Bury Your Dead Read Online Free Page B

better. We speak of you often and hope you’ll visit. Ruth says to bring Reine-Marie, since she doesn’t actually like you. But she did ask me to say hello, and fuck off.
     
    Gamache smiled. It was one of the kinder things Ruth Zardo said to people. Almost an endearment. Almost.
     
I do, however, have one question. Why would Olivier move the body? It doesn’t make sense. He didn’t do it, you know.
Love,
Gabri
     
    Inside, as always, Gabri had put a licorice pipe. Gamache took it out, hesitated, then offered the treat to the man across the way.
    “Licorice?”
    The man looked up at Gamache then down at the offering.
    “Are you offering candy to a stranger? Hope I won’t have to call the police.”
    Gamache felt himself tense. Had the man recognized him? Was this a veiled message? But the man’s faded blue eyes were without artifice, and he was smiling. Reaching out the elderly man broke the pipe in half and handed the larger portion back to his companion. The part with the candy flame, the biggest and the best part.
    “Merci, vous êtes très gentil.”
Thank you, you’re very kind, the man said.
    “C’est moi qui vous remercie.”
It is I who thank you, Gamache responded. It was a well-known, but no less sincere, exchange among gracious people. The man had spoken in perfect, educated, cultured French. Perhaps slightly accented, but Gamache knew that might just be his preconception, since he knew the man to be English, while he himself was Francophone.
    They ate their candy and read their books. Henri settled in and by three thirty the librarian, Winnie, was turning on the lamps. The sun was already setting on the walled city and the old library within the walls.
    Gamache was reminded of a nesting doll. The most public face was North America and huddled inside that was Canada and huddled inside Canada was Québec. And inside Québec? An even smaller presence, the tiny English community. And within that?
    This place. The Literary and Historical Society. That held them and all their records, their thoughts, their memories, their symbols. Gamache didn’t have to look at the statue above him to know who it was. This place held their leaders, their language, their culture and achievements. Long forgotten or never known by the Francophone majority outside these walls but kept alive here.
    It was a remarkable place almost no Francophone even knew existed. When he’d told Émile about it his old friend had thought Gamache was joking, making it up, and yet the building was just two blocks from his own home.
    Yes, it was like a nesting doll. Each held within the other until finally at the very core was this little gem. But was it nesting or hiding?
    Gamache watched Winnie make her way around the library with its floor-to-ceiling books, Indian carpets scattered on the hardwood floors, a long wooden table and beside that the sitting area. Two leather wing chairs and the worn leather sofa where Gamache sat, his correspondence and books on the coffee table. Arched windows broke up the bookcases and flooded the room with light, when there was light to catch. But the most striking part of the library was the balcony that curved above it. A wrought iron spiral staircase took patrons to the second story of bookshelves that rose to the plaster ceiling.
    The room was filled with volume and volumes. With light. With peace.
    Gamache couldn’t believe he’d never known it was here, had stumbled over it quite by accident one day while on a walk trying to clear his mind of the images. But more than the flashes that came unbidden, were the sounds. The gunshots, the exploding wood and walls as bullets hit. The shouts, then the screams.
    But louder than all of that was the quiet, trusting, young voice in his head.
    “I believe you, sir.”
     
    Armand and Henri left the library and did their rounds of the shops, picking up a selection of raw milk cheeses, pâté and lamb from J.A. Moisan, fruit and vegetables from the grocery store