66 pages • 2 hours read
Bury Your Dead
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Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
Gamache walks in bitter cold to his lunch with Émile and the Société Champlain members, heading for Québec City’s Chateau Frontenac hotel. Gamache is lost in thoughts of the colony’s early settlers, their struggle with the elements and the deaths of many early arrivals. Over lunch, the men watch an ice canoe in the distance, and one of the men argues that Québec itself is a water craft, specifically a rowboat: “We move forward, but we’re always looking back” (148).
Turning to the case, Gamache asks those assembled if there is any possibility Champlain could be buried under the Literary and Historical Society. They explain that only a few locations could be his resting place, as the area where he died is marked by the statue Gamache observed during his walk. The Literary and Historical Society was not yet settled at the time. The men largely dismiss Renaud as an eccentric “crank,” though one suggests that Gamache meet with the priest at the city’s Notre-Dame Basilica, who knew him.
The narrative shifts to Beauvoir, at a prison in Montreal to visit Olivier. Olivier agrees, finally, to tell the entire truth, describing his relationship with the Hermit and his habit of selling some of his antiques, which the old man gave him in exchange for food. Olivier insists he still has no idea why the Hermit’s wood carvings refer to a woman named Charlotte and contain the word “Woo.” Beauvoir is convinced Olivier was only interested in profit, not the older man’s personal life.
After confirming that Olivier sold the Hermit’s goods at a Montreal antiques shop, Beauvoir has another epiphany and calls the prison. He reminds Olivier that he had said the Hermit was Czech during the original case but had said nothing about it in their recent exchange. Olivier admits he invented this detail hoping to distract Gamache.
Chapter 10 Summary
Gamache interviews Ken Haslam, the other board member in the canoe race with Tom Hancock. To his surprise, Haslam speaks nearly inaudibly, below even a faint murmur, but is animated about the camaraderie of racing.
Gamache’s next stop is the basilica, where he finds himself hearing Morin’s voice again. The priest interrupts his reverie, but Gamache hears Morin once more when the priest asks if Gamache is there on a case or for confession of his sins. The priest explains that he had known Renaud for some time, dating back to one of Renaud’s early archeological finds beneath the church. The priest gives Gamache a history lesson, explaining that much of Champlain’s life and origins are unknown but that he is revered as a “symbol of freedom and sacrifice and vision. He didn’t just create a colony, he created a New World” (190).
Chapter 11 Summary
Elizabeth MacWhirter joins her society comrades for an evening nightcap in the church rectory. Elizabeth is struck by the newspaper headlines that now lionize Renaud and seem to express shock that her community exists. She remembers the political tumult of the 1960s, when the library was set on fire by angry Québécois separatists. She and her friends tossed volumes of books out the windows to save them.
Gamache begins working with the local inspector to sort through Renaud’s home. It is less residence than a dense, unsorted archive full of any material remotely pertinent to Champlain.
They sort through the mountain of papers, and Langlois makes particular note of one theory that Champlain may have been a Huguenot, the historical term for a French Protestant. This seems unlikely on its face given that his will, one of the few documents besides his diary to survive, leaves a substantial bequest to the Catholic church. Gamache will later solve this mystery and its connection to Renaud’s murder—Champlain was in fact Protestant, and he paid the church to bury him outside its cemetery. Renaud’s discovery of this led the killer to silence him. Gamache, searching the house once more, finds Renaud’s diaries, the evidence that will lead him to these motives.
Chapter 12 Summary
Beauvoir returns to Three Pines, exhausted and unsure what to do with Olivier’s revelations. After a nap, he visits the bistro for dinner, and Clara Morrow joins him. Beauvoir finds himself enjoying their chat and turns the conversation to the case. Clara admits that even the prospect of freeing Olivier is terrible, as his potential innocence implicates another community member. They consider the local carpenter, known as Old Mundin, his wife, Michelle, and their young son, Charlie, who has Down syndrome. Mundin worked with Olivier’s furniture and could have followed him to the cabin. The other suspects remain the Parras and the Gilberts.
Beauvoir asks Clara to be a kind of informal assistant in finding new suspects. They are joined by Clara’s husband, Peter, and her best friend, Myrna Landers, who owns the bookstore. They all consider the village eccentric, internationally famous poet Ruth Zardo, now an angry woman with an alcohol use disorder who keeps a pet duck named Rosa. Rosa’s recent migration south has soured Ruth’s mood even further. As Beauvoir leaves, Clara agrees to help him. Almost against his will, Beauvoir finds himself visiting Ruth.
