The Marble Mask by Archer Mayor

“History major in college—made me chronically curious. Also drives my wife nuts.”
    It no longer had anything to do with crime families and why we were on the road, but by now he’d caught my interest. “So if American Loyalists started Sherbrooke,” I asked, “why’s it totally French now?”
    “The simple answer,” he said, “is railroads. Before eighteen-fifty, the town had a few hundred Anglos in it, running sawmills, tanneries, furniture factories, foundries—things that were largely powered by the hydro dams on the Magog River. But after the trains came in, the market exploded. Industry took off, workers were needed, and where the French had at first avoided the area, they now found themselves both crowded in their previous stomping grounds and attracted by the cash flow. They went from fifteen percent of the population to fifty in twenty years.
    “Not that it
is
totally French now,” he added. “People think that, but there’re still small English pockets all over Québec. Lennoxville is one of them, and it’s Sherbrooke’s oldest suburb.”
    “Fascinating,” Smith muttered, sounding bored. “Border’s coming up.”
    The interstate ahead widened as we approached the customs check, which spanned the roadway like a line of toll booths, one of which housed a thin man with an oversized mustache.
    “Good day, gentlemen,” he said in careful English. “What is your purpose in visiting Canada?”
    “We’re police officers,” Gary answered for us. “Going to a meeting with the Sûreté in Sherbrooke.”
    “Are any of you carrying weapons?” the man asked without further comment.
    “Nope. Left ’em at home.”
    He finally allowed a small smile. “Then welcome to Canada. Have a good meeting.”
    Smith picked up speed, now traveling the Canadian version of I-91, Route 55. “I thought we’d have to show our badges, at least.”
    “You never been over here?” I asked him.
    “Nope. Never saw the need,” he said, as if to counteract Spraiger’s exuberance.
    “Good place for a cheap vacation,” Paul said from the back seat, undaunted. “The U.S. dollar’s worth a bundle.”
    Silence returned as we all three watched the countryside slowly change to something markedly foreign. Québec is where the Appalachians peter out in altitude, becoming a plateau that gently tilts back down toward the St. Lawrence River farther north. The sky, restricted in Vermont to whatever mountain stands nearest, here opens up, leaving the impression that you’re traveling not at the bottom of a series of geological cereal bowls, but instead across an enormous plate, bordered only in the far distance by a fringe of low hills.
    And the occasional mountain.
    As we drew abreast of Magog to our west and took the right fork where Route 55 hooks up with Route 10, we were struck by the enormity of Mount Orford, the area’s largest ski resort, made all the more impressive by its uniqueness amid the relatively flat terrain. Hulking like a sleeping monster, it was a reminder of the earth’s travails, and of the fire and ice that had made our planet habitable, if perhaps only briefly.
    The final approach to Sherbrooke, by contrast, was subtlety itself. Apart from the snow-covered forested terrain’s being occasionally scored by high tension lines, there was no hint of the city until after Gary had turned off onto Route 410 and was just a few miles shy of downtown. Even then we saw only a vast, largely vacant industrial park to our right, with clusters of apartment buildings and shopping malls across from it. If the history lesson Paul Spraiger had given us was accurate, this introduction to Sherbrooke held true to its roots. It spoke of industry, of a worker’s town, of the interest of erstwhile pioneers to transform themselves into modern merchants.
    And the final unveiling didn’t disappoint. As we topped the last hill and descended into the shallow valley that held the Magog River and the city in its crease, these