Page 63 of Miss Wolcott’s Ghost

CHAPTER 24

When Inspector Eidinger arrived in Chief Inspector Gamache’s office, he closed his laptop and rose from behind his desk. He was pale, pasty.

He waved her to a seat next to Jean-Guy, who greeted her with a silent nod.

He looked like a man haunted.

“When we mentioned Empress of Ireland in your office,” said the Chief, joining them in the seating area, “you said, ‘Funny you should say that.’ What did you mean?”

The accountant was also pale and shaken. Most of her work had to do with facts, figures. Balance sheets. Or, mostly really, sheets that did not balance. Where there was a thumb on the scales, tilting them toward a miscreant.

Rarely did she come face-to-face with a human tragedy on such a scale as the Empress of Ireland. It might have been a mistake, she now thought, to have read so much about the sinking.

Did the details of that night really matter to this murder investigation?

But a voice from well below her head said yes, it mattered. Maybe to their investigation. Maybe not. But certainly, as human beings, it mattered. The dead must be remembered.

And she, like Gamache, like Beauvoir, had the feeling that the Empress of Ireland’s story wasn’t over.

She pulled herself together.

“In doing our research into Réunion, we discovered a reference to the Empress of Ireland. It was, in many ways, how Réunion got started.”

“How so?”

Warming to her story, Eidinger leaned forward. “When he was a teenager, Brian Fillmore became interested in genealogical research. Not his own family, though. It seems several years earlier, he’d discovered the story of the Empress of Ireland and became fixated. Obsessed really. He decided to try to track down and reconcile families who’d lost members in that tragedy. The sinking fractured families. Many lost contact with each other. Fillmore decided, as a sort of hobby, to try to bring them back together.”

“To reunite survivors of the sinking?” said Beauvoir. “But they’d be long dead by then, non? Even those who were infants at the time and survived.”

“True,” said Eidinger. “He was hoping to connect the next generation. Many of those who survived chose never to get on a ship again—”

Jean-Guy made a guttural sound that was all too easy to interpret.

“They stayed here in Canada,” the accountant continued. “Made lives here and eventually lost touch with any family back in Britain or elsewhere. Many in the next generation never even knew they had family in Europe. At first, it was a hobby, but then Fillmore saw how emotionally rewarding it was—”

“Just emotionally?” asked Gamache.

Eidinger smiled. “Well, financially too. People are willing to pay for this kind of one-stop family shop. He did all the work for them. He researched their family trees. Not just names, but he tracked down the actual living relatives for anyone who wanted to get in touch. Soon he expanded, offering a travel service. Guides. He’d do private tours to reunite the families, and to provide context.”

“Context?” said Beauvoir. “What do you mean?”

“Well, he’d take them around the region of their origin, organizing walking tours, cooking classes. Language classes. Concerts. Réunion introduced people to a culture, a cuisine, in some cases a language they’d also lost. Impressive.”

“Expensive,” said Jean-Guy.

“True, though there are different levels.”

“First class down to steerage?” asked Gamache.

“Kind of, yes. Though so far, everyone has survived.”

“Maybe not everyone,” said Jean-Guy.

“It’s become a huge business, this genealogical tourism,” said the forensic accountant. “Réunion just went public, with an IPO before Christmas. Made the Fillmore brothers hundreds of millions of dollars.”

“Can you be more specific?” asked Gamache. “How wealthy are they?”

The forensic accountant put on glasses and consulted her notes. “Brian, the senior partner and founder, is now worth three hundred and forty million dollars.” Beauvoir’s eyes widened. “Charles made a hundred and ten million. That’s on paper, of course. But still…”