“They refused, insisting on one thousand dollars each, and they got it but only after Douglas had secured their pledge of secrecy and found out where they lived. The Irishmen, who hated the English, also feared them. They knew what lay behind the civilized veneer. They knew what an Englishman was capable of, if crossed. Patrick and O’Mara agreed, then carried the coffin to the basement and left.”
His phone buzzed again. Still Gamache ignored it.
“How do you know all this?” someone asked.
“Because I found this.”
Gamache bent down to his satchel and removed a black leather book. As he held it he looked at Émile who looked surprised, and something else. Was that a small smile? A grin or a grimace?
“It’s Father Chiniquy’s journal for the year 1869. Augustin Renaud found it and recognizing its significance he hid it.”
“Where was it?” Émile asked.
“The library of the Literary and Historical Society,” said Gamache, staring at his mentor.
“Augustin Renaud hid the journal in a library?” asked René Dallaire.
“No,” clarified Gamache. “His murderer did.”
“Why’re you telling us all this?” Jean Hamel, slender and contained and sitting next to René Dallaire as always, asked.
“I think you know why,” said Gamache, looking the man directly in the eyes until Hamel lowered his.
“Where did you say the Irish workers were digging?” a member asked.
“I didn’t, but I can tell you. It was under the Old Homestead.”
The room grew very quiet. Everyone stared at Gamache.
“You found the other book, didn’t you,” said Émile into the silence.
“I did.”
Gamache reached into the satchel, now on his lap. The satchel he’d spent the last few hours protecting.
“Last year the Literary and Historical Society sold a number of boxes of books, boxes they hadn’t bothered to examine. Augustin Renaud bought some of them. When he went to see what he had he found they were from the collection of Father Charles Chiniquy. Not very promising, for a Champlain scholar—”
The use of the word “scholar” brought some harrumphs.
“—so he didn’t hurry to read them. But eventually, scanning them, he came across something extraordinary. He made mention of it in his own diary, but in true Renaud fashion he was”—Gamache searched for the word—“guarded.”
“Don’t you mean demented?” asked Jean Hamel. “Nothing he said or wrote can be trusted.”
“No, I mean guarded. And he was quite right. What he’d found was staggering.”
Gamache withdrew another black leather book. This one was larger, thicker than the first. Frayed and brittle, but in good condition. It had not seen the sun for hundreds of years then, dug up, it had sat anonymously on the bookshelves of Father Chiniquy’s home for thirty years until his death.
“This,” Gamache held up the book, “was Father Chiniquy’s secret, and in the end the secret had died with him so that when his housekeeper packaged up his books and sent them to the Lit and His more than a century ago, no one knew what treasures they contained.
“In reading Chiniquy’s journals Augustin Renaud found the report of the fateful encounter one July evening in 1869. And among the many religious books, the hymnals, the sermons, the family bibles in the box of used books he found this.”
Gamache laid his large hand on the plain leather cover, barely recognizable for what it was.
Once again his phone buzzed. It was his private line. Few knew the number, but it hadn’t stopped ringing for the past ten minutes.
“May I?” Émile reached out.
“Oui.” Gamache stood and handed the book to his mentor and watched as Émile did exactly what he himself had done an hour earlier. Exactly what he imagined Augustin Renaud had done a month ago. What Father Chiniquy had done a century ago.
Émile opened the simply tooled leather book to the inscription page.
There was a sharp intake of breath then Émile sighed and with the sigh two words escaped. “Bon Dieu.”
“Yes,” said the Chief. “Good God.”
“What is it?” Jean Hamel asked, stepping out from the convenient shadow of his friend René. It was clear now who was the real leader of the Société Champlain.
“They’d found Champlain,” said Émile, staring at Gamache. It wasn’t a question, it was beyond question. “It was Champlain’s coffin the Irish workers found beneath the Old Homestead.”