The rest of the chapter moves back and forth between Gamache and Beauvoir. Gamache confirms that Renaud had never previously dug anywhere near where he ultimately died. Beauvoir and Ruth have a volatile but honest conversation: The two trade insults of mutual loathing, but Beauvoir, admitting that he needs someone to talk to, does not leave.
Gamache finds a reference to the Literary and Historical Society, with oblique mentions of the names JD, O’Mara, Patrick, and Chin as well as of some digits beginning with 1800. Gamache finds a Patrick in the city directory whose house number is 1809 and decides to visit the next day. He decides to stop by the booksellers Renaud frequented, hoping for more information about his recent research.
The narrative returns to Beauvoir, who has chosen Ruth to confide in precisely because she will be pitiless. He describes the phone call and Morin’s conversation with Gamache, which the agents struggled to trace to his location. Morin’s captor explained that a bomb had been attached to him to deter them from following him. Gamache’s longtime adversary, chief superintendent Sylvain Francoeur, arrived to take over the case. Beauvoir is briefly struck by Ruth quietly leaving a nest for Rosa the duck, refusing to accept that she might not return.
As Gamache walks through streets of celebrating revelers in Québec City, Beauvoir recalls the terrorists indicating that the bomb attached to Morin would go off if Gamache stopped speaking or ended the call. As the chapter closes, Gamache is on another middle-of-the-night walk: “Then onto the plains of Abraham to toss the ball and contemplate a general’s fatal mistakes. Henri, Chief Inspector Gamache, and agent Morin” (231).
Chapters 9-12 Analysis
At this stage in the narrative, the dual investigations deepen in scope and emotional weight. Elizabeth MacWhirter’s memories of the 1960s, with her beloved books literally aflame, reveal how deeply she and her friends cherished their heritage: enough to fight an angry crowd for it. The past, for them, has both value and weight—pain as well as priceless treasure. The members of the Champlain Society and the priest in the Basilica are similarly transfixed by the quest for Champlain and the meaning of Renaud’s death. When Gamache’s interlocutor compares all Québécois to rowboat passengers, perpetually looking backward, it is this belief in the power of a knowable heritage that seems to unite the otherwise divided society. Gamache himself winds up on a quest for written records, drawn into Renaud’s diaries as not only a possible motive for murder but perhaps a grand historical discovery.
Gamache, as a Québécois, is fascinated with Champlain and the Battle of Québec, but the national and the personal seem to blend together. His walk over the erstwhile battlefield, accompanied by the conversations he cannot forget, underlines that he, too, is embattled and perhaps forever changed. It is equally significant that Morin’s voice follows him into the Catholic church, the faith of his childhood, and grows stronger when the priest offers him confession. This emphasizes his sense of guilt that cannot be absolved and the extent of his suffering.
Beauvoir meanwhile makes the confession his mentor cannot, seeking out Ruth as his unlikely confidant. (Penny bases parts of Ruth’s character on Canadian literary icon Margaret Atwood: All of Ruth’s poetry belongs to her.) Penny seems to suggest that for all their mutual professed loathing, the two are alike: Both are surrounded by warmer, more affable personalities, and both struggle to trust. Both have a profound capacity for love: Beauvoir’s relationship with Gamache defines much of his life, much as Ruth’s love for her absent duck creates more fondness for her in both the reader and her fellow villagers.
Beauvoir provides the explanation for Gamache’s nocturnal sojourns and uneasy thoughts: He spent an entire day in conversation with Paul Morin, who became his protégé during the investigation of the Hermit’s death in The Brutal Telling. The introduction of Sylvain Francoeur into the bombing plot telegraphs to series readers that Gamache’s tragedy will have long-term personal and political implications for himself and his team. Francoeur is a longtime adversary, corrupt, ambitious, and deeply resentful of Gamache’s unwillingness to tolerate injustice. He represents mistrust and division within the Sûreté, mirroring the paranoia and doubts already at play in the Renaud case and in Beauvoir’s reopening of Olivier’s case. Beauvoir also dreams that Morin is found safe, underlining how Gamache grieves his death. Penny suggests that the reader cannot yet know what Morin suffered because Gamache remains deep in his trauma. Clarity for all parties depends on his healing.
Tellingly, both Gamache and Beauvoir find themselves seeking new investigative partnerships in the other’s absence. Beauvoir enlists Clara to help him understand Three Pines—and in so doing develops a reluctant appreciation for the village he has hitherto been suspicious of. Gamache turns to both Langlois and Émile, quietly sorting through documents with the inspector he previously hesitated to help. While his walks are solitary, his investigations are not. Penny thus suggests that the detective who seeks both personal and professional clarity must, in the end, overcome isolation, doubt, and shame.
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