I have lived in the South al of my adult life. It can never be too hot for me. I love the beach in August, sundresses, ceiling fans, the smel of children's sweaty hair, the sound of bugs at window screens.

Yet I spend my summers and school breaks in Quebec. Most months during the academic year, I fly from Charlotte, North Carolina, where I am on the anthropology faculty at the university, to work at the medicolegal lab in Montreal. This is a distance of approximately twelve hundred miles. Due north.

When it is deep winter, I often have a talk with myself before deplaning. It wil be cold, I remind myself. It wil be very cold.

But you wil dress for it and be ready. Yes. I wil be ready. I never am. It's always a shock to leave the terminal and take that first, startling breath.

At 6 A.M." on the tenth day of March, the thermometer on my patio read two degrees Fahrenheit. Seventeen below, Celsius. I was wearing everything I possibly could. Long underwear, jeans, double sweaters, hiking boots, and woolen socks. Inside the socks, I had sparkly insulated liners designed to keep astronaut feet toasty on Pluto. Same provocative combo as the day before. I'd probably stay just as warm.

When LaManche honked, I zipped my parka, pul ed on gloves and ski hat, and bolted from the lobby. Unenthused as I was for the day's outing, I didn't want to keep him waiting. And I was extremely over-heated.

I had expected a dark sedan, but he waved at me from what would probably be cal ed a sport utility vehicle. Four-wheel drive, bright red, with racing stripes.

"Nice car," I said as I climbed in.

"Merci." He gestured to a center rack. It held two Styrofoam cups and a Dunkin' Donuts bag. Bless you. I chose an apple crunch.

On the drive to St-Jovite, LaManche related what he knew. It went little beyond what I'd heard at 3 A.M. From across the road a neighbor couple saw occupants enter the residence at nine in the evening. The neighbors left after that and visited friends some distance away, where they stayed late. When they were returning around two they noted a glow from down the road, and then flames shooting from the house.

Another neighbor thought she'd heard booming sounds sometime after midnight, wasn't sure, and went back to sleep. The area is remote and sparsely populated. The volunteer fire brigade arrived at two-thirty, and cal ed in help when they saw what they had to deal with. It took two squads over three hours to put out the flames. LaManche had talked to the coroner again at five forty-five. Two deaths were confirmed, others anticipated. Some areas were stil too hot, or too dangerous, to search. Arson was suspected.

We drove north in the predawn darkness, into the foothil s of the Laurentian Mountains. LaManche talked little, which was fine with me.