A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12) - Louise Penny Page 0,97
of course it does, we’re staying there,” said Huifen, staring. “This map is incorrect.”
“Can’t be. Turcotte drew it himself,” said Bergeron. “His work was the foundation. We add new roads and towns, but it’s all built on Antony Turcotte’s original surveys. Maybe he just missed it. It must be pretty small. I’ve never even heard of it.”
“But Turcotte lived there himself,” said Amelia. “Why would he leave his own village off the official map?”
“Maybe we got it wrong and he didn’t live there,” said Huifen. “Maybe he made the orienteering map and gave it to someone else. Someone who did live there.”
“Then how did it get into the stained-glass window in Three Pines?” asked Amelia. “Non. That map was made by someone who not only lived in the village, but loved it.”
“So why did he disappear it?” asked Huifen. She turned to Bergeron. “What do you know about him?”
“Not a lot, really. I don’t think many people actually even met him.”
“Was that unusual?” asked Amelia.
Monsieur Bergeron smiled. “Not many meet me. The Société des cartelogues du Québec tried to do a biography of Turcotte for the Canadian Encyclopedia. Here, let me find it.”
He pulled a thick book from his shelf. Wiping off the dust, he found a page, then handed the book to Huifen.
“Antony Turcotte, cartographer,” she read. “Born in LaSalle, in 1862. Died in 1919.”
“But not in Three Pines,” said Amelia, reading over her shoulder. “It says here he’s buried in a place called Roof Trusses. Roof Trusses?”
She looked at Monsieur Bergeron, who smiled. “I’m afraid so. Turcotte’s one great error. It’s become legendary in the toponymie world.”
“He named a village Roof Trusses?”
“We can’t explain it. Well, actually we can, sort of. At the entrance to the village, there used to be a small business that made—”
“Roof trusses?”
“Oui. Those wooden things that hold up roofs. We think, because he didn’t speak much English, that he mistook the sign for the name of the village.”
“He never explained?”
“He was never asked. He sent in his map, with the place names, but this was a tiny village and no one noticed until years later.”
“So how do you know he didn’t make other mistakes?” asked Huifen.
Monsieur Bergeron looked affronted and even slightly confused, as though the idea of Antony Turcotte making another error was incomprehensible.
“He was human, after all,” she prompted, despite the mythologizing that had apparently happened over the years.
“Antony Turcotte did not make another mistake, and the one he made he owned for eternity, by choosing to be buried there,” said Bergeron, his voice clipped.
Amelia was about to point out that Turcotte had left the village of Three Pines off the map, but stopped herself. She suspected that had not been a mistake.
“This biography doesn’t mention a wife or children,” said Huifen.
“No, there was no record of either. It doesn’t mean he didn’t have them, just that the records were lost. As you can see, we couldn’t find out much about him.”
The entry was indeed sparse.
“Can you show us Roof Trusses on the map?” asked Huifen.
Monsieur Bergeron looked a little sheepish. “I’m afraid not.”
“Don’t tell me—” started Huifen.
“It doesn’t exist anymore,” said Bergeron. “When the error was discovered, it was renamed, something the villagers themselves chose. But then it disappeared too.”
“Disappeared?” asked Amelia.
“It happens,” said Bergeron. “Villages spring up around a single industry and when it dies, the village dies.”
And now Roof Trusses, like Three Pines, was not even a tiny dot on a large map, thought Amelia.
* * *
Jacques rammed the drawer of the filing cabinet shut with such force the sound knocked Nathaniel out of his skin.
Hands trembling, breath short and shallow, his pupils dilated, Nathaniel dropped his head, but not before he saw Jacques turn and look down the long, long line of files. And focus. On him.
The younger cadet went back to the cards, desperately going through them, trying to find the one with the answer. But Jacques was bearing down on him with purpose. He’d reached the end of his patience with the search, and had found something more interesting to do.
Please, oh please, thought Nathaniel as his fingers fumbled. But his eyes no longer took in the words on the cards, and he waited, numb, for the shove, the punch, the slap. The harsh word. Or worse.
Instead, a few feet away, Jacques stopped. A familiar buzzing had halted him. And, like Pavlov’s dog, he couldn’t help but react to it, bringing his iPhone out.