At the top of the street he paused to catch his breath. A breath that was easier and easier to catch with each passing day as his health returned thanks to long, quiet walks with Reine-Marie, Émile, or Henri, or sometimes alone.
Though these days he was never alone. He longed for it, for blessed solitude.
Avec le temps, Émile had said. With time. And maybe he was right. His strength was coming back, why not his sanity?
Resuming his walk Gamache noticed activity ahead. Police cars. No doubt trouble with some hung-over university students, come to Québec to discover the official drink of the Winter Carnival, Caribou, a near lethal blend of port and alcohol. Gamache could never prove it, but he was pretty sure Caribou was the reason he’d started losing his hair in his twenties.
As he neared the Literary and Historical Society he noticed more Quebec City police cars and a cordon.
He stopped. Beside him Henri also stopped and sat alert, watching.
This side street was quieter, less traveled, than the main streets. He could see people streaming by twenty feet away, oblivious to the events happening right here.
Officers were standing at the foot of the steps up to the front door of the old library. Others were milling about. A telephone repair truck was parked at the curb and an ambulance had arrived. But there were no flashing lights, no urgency.
That meant one of two things. It had been a false alarm or it hadn’t, but there was no longer any need to rush.
Gamache knew which it was. A few of the cops leaning against the ambulance laughed and poked each other. Across the street Gamache bristled at the hilarity, something he never allowed at crime scenes. There was a place for laughter in life but not in recent, violent, death. And this was a death, he knew that. It wasn’t just instinct, it was all the clues. The number of police, the lack of urgency, the ambulance.
And this was violent death. The cordon told him that.
“Move along, monsieur,” one of the officers, young and officious, came up to him. “No need to stare.”
“I wanted to go in there,” said Gamache. “Do you know what happened?”
The young officer turned his back and walked away but it didn’t upset Gamache. Instead he watched the officers talk among themselves inside the cordon. While he and Henri stood outside.
A man walked down the stone steps, spoke a few words to one of the officers on guard then went to an unmarked car. Pausing there he looked round, then stooped to get into the car. But he didn’t. Instead he stopped and slowly straightening he looked right at Gamache. He stared for ten seconds or more, which, when eating a chocolate cake isn’t much, but when staring, is. Softly, he closed the car door and walking to the police tape he stepped over it. Seeing this, the young officer broke away from his companions and trotted over, falling into step with the plainclothes officer.
“I already told him to leave.”
“Did you now.”
“Oui. Do you want me to insist?”
“No. I want you to come with me.”
Watched by the others, the two men crossed the snowy street and walked right up to Gamache. There was a pause, as the three men stared at each other.
Then the plainclothes officer stepped back and saluted. Astonished, the young cop beside him stared at the large man in the parka and scarf and toque, with the German shepherd dog. He looked more closely. At the trim, graying beard, the thoughtful brown eyes, and the scar.
Blanching, he stepped back and saluted as well.
“Chef,” he said.
Chief Inspector Gamache saluted back and waved them to drop the formalities. These men weren’t even members of his force. He was with the Sûreté du Québec and they were with the local Quebec City police. Indeed, he recognized the plainclothes officer from crime conferences they’d both attended.
“I didn’t know you were visiting Québec, sir,” said the senior officer, obviously perplexed. Why was the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec standing just outside a crime scene?
“It’s Inspector Langlois, isn’t it? I’m on leave, as you might know.”
Both men gave curt nods. Everyone knew.
“I’m just here visiting a friend and doing some personal research in the library. What’s happened?”
“A body was found this morning by a telephone repairman. In the basement.”
“Homicide?”
“Definitely. An effort had been made to bury him, but when the repairman dug for a broken cable he found the body.”
Gamache looked at the building. It had been the original courthouse and jail, hundreds of years before. Prisoners had been executed, hanged from the window above the front door. It was a place that knew violent death and the people who committed it, on either side of the law. Now there’d been another.