Scores of technicians were working long hours to scan everything in, but it would take years, decades.
He loved walking the aisles, imagining all the history contained there. Maps drawn by Cartier. Diaries written by Marguerite d’Youville. The bloodstained plans for the Battle of the Plains of Abraham.
And maybe, maybe, the story of the Ouellet Quints. Not the one for public consumption, but their private lives. Their real lives, when the cameras turned off.
If it was anywhere, it was here.
And he needed it.
He turned back to Madame Dufour. “I’m researching the Ouellet Quints for a case, and I need your help.”
“I guessed that much.”
“I need to look at what you have in the private archives.”
“Those are sealed.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t read them. They’re sealed.”
Gamache felt a stroke of annoyance until he noticed a slight look of amusement on her face.
“Would you like to read them?” he asked.
Now she hesitated, caught between the correct response and the truthful one.
“Are you trying to bribe me?” she asked.
Now it was his turn to be amused. He knew her currency. It was the same as his. Information, knowledge. Finding things out that no one else knew.
“Even if I let you, you couldn’t use what you found in court,” she said. “It would be illegally obtained. The principals are still alive.”
By that she meant the Quints themselves, he knew.
When he said nothing she grew quiet, her intelligent eyes assessing him, and the silence.
“Come with me.”
She turned away from the large doors that led to the glass and metal public library, and took him in the opposite direction. Along a corridor. Down some stairs. And finally, she tapped a code into a keypad and a large metal door clicked open with a slight whoosh.
Incandescent lights went on automatically when the door opened. It was cool inside the windowless room.
“Sorry for the lighting,” she said, locking the door behind them and moving farther into the room. “We try to keep it to a minimum.”
As his eyes adjusted he realized he was in a large room, but only one of many. He looked right. Then left. Then ahead of him. Room after room, all connected, had been constructed under the bibliothèque.
“Coming?” she said, and walked away. Gamache realized if he lost her, he’d be lost. So he made sure not to lose her.
“The rooms are set out according to quarter centuries,” she said as she walked quickly from one to another.
Gamache tried to read the labels on the drawers as they walked by, but the dull lighting made it difficult. He thought he saw Champlain on one, and he wondered if Champlain himself was actually filed there. And later, in another room, War of 1812.
After a while he kept his eyes ahead of him, concentrating on Madame Dufour’s thin back. It was best not to know the treasures he was walking by.
Finally she stopped and he almost bumped into her.
“There.” She nodded to a drawer.
The label read Ouellet Quintuplets.
“Has anyone else seen the documents?” he asked.
“Not that I know of. Not since they were collected and sealed.”
“And when was that?”
Madame Dufour went to the drawer and looked closely at the label.
“July 27, 1958.”
“Why then?” he wondered.
“Why now, Chief Inspector?” she asked, and he realized that she was standing between him and what he needed to know.
“It’s a secret,” he said, his voice light, but his eyes not leaving hers.
“I’m good at keeping secrets,” she said, glancing down the long line of files.
He considered her for a moment. “Constance Ouellet died two days ago.”
Madame Dufour took in that information, her face troubled. “I’m sorry to hear that. She was the last of them, I believe.”
Gamache nodded, and now she studied him more closely.
“She didn’t just die, did she?”
“No.”
Lili Dufour took a long breath, and sighed. “My mother went to see them, you know, at that home that was built for them here in Montréal. She lined up for hours. They were just children at the time. She talked about it until the day she died.”
Gamache nodded. There’d been something magical about the Quints, and their extreme privacy later in life only added to the mystique.
Madame Dufour stepped aside, and Gamache reached for the drawer where their private life lived.