René placed his substantial finger on the site of the building, by rue St-Stanislas. “That’s it, right?”
Gamache bent over the map, as did they all, narrowly avoiding knocking heads. He nodded agreement.
“Then there can be no doubt. You agree?” René Dallaire looked at Jean and Émile.
They agreed.
“I can guarantee you,” René looked Gamache in the eye. “Samuel de Champlain is not buried there.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“When you arrived at the Château, did you happen to notice the statue of Champlain out front?”
“I did. Hard to miss.”
“C’est vrai. That’s not simply a monument to the man, but it marks the exact spot he died.”
“As exact as we can get, anyway,” said Jean. René shot him a small, annoyed look.
“How do you know that’s where he died?” Gamache asked. Now it was Émile’s turn to answer.
“There’re reports written by his lieutenants and the priests. He died after a short illness on Christmas Day, 1635, during a storm. It’s one of the few things we know about Champlain without a doubt. The fortress was right there, where the statue is.”
“But he wouldn’t have been buried right where he died, would he?” asked Gamache.
René unfolded another map or, at least, a reproduction and placed it on top of the modern city map. It was little more than an illustration.
“This was drawn in 1639, four years after Champlain died. It’s not much different than the Québec he would have known.” The map showed a stylized fort, a parade grounds in front, and a scattering of buildings around. “This is where he died.” His finger landed on the fort. “It’s where the statue now stands. And this is where they buried Champlain.”
René Dallaire’s thick finger pointed to a small building a few hundred yards from the fort.
“The chapel. The only one in Québec at the time. There’re no official records but it seems obvious Champlain would have been buried there, either right in the chapel or in a cemetery beside it.”
Gamache was perplexed. “So, if we know where he was buried, what’s the mystery? Where is he? And why aren’t there any official records of the burial of the most important man in the colony?”
“Ahh, but nothing is ever straightforward is it?” said Jean. “The chapel burned a few years later, destroying all the records.”
Gamache thought about that. “A fire would burn the records, yes, but not a buried body. We should still have found him by now, no?”
René shrugged. “Yes, we should have. There’re a number of theories, but the most likely is that they buried him in the cemetery, not the chapel, so the fire wouldn’t have disturbed him at all. Over time the colony grew—”
René paused but his hands were expressive. He opened them wide. The other two men were also silent, eyes down.
“Are you saying they put a building on top of Champlain?” Gamache asked.
The three men looked unhappy but none contradicted him until Jean spoke.
“There is another theory.”
Émile sighed. “Not that again. There’s no proof.”
“There’s no proof of any of this,” Jean pointed out. “I agree it’s a guess. You just don’t want to believe it.”
Émile was silent. It seemed Jean had made a direct hit. The little man turned to Gamache. “The other theory is that as Quebec City grew there was a huge amount of building work, as René says. But along with it was excavation, digging down beneath the frost line before they put up the new buildings. The city was booming, and things went up in a hurry. They didn’t have time to worry about the dead.”
Gamache was beginning to see where this was going. “So the theory is that they didn’t build on top of Champlain.”
Jean shook his head slowly. “No. They dug him up along with hundreds of others and dumped him in a landfill somewhere. They didn’t mean to, they just didn’t know.”
Gamache was silent, stunned. Would the Americans have done that to Washington? Or the British to Henry the Eighth?
“Could that have happened?” He turned, naturally, to Émile Comeau who shrugged, then finally nodded.
“It is possible, but Jean’s right. None of us wants to admit it.”
“To be fair,” said Jean. “It is the least likely of the theories.”
“The point is,” said René, looking at the map again. “This is the limit of the original settlement in 1635.” He twirled his finger over the old map, then swept it aside and found the same place on the modern map. “Pretty much from where we’re sitting now, in the Château, to a radius of a few hundred yards. They’d keep it small. Easier to defend.”