“No, wait,” Porter stood before the stereo, blocking it. “It gets better. Listen.”
“Can you describe what happened?”
“Well, Jacquie, I was in the office of the Lit and His when the telephone repairman arrived. I’d called him because the telephones weren’t working. They should have been because, as you know, we’re in the middle of a huge restoration of the library. In fact, you’ve helped us with the fundraisers.”
What followed were five excruciating minutes of Porter plugging the fundraising and the interviewer desperately trying to get him to talk about anything other than himself.
Finally she cut off the interview and went to music.
“Is it over?” Tom asked. “Can I stop praying now?”
“What were you thinking?” Winnie asked Porter.
“What d’you mean? I was thinking this was a great chance to get more donations for the library.”
“A man was murdered,” snapped Winnie. “Honestly, Porter, this wasn’t a marketing opportunity.”
As they argued Elizabeth went back to reading the press. The papers were full of the Renaud murder. There were photographs of the astonishing-looking man, there were tributes, eulogies, editorials. He was barely cold and already he’d risen, a new man. Respected, beloved, brilliant and on the verge of finding Champlain.
In the Literary and Historical Society, apparently.
One paper, La Presse, had discovered that Renaud had approached the board shortly before his death and been turned down. Something that had seemed so reasonable, just following procedure, now seemed ominous, suspicious.
But the most disconcerting of all was the astonishment in all the French papers. Just as shocking as the discovery of Augustin Renaud’s dead body was the discovery of so many live bodies, so many Anglo bodies, among them all this time.
Quebec City seemed to only now be awakening to the fact that the English were still there.
“How could they not know we’re here?” said Winnie, reading over Elizabeth’s shoulder.
Elizabeth had felt the sting too. It was one thing to be vilified, to be seen as suspects, as threats. Even to be seen as the enemy, she was prepared for all that. What she was unprepared for was not being seen at all.
When had that happened? When had they disappeared, become ghosts in their home town? Elizabeth looked over at Mr. Blake who’d also lowered his newspaper and was staring ahead.
“What’re you thinking?”
“That it must be dinner time,” he said.
Yes, thought Elizabeth, going back to reading, best not to underestimate the English.
“I was also remembering 1966.”
Elizabeth lowered her paper.
“What do you mean?”
“But you remember, Elizabeth. You were there. I was telling Tom about it just a week or so ago.”
Elizabeth looked over at their minister, so young and vibrant. Laughing with Porter, charming the prickly old man. He hadn’t even been born in 1966 but she remembered it as though it was yesterday.
The thugs arriving. The Québec flag waving. The insults. Maudits Anglais. Têtes Carré and worse. The singing outside the Literary and Historical Society. Gens du Pays. The separatist anthem, with such achingly beautiful words, hurled as an insult at the building and to the frightened Anglos inside.
Then the attack, the separatists racing through the doors and up the sweeping staircase, into the library itself. Into the very heart of the Lit and His. Then the smoke, the books on fire. She’d run, trying to stop them, trying to put out the fires, pleading with them to stop. In her perfect French, appealing to them. Porter and Mr. Blake and Winnie and others, trying to stop it. The smoke, the shouting, the breaking glass.
She’d looked over and seen Porter breaking the fine leaded glass windows, windows that had been in place for centuries, now shattered. And she saw him tossing books out, at random. Handfuls, armfuls. And Mr. Blake joining him. While the separatists burned the books, the Anglos threw them out the windows, their covers splaying as though trying to take flight.
Winnie, Porter, Ken, Mr. Blake and others, saving their history before saving themselves.
Yes. She did remember.
Armand Gamache got home just in time for Henri’s dinner then they went for a walk. The streets of Québec were dark, but they were also clogged with revelers celebrating Carnaval. Rue St-Jean had been closed and filled with entertainment. Choirs, jugglers, fiddlers.
Man and dog wove in and out of the crowds, stopping now and then to appreciate the music, or to people watch. It was one of Henri’s favorite things, after the Chuck-it. And bananas. And dinner time. Lots of people stopped and made a fuss of the young shepherd with the unnaturally large ears. Gamache, beside him, might as well have been a lamppost.