Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #1) - Louise Penny Page 0,18

leading out of Three Pines.

‘Been in my family for generations. My mother lived there.’

Gamache didn’t quite know what to say. He’d seen homes like that before. Many times. They were what he’d heard referred to during his time at Christ’s College, Cambridge as Victorian piles. Quite descriptive, he’d always thought. And Quebec, notably Montreal, boasted its share of piles, built by the Scottish robber barons, of railway, booze and banking money. They were held together with hubris, a short-term binder at best since many of them had long ago been torn down or donated to McGill University, which needed another Victorian monstrosity like it needed the Ebola virus. Ben was looking at the home with great affection.

‘Will you move to the big house?’

‘Oh yes. But it needs some work. Parts of it are straight out of a horror movie. Gruesome.’

Ben remembered telling Clara about the time he and Peter had played war in the basement as kids and had come across the snake’s nest. He’d never seen a person turn green, but Clara had.

‘Is the village named after those trees?’ Gamache looked at the cluster on the green.

‘You don’t know the story? Those pines aren’t the originals, of course. They’re only sixty years old. My mother helped plant them when she was a kid. But there have been pines here since the village was founded, more than two hundred years ago. And always in a group of three. Three Pines.’

‘But why?’ Gamache leaned forward, curious.

‘It’s a code. For the United Empire Loyalists. They settled all the land around here, except for the Abenaki, of course.’ In a sentence, Gamache noticed, Ben had dismissed a thousand years of native habitation. ‘But we’re only a couple of kilometers from the border with the States. When the people loyal to the crown during and after the War of Independence were fleeing, they had no way of knowing when they were safe. So a code was designed. Three pines in a cluster meant the loyalists would be welcome.’

‘Mon Dieu, c’est incroyable. So elegant. So simple,’ said Gamache, genuinely impressed. ‘But why haven’t I heard of this? I’m a student of Quebec history myself, and yet this is completely unknown to me.’

‘Perhaps the English want to keep it a secret, in case we need it again.’ Ben at least had the grace to blush as he said this. Gamache turned in his seat and looked at the tall man, slumping as was his nature, his long sensitive fingers loosely holding the leash of a dog who couldn’t possibly leave him.

‘Are you serious?’

‘The last sovereignty referendum was perilously close, as you know. And the campaign was ugly at times. It’s not always comfortable being a minority in your own country,’ said Ben.

‘I appreciate that, but even if Quebec separates from Canada, surely you wouldn’t feel threatened? You know your rights would be protected.’

‘Do I? Do I have the right to put up a sign in my own language? Or work only in English? No. The language police would get me. The Office de la Langue Française. I’m discriminated against. Even the Supreme Court agrees. I want to speak English, Chief Inspector.’

‘You are speaking English. And so am I. And so are all my officers. Like it or not, Mr Hadley, the English are respected in Quebec’

‘Not always, and not by everyone.’

‘True. Not everyone respects police officers either. That’s just life.’

‘You’re not respected because of your actions, what Quebec police have done in the past. We’re not respected just by virtue of being English. It’s not the same thing. Do you have any idea how much our lives have changed in the last twenty years? All the rights we’ve lost? How many of our neighbors and friends and family members have left because of the draconian laws here? My mother barely spoke French, but I’m bilingual. We’re trying, Inspector, but still the English are the laughing stock. Blamed for everything. The tête carrée. No,’ Ben Hadley nodded toward the three sturdy pine trees swaying slightly in the wind, ‘I’ll put my faith in individuals, not the collective.’

It was, reflected Gamache, one of the fundamental differences between anglophone and francophone Quebecers; the English believed in individual rights and the French felt they had to protect collective rights. Protect their language and culture.

It was a familiar and sometimes bitter debate, but one that rarely infected personal relationships. Gamache remembered reading in the Montreal Gazette a few years ago an article by a columnist who observed that Quebec worked in