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.
“Homicide,” his secretary had said, answering the phone.
Beauvoir had been in his office when the call came through, discussing a case in Gaspé. She’d stuck her head in the door.
“It’s Inspector Norman, in Ste-Agathe.”
Gamache looked up. She rarely interrupted him. They’d worked together for years and she knew when to handle it herself, and when not to.
“Put him through,” said the Chief. “Oui, Inspector. What can I do for you?”
And so the battle had begun.
Je me souviens, thought Gamache. The motto of Québec. The motto of the Québécois. I remember.
“I was at Carnaval once,” Agent Morin said. “It was great. My dad took us and we even played fiddle at the skating rink. Mom tried to stop him. She was embarrassed, and my sister could have died, but Dad and I took out our fiddles and started playing and everyone seemed to really like it.”
“That piece you played for us? ‘Colm Quigley’?”
“No, that’s a lament. It gets faster, but the beginning’s too slow for skaters. They wanted something peppier, so we did some jigs and reels.”
“How old were you?” Gamache asked.
“Thirteen, maybe fourteen. It was about ten years ago. Never went back.”
“Maybe this year.”
“Oui. I’ll take Suzanne. She’d love it. Might even take the fiddle again.”
Je me souviens, thought Gamache. That was the problem. Always the problem. I remember. Everything.
In the cabin in the woods Beauvoir lay awake. Normally he slept soundly, even after what happened. But now he found himself staring into the dark rafters, then at the glow of the fireplace. He could see Dr. Gilbert asleep on the two chairs he’d pulled together. The asshole saint had given Beauvoir the bed. Beauvoir felt horrible, having an elderly man who’d been so kind, sleep on a couple chairs. And he wondered, briefly, if that was the point. Why be a saint unless you could also be a martyr?
Perhaps it was the peaceful cabin, perhaps it was exhaustion after pushing himself too far, or the little half pill, but Beauvoir’s defenses were down.
And over the wall swarmed the memories.
“Homicide,” the Chief’s secretary had said. Gamache had taken the call.
11:18 the clock had said. Beauvoir had looked around the room, letting his mind wander, as the Chief spoke on the phone with the Ste-Agathe detachment.
“Agent Morin’s on the phone.” Gamache’s secretary appeared again at the doorway a moment later. The Chief covered the mouthpiece and said, “Ask him to call back in a few minutes.”
Gamache’s voice was hard and Beauvoir immediately looked at him. He was taking notes as Inspector Norman spoke.
“When was this?” Gamache’s sentences were clipped. Something had happened.
“He says he can’t.” The Chief’s secretary hovered, uncomfortable, but insistent.
Gamache nodded to Beauvoir to take the Morin call, but Gamache’s secretary stood her ground.
“He says he needs to speak to you, sir,” she said. “Now.”
Both Chief Inspector Gamache and Inspector Beauvoir stared at her, amazed she would contradict the boss. Then Gamache made up his mind.
“Désolé,” he said into the receiver to Inspector Norman. “I have to give you to Inspector Beauvoir. Wait, I have a question. Was your agent alone?”
Beauvoir saw Gamache’s face change. He waved for Beauvoir to take the other phone in his office. Beauvoir picked up the receiver and saw the Chief take Agent Morin’s call on the other line.
“Oui, Norman, what’s happened?” Beauvoir remembered asking. For something had, something serious. The worst, in fact.
“One of our agents has been shot,” Norman said, obviously on a cell phone. He sounded far away, though Beauvoir knew he was only about an hour north of Montreal, in the Laurentian Mountains. “He was checking out a car stopped on the side of a secondary road.”
“Is he—?”
“He’s unconscious, on his way to the Ste-Agathe hospital. But reports I’m getting aren’t hopeful. I’m on my way to the scene.”
“We’ll be right there, give me the location.” Beauvoir knew not only was time crucial, but so was coordination. In a case like this every cop and every department was in danger of descending and then they’d have chaos.
Across the room he could see Gamache standing at his desk, the phone to his ear, his hand gesturing for calm. Not to anyone in the room, but to whoever he was speaking with, presumably Agent Morin.
“He wasn’t alone,” Norman was saying, the transmission cutting in and out as he raced through the mountains to the scene. “We’re looking for the other agent.”
It didn’t take a homicide detective to know what that meant. One agent shot, the other missing? Lying dead or gravely wounded in some culvert. That’s what Inspector Norman was thinking, that’s what Beauvoir was thinking.
“Who’s the other agent?”
“Morin. One of yours. He’s on loan to us for the week. I’m sorry.”
“Paul Morin?”
“Oui.”
“He’s still alive,” said Beauvoir, and felt the relief. “He’s on the phone with the Chief Inspector.”
“Oh, thank God for that. Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
Gamache took Morin’s call, his mind racing in response to what he’d heard from Inspector Norman. An agent gravely wounded, another missing.
“Agent Morin? What is it?”
“Chief?” The voice sounded hollow, tentative. “I’m sorry. Did you find—”
“Is this Chief Inspector Gamache?” The phone had clearly changed hands.
“Who is this?” the Chief demanded. He gestured to his secretary to get a trace and make sure it was being recorded.