearing a cardigan, and corduroys, but also a beard. Shot with gray. And a scar above his left temple.
“Alors,” Langlois started. “Before the first one comes in I want to go over what we know so far.”