Samuel de Champlain wasn’t simply one more explorer, he was the Father of Québec, and as such he’d become a symbol for the Québécois of greatness. And freedom. Of New Worlds and new countries.
Of sovereignty. Of separation from Canada.
Gamache remembered the extremes of the late 1960s. The bombs, the kidnappings, the murders. All done by young separatists. But the young separatists of the 1960s became elderly separatists, who joined societies and sat in genteel lounges and sipped aperitifs.
And plotted?
Samuel de Champlain was found and found to be a Protestant. What would the church make of that? What would the separatists make of that?
“How did you find the books?” Émile asked, dropping his eyes to the bag at Gamache’s side.
“It was his satchel. Why carry it just for a small map? There must have been something else in it. Then when we couldn’t find the books I realized he probably kept them with him. Augustin Renaud would have refused to let them out of his possession, even for a moment. He must have taken them to the Literary and Historical Society when he met his murderer. But they weren’t on his body. That meant the killer must have taken them. And done what?”
Émile’s eyes narrowed, his mind moving along the path Armand had laid out. Then he smiled. “The murderer couldn’t take them home with him. If they were found in his possession they’d incriminate him.”
Gamache watched his mentor.
“He could have destroyed them, I suppose,” Émile continued, thinking it through. “Thrown them into a fireplace, burned the books. But he couldn’t bring himself to do that. So what did he do?”
The two men stared at each other in the crowded hall of the hotel. People swirled around them like a great river, some bundled against the cold, some in formal wear off to a cocktail party. Some in the colorful, traditional sashes of the Carnaval, les ceinture fléchée. All ignoring the two men, standing stock-still in the current.
“He hid them in the library,” said Émile, triumphantly. “Where else? Hide them among thousands of other old, leather, unread, unappreciated volumes. So simple.”
“I spent this morning looking and finally found them,” said Gamache.
The two men walked out of the Château, gasping as the cold hit their faces.
“You found the books, but what happened to Champlain?” Émile asked, blinking his eyes against the freezing cold. “What did James Douglas and Chiniquy do with him?”
“We’re about to find out.”
“The Lit and His?” Émile asked, as they turned left past the old stone buildings, past the trees with cannonballs still lodged in them, past the past they both loved. “But why didn’t the Chief Archeologist find Champlain when he looked a few days ago?”
“How do you know he didn’t?”
TWENTY–THREE
When the Chief Inspector and Émile Comeau arrived at the Literary and Historical Society, Elizabeth, Porter Wilson, tiny Winnie the librarian and Mr. Blake were assembled in the entrance hall, waiting.
“What’s going on?” Porter launched right into it before Gamache and Émile had even closed the door behind them. “The Chief Archeologist is back with some technicians and that Inspector Langlois is also there. He’s ordered us to stay away from our own basement.”
“Had you planned to go down there?” Gamache asked, taking off his coat.
“Well, no.”
“Do you need to go down there?”
“No, not at all.” The two men stared at each other.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Porter, this is embarrassing,” said Elizabeth. “Let the men do their work. But,” she turned to Armand Gamache, “we would appreciate some information. Whatever you can give us.”
Gamache and Émile exchanged glances. “We think Augustin Renaud might have been right,” said the Chief Inspector.
“About what?” snapped Porter.
“Don’t be a fool,” said Mr. Blake. “About Champlain, what else?” When Gamache nodded Mr. Blake frowned. “You believe Samuel de Champlain is in our basement and has been all this time?”
“For the last 140 years anyway, yes. Pardon.”
The men squeezed past the gathering and made their way through the now familiar halls to the trap door into the first basement, then down another steep metal ladder to the final level.
Through the floorboards of the level above they could see glaring light, as though the sun was imprisoned down there. But once down they recognized it for what it was, a series of brilliant industrial lamps trained, once again, on the dirt and stone basement.