Behind the desk was the first wall of books, and enough space to walk around and look at them. There were all kinds of books. Old leather bound tomes, frayed fabric-bound hardbacks, ratty paperbacks and clean paperbacks, magazines, loose-leaf maps and sheafs of notation held together by fold-back paper-clips.

I pulled out a couple of them and flipped through pages in no particular order. Maps and notations. Comments on mapping techniques, topographical maps of the area. Farmland parcels. There were books filled with historical maps that told stories of the area. Agricultural information maps which showed how farming had changed. One year wheat was in; a hundred years later it was rapeseed for cooking-oil.

It occurred to me that there was no organizing principle to the bookshelf, it wasn’t in alphabetical order, nor was it by author. But from what I’d seen, Gilles had been an obsessive organizer. So there must be a rhyme and reason to the order of books. I stepped back all the way to the desk and leaned on it, and noticed the framed map hung just to the left of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf.

I examined the map up close. It was of the local area, what the French call a department. Alencourt was directly in the center of the department, but all around were other towns, villages and communes. Like Gravins, Lascombe, and Sevenans. The river was named Le Menthon, and flowed through the department in a diagonal line from north-east to south-west. Vaugeois had made little marks around the map. Circles were drawn in colored pencil.

I stepped all the way back to the desk again and got the big picture. The bookshelf itself was a map of the local department. In the middle of it were documents and texts relating to Alencourt. Then the river areas continued on either side, top-right and bottom-left. Top and bottom were books and documents relating to the north and south of the department, and so on. The bookshelf was a map. Maps within a map.

To my left, another wall of books. Legal texts, all of them. Vaugeois had been a lawyer, so that made sense. Lawyers have to memorize stuff, that’s their job. The law is written down, it’s a book. Lawyers need to know that book by heart. The best lawyers can memorize and think at the same time, the worst lawyers can only memorize and repeat.

I turned left again, like a compass needle, and found myself facing the door. The bookshelf was narrower, accommodating the doorframe, but still ran from floor to ceiling. It was a collection of books from a series. The spines were all the same width. Multi-colored volumes in bright hues. I tilted my head sideways. It was an adventure book series from the nineteen-fifties and early sixties. Explorers and train robbers, spies and crooks. This was Gilles’ collection of nostalgic books from his childhood.