Armand Gamache had hoped that after the initial interviews his obligation to Elizabeth MacWhirter and the rest of the Lit and His would be over. But he now knew that wasn’t true. Renaud had demanded to meet the board, the board had refused, then they’d purged the incident from the minutes. When word got out there’d be hell to pay. And it would be the Anglos who had to pay it.
No, Gamache thought as he and Henri trudged out the gates, he couldn’t leave them. Not yet.
The snow had almost stopped and the temperature was dropping. There was no traffic, not a sound except Gamache’s feet squeaking on the snow.
It was three twenty in the morning.
Every day Gamache woke at about that time. At first he’d tried to get back to sleep, had stayed in bed, had fought it. But now, after weeks and weeks, he’d decided this was it, for now. Instead of fighting, he and Henri would get up quietly and go for a walk, first around their Montreal neighborhood and now here in Quebec City.
Gamache knew that in order to get through the day he needed this quiet time with his thoughts at night.
He needed this quiet time with the voice in his head.
“My father taught me to play the fiddle,” Agent Paul Morin said, in answer to Gamache’s question. “I was about four. We have some home video of it somewhere. My father and grandfather playing the fiddle behind me, and me in front wearing these great big sagging shorts, they look like diapers.” Morin laughed. “I had my little fiddle. My grandmother was on piano and my sister pretended to conduct. She was about three. She’s married now, you know, and expecting.”
Gamache turned left and walked through the darkened Carnaval site at the foot of the Plains of Abraham. A couple of guards watched but didn’t approach. Too cold for confrontation. Gamache and Henri wound along the pedestrian walk, past attractions that would be filled with excited kids and freezing parents in just a few hours. Then the stalls and temporary buildings and rides trailed off and they were walking through thin forest toward the infamous open field and the monument erected where the English General Wolfe fell, and died, on September 13, 1759.
Gamache scooped up a handful of snow and crushed it into a ball. Henri immediately dropped the tennis ball and danced around. The Chief cocked his arm, smiling at Henri, who suddenly crouched. Muscles tense. Waiting.
Then Gamache threw the snowball and Henri raced after it, catching it in mid-air. He was ecstatic for a moment then his jaws closed, the snow disintegrated and Henri landed, perplexed as always.
Gamache took the tennis ball encrusted with frozen saliva, put it in the Chuck-it and tossed. The brilliant yellow ball sailed into the darkness with the shepherd sailing after it.
The Chief Inspector knew every inch of the Champs-de-Bataille, in every season. He knew the changing face of the battlefield. Had stood there in spring and seen the daffodils, had stood there in summer and seen the picnickers, had stood there in winter and watched families cross-country ski and snowshoe, and he’d stood there in early autumn. On September 13. The exact day of the battle, when more than one thousand men had died or been wounded in an hour. He’d stood there and believed he heard the shouts, heard the shots, smelled the gunpowder, seen the men charging. He’d stood where he believed Général Montcalm had been when he realized the full nature of his mistake.
Montcalm had underestimated the English. Their courage and their cunning.
At what point did he know the battle was lost?
A runner had appeared in Montcalm’s camp, upriver from Québec, the night before. Exhausted, almost incoherent, he’d reported the English were scaling the 150-foot cliffs from the river and were on the field belonging to the farmer Abraham just outside the city.
Montcalm’s camp hadn’t believed him. Thought the man mad. No commander would issue such an order, no army would obey it. They’d have to have wings, Montcalm had laughingly told his generals and gone back to bed.
By dawn the English were on the Plains of Abraham, prepared for battle.
Was that when Montcalm knew all was lost? When the English, armed with wings, had done the impossible? The Général rushed there and had stood on the very spot Gamache now stood. From there he’d looked over the fields and seen the enemy.
Did Montcalm know then?
But still the battle needn’t have been lost. He could have prevailed. But Montcalm, the brilliant strategist, had more mistakes to make.
And Gamache thought about that moment when he’d realized his own final and fatal mistake. The enormity of it. Though it had taken him a few moments to grasp as everything unraveled, fell apart. With such speed, and yet it seemed now, so slowly.