Page 176
Gaston Comeau was asleep in the car. Gamache tried to wake him, but the young man was out cold. He did up Comeau’s seat belt, then put on his own and turned the car toward the Eastern Townships autoroute. And home.
He’d driven a block when he got the call. Turning the car around, he headed back to Brian Fillmore’s home.
CHAPTER 58
“These were in the basement,” said Armand as he plunked the heavy box of files on the conference table of the Incident Room.
Jean-Guy and Isabelle unpacked them, as eager as kids on Christmas morning, while Gamache brought in more boxes.
He’d dropped Comeau at the B&B, again with unenforceable instructions not to leave. Though Comeau now seemed like a man with nowhere to go.
“This is incredible,” said Isabelle. “Look. Research on cave drawings in Syria. Dinosaur bones in Alberta. Signals from space.”
“There’s a file with receipts from vintage clothing shops in Canada and the UK,” said Jean-Guy.
It was as though Google Search were an actual place and they’d found it. In Brian Fillmore’s basement.
“The boxes were in a cedar closet,” said Armand as he unpacked one of them. “No attempt to hide them. Ahhh.”
He pulled out a thick file and, putting on his reading glasses, he sat down.
“The Empress of Ireland,” he said.
It was bulging with bios of the passengers and survivor reports. Copies of newspaper articles of the day. There were the written details from the inquiries and their findings.
It was fascinating and overwhelming.
“Look.” Isabelle held up another file. This one was slender and labeled, Thomas Morrow, Receiver of Wrecks. “There’s his birth certificate. His record of employment, but without any suggestion he was a thief. His death certificate said it was an accident. A house fire.”
“I’ve got Aldous Clybourne’s file,” said Jean-Guy. He scanned it. “Nothing much here. Nothing we don’t already know.”
They dug deeper into the boxes and finally Isabelle emerged, triumphant.
“Voilà! Daisy Wolcott.” She held up a thin dossier. Opening it on the conference table, she sat down and read. “Her obituary just says she was a gardener who took over her father’s estate and fortune and ran it into the ground.” She looked up. “Not very charitable. Whoever wrote it was no friend.”
“I’m not sure she had any friends,” said Jean-Guy.
There was a clipping from some obscure and now defunct gardening magazine in the UK describing how Miss Wolcott had sabotaged—the word in the article—her neighbors’ perennial beds by dropping the unwanted seed.
That article must have been the basis of the lore. That Miss Wolcott was a crazy, disliked, misguided, and embittered amateur botanist. Who used her most invasive find to try to ruin other gardens.
The file stopped there.
There was nothing about the donation to Macdonald College or any other institution, for that matter. No letter to or from her friend Professor Lafrenière. Nothing about the unfortunate Professor Russell even.
And nowhere was there a mention of Miss Wolcott’s Ghost.
Armand left them to it.
It was early evening. The heat had settled, and the sky was a deep blue as the sun began its descent. He walked across the stone bridge over the Rivière Bella Bella, past the bench where Ruth, Rosa, and Myrna were enjoying a quiet time. Or just ignoring each other. He waved but didn’t stop.
As soon as his foot touched the bottom step of his veranda, the front door opened and Henri came bounding out. Had he not been expecting it and braced, Armand would have been knocked on his keister.
Reine-Marie came out to greet him, holding a banana peel. “For your aching feet, monsieur. Welcome home.”
“Merci, madame.” He took the peel, then held her tight.
Home. Now he was home.
