“Now there’s an understatement,” said Elizabeth. “It was a disaster. We sold a few boxes, books that had been sitting for decades gathering dust. A shame. They should be in someone’s collection, appreciated, not piling up here. And God knows, we need the money. It was a perfect solution. Turn unwanted books into wiring.”
“So what went wrong?” asked Gamache.
“The community went wrong. They decided we were as much a museum as a library and every item ever donated was a treasure. The books became symbolic, I’m afraid.”
“Symbolic of what?” Gamache asked.
“Of the value of the English language. Of the English culture. There was a fear that if even the Lit and His didn’t value the English language, the written word, then there was no hope. They stopped being books and became symbols of the English community. They had to be preserved. Once that happened there was no fighting, no arguing. And certainly, no selling.”
Gamache nodded. She was quite right. The battle was lost at that moment. Best to quit the field.
“And so you stopped the sale?”
“We did. Which is why you see boxes piled in the corridors. If one more elderly Anglo dies, the Literary and Historical Society will explode.” She laughed, but without humor.
“Why do you think Augustin Renaud was here?” Langlois asked.
“For the same reason you do. He must have thought Champlain was here.”
“Why would he think that?”
Elizabeth shrugged, making even that look refined. “Why did he think Champlain was buried under that Chinese restaurant? Or that primary school? Why did Augustin Renaud think anything?”
“Did he ever come here?”
“Well, he did last night.”
“I mean, did you ever see him here before that?”
Elizabeth MacWhirter hesitated.
“Never inside, as far as I know. But I saw him at the front door. Yesterday morning.”
The young assistant, so shocked something worthwhile had actually been said, almost forgot to write this down. But then his pen whirled into action.
“Go on,” said Langlois.
“He asked to see the Board of Directors.”
“When was this?”
“Around eleven thirty. We’d locked the door as we always do during a board meeting.”
“He just showed up?”
“That’s right.”
“How’d he even know you were meeting?”
“We put the announcement in the paper.”
“Le Soleil?”
“The Québec Chronicle-Telegraph.”
“The what?”
“The Chronicle-Telegraph.” Elizabeth spelled it for the assistant. “It’s the oldest newspaper in North America,” she said by rote.
“Go on. You say he showed up. What happened?” asked the Inspector.
“He rang the bell and Winnie answered it, then came up here with his request. She left him downstairs, outside.”
“And what did you say?”
“We took a vote and decided not to see him. It was unanimous.”
“Why not?”
Elizabeth thought about this. “We don’t react well to anything different, I’m afraid. Myself included. We’ve created a quiet, uneventful, but very happy life. One based on tradition. We know that every Tuesday there’ll be a bridge club, they’ll serve ginger snaps and orange pekoe tea. We know the cleaner comes on Thursdays, and we know where the paper towels are kept. In the same place my grandmother kept them, when she was secretary to the Lit and His. It’s not an exciting life but it’s deeply meaningful to us.”
She stopped then appealed to Chief Inspector Gamache.
“Augustin Renaud’s visit upset all that,” he said.
She nodded.
“How’d he react when told you wouldn’t see him?” Gamache asked.
“I went down to tell him. He wasn’t pleased but he accepted it, said he’d be back. I didn’t think he meant quite so soon.”
She remembered standing at the thick wooden door, opened a sliver as though she was cloistered and Renaud a sinner. His white hair sticking out from under his fur hat, frost and icicles and angry breath dripping from his black moustache. His blue eyes not just mad, but livid.
“You cannot stop me, madame,” he’d said.
“I have no desire to stop you, Monsieur Renaud,” she’d said in a voice that she hoped sounded reasonable. Friendly even.
But they both knew she was lying. She wanted to stop him almost as badly as he wanted in.
