The home where Gamache and Reine-Marie live in Three Pines has a partially finished basement, which, like many basements, contains stored holiday decorations, canned food, tools, and the like. This particular basement also has a sealed and secured room where Gamache keeps his personal archive of files documenting the cases he has investigated during his career. There, evil is seemingly contained, until Gamache needs to access the files on Fleming, when he suspects that Fleming has escaped in a variation on the idea of the return of the repressed.

Thus, like the files in the basement, past traumatic events can be stored in someone’s psyche, and, as in the basement itself, they may be forgotten, but they still remain below the surface. In short, the basement is the equivalent of the subconscious or the repressed in the human mind: It is a dark, shadowy, seldom-accessed place, where the past is stored, perhaps even hidden away, but never completely dormant.

Hence, Sam’s sneaking into and poking around in Gamache’s basement, which is motivated by his desire for revenge for the past, connects to the unsettling effect he always has on the detective. Fleming also gets into Gamache’s mind, first as a recollection and then through actual manipulation of Gamache’s deepest fears.