What was Gamache about? What was he doing?
Francoeur should have been pleased, but alarms were sounding. They were so close. And now this.
What’re you up to, Armand?
* * *
The parish priest met him with keys to the old stone church.
Long gone were the days when churches were unlocked. Those days disappeared along with the chalices and crucifixes and anything else that could be stolen or defaced. Now the churches were cold and empty. Though not all of that could be laid at the feet of the vandals.
Gamache brushed the snow from his coat, took off his hat, and followed the priest. Father Antoine’s Roman collar was hidden beneath a worn scarf and heavy coat. He hurried, not happy to be taken from his lunch and his hearth on this snowy day.
He was elderly, stooped. Closing in on eighty, Gamache guessed. His face was soft, the veins in his nose and cheeks purple and protruding. His eyes were tired. Exhausted from looking for miracles in this hardscrabble land. Though it had produced one miracle within living memory. The Ouellet Quints. But perhaps, thought Gamache, one was worse than none. God had visited once. And then not returned.
Father Antoine knew what was possible, and what was passing him by.
“Which one do you want?” Father Antoine asked when they were in his office at the back of the church.
“The 1930s forward, please,” said the Chief. He’d called ahead and spoken to Father Antoine, but still the priest seemed put out.
He looked around the room, as did Gamache. Books and files were everywhere. Gamache could see that it had once been a comfortable, even inviting, room. There were two easy chairs, a hearth, bookcases. But now it felt neglected. Filled, but empty.
“It’ll be over there.” The priest pointed to a bookcase by the window, dropped the keys on the desk, and left.
“Merci, mon père,” the Chief called after him, then closed the door, turned on the lamp on the desk, took off his coat, and got to work.
* * *
Chief Superintendent Francoeur handed the paper to his lunch companion and watched as he read, folded it back up, and placed it on the table beside the bone china plate with the warm whole-grain roll. A curl of shaved butter sat beside a sterling silver knife.
“What do you think it means?” his companion asked. His voice, as always, was warm, friendly, steady. Never flustered, rarely angry.
Francoeur didn’t smile, but he felt like it. Unlike Tessier, this man wasn’t fooled by Gamache’s plodding attempt to throw them off.
“He suspects we’ve bugged his office,” said Francoeur. He was hungry, but he didn’t dare appear distracted in front of this man. “That”—he nodded toward the paper on the linen tablecloth—“was meant for us.”
“I agree. But what does it mean? Is he resigning or not? What message is he sending us? Is this”—he tapped the paper—“a surrender, or a trick?”
“To be honest, sir, I don’t think it matters.”
Now Francoeur’s companion looked interested. Curious.
“Go on.”
“We’re so close. Having to deal with that woman at first seemed a problem—”
“By ‘deal with,’ you mean throwing Audrey Villeneuve off the Champlain Bridge,” the man said. “A problem you and Tessier created.”
Francoeur gave him a thin smile and composed himself. “No, sir. She created it by exceeding her mandate.”
He didn’t say that she should never have been able to find the information. But she had. Knowledge might be power, but it was also an explosive.
“We contained it,” said Francoeur. “Before she could say anything.”
“But she did say something,” his companion pointed out. “It was only good luck that she went to her supervisor, who then came to us. It was very nearly a catastrophe.”
The use of that word struck Francoeur as interesting, and ironic, considering what was about to happen.
“And we’re sure she didn’t tell anyone else?”
“It would’ve come out by now,” said Francoeur.
“That’s not very reassuring.”
“She didn’t really know what she’d found,” said Francoeur.
“No, Sylvain. She knew, but she couldn’t quite believe it.”
Instead of anger in his companion’s face, Francoeur saw satisfaction. And felt a frisson of that himself.
They’d counted on two things. Their ability to conceal what was happening and, if found, that it would be dismissed as inconceivable. Unbelievable.