The Brutal Telling (51 page)

“I saw Rosa outside,” said Clara, anxious to change the subject. “She’s
looking very smart in her rain jacket.” It had occurred to her to wonder why a duck might need a raincoat, but she supposed Ruth was just training Rosa to get used to wearing coats.

Eventually the conversation came back to Olivier, and the Hermit, dead, and the Hermit alive. Ruth leaned over and took Olivier’s hand. “It’s all right, dear, we all know you’re greedy.” Then she looked at Clara. “And we all know you’re needy, and Peter’s petty and Clouseau here,” she turned to Gamache, “is arrogant. And you’re . . .” She looked at Myrna, then turned back to Olivier, whispering loudly, “Who is that anyway? She’s always hanging around.”

“You’re a nasty, demented, drunken old fart,” said Myrna.

“I’m not drunk, yet.”

They finished their drinks and left, but not before Ruth handed Gamache a piece of paper, carefully, precisely folded, the edges sharpened. “Give this to that little fellow who follows you around.”

Olivier kept looking out into the village where Rosa was sitting quietly on the village green, waiting for Ruth. There was no sign of the one not there, the one Olivier longed to see.

G
abri was mostly curious to meet the saint. Vincent Gilbert. Myrna was in awe of him, and she wasn’t in awe of many people. Old Mundin and The Wife said he’d changed their lives with his book
Being
, and his work at LaPorte. And by extension, he’d changed little Charlie’s life.

“
Bonsoir
,” said Gabri, nervously. He looked over to Vincent Gilbert. Growing up in the Catholic Church he’d spent endless hours staring at the gleaming windows showing the wretched lives and glorious deaths of the saints. When Gabri had wandered from the Church he’d taken one thing with him. The certainty that saints were good.

“What do you want?” Marc Gilbert asked. He stood with his wife and mother by the sofa. Forming a semicircle. His father a satellite off to the side. Gabri waited for Vincent Gilbert to calm his son, to tell him to greet their guest nicely. To invite Marc to be reasonable.

Gilbert said nothing.

“Well?” said Marc.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been up sooner to welcome you.”

Marc snorted. “The Welcome Wagon’s already left us our package.”

“Marc, please,” said Dominique. “He’s our neighbor.”

“Not by choice. If he had his way we’d be long gone.”

And Gabri didn’t deny it. It was true. Their troubles arrived with the Gilberts. But here they were and something had to be said.

“I came to apologize,” he said, standing to his full six foot one. “I’m sorry I haven’t made you feel more welcome. And I’m very sorry about the body.”

Yes, that definitely sounded as lame as he’d feared. But he hoped it at least sounded genuine.

“Why isn’t Olivier here?” Marc demanded. “You didn’t do it. It’s not up to you to apologize.”

“Marc, really,” said Dominique. “Can’t you see how difficult this is for him?”

“No, I can’t. Olivier probably sent him hoping we won’t sue. Or won’t tell everyone what a psycho he is.”

“Olivier’s not a psycho,” said Gabri, feeling a kind of trill inside as his patience unraveled. “He’s a wonderful man. You don’t know him.”

“You’re the one who doesn’t know him if you think he’s wonderful. Does a wonderful man dump a body at a neighbor’s home?”

“You tell me.”

The two men advanced on each other.

“I didn’t take the body into a private home to scare the occupants half to death. That was a terrible thing to do.”

“Olivier was pushed to it. He tried to make friends when you first arrived but then you tried to steal our staff and open this huge hotel and spa.”

“Ten guest rooms isn’t huge,” said Dominique.

“Not in Montreal, but out here it is. This’s a small village. We’ve been here for a long time living quietly. You come here and change all that. Made no effort to fit in.”

“By ‘fit in’ you mean tug our forelocks and be grateful you’ve allowed us to live here?” Marc demanded.

“No, I mean being respectful of what’s here already. What people’ve worked hard to establish.”

“You want to raise the drawbridge, don’t you?” said Marc in disgust. “You’re in and you want to keep everyone else out.”

“That’s not true. Most of the people in Three Pines have come from somewhere else.”

“But you only accept people who follow your rules. Who do as you say. We came here to live our dream and you won’t let us. Why? Because it clashes with yours. You’re threatened by us and so you need to run us out of town. You’re nothing but bullies, with big smiles.”

Marc was almost spitting.

Gabri stared at him, amazed. “But you didn’t really expect us to be happy about it, did you? Why would you come here and deliberately upset people who were going to be your neighbors? Didn’t you want us as friends? You must’ve known how Olivier would react.”

“What? That he’d put a body in our home?”

“That was wrong. I’ve already said that. But you provoked him. All of us. We wanted to be your friends but you made it too difficult.”

“So, you’ll be friends with us as long as what? We’re just a modest success? Have a few guests, a couple of treatments a day? Maybe a small dining room, if we’re lucky? But nothing to compete with you and Olivier?”

“That’s right,” said Gabri.

That shut Marc up.

“Listen, why do you think we don’t make croissants?” Gabri continued. “Or pies? Or any baking? We could. It’s what I love to do. But Sarah’s Boulangerie was already here. She’d lived in the village all her life. The bakery belonged to her grandmother. So we opened a bistro instead. All our croissants, and pies, and breads are baked by Sarah. We adjusted our dreams to fit the dreams already here. It’d be cheaper and more fun to bake ourselves but that’s not the point.”

“What is the point?” asked Vincent Gilbert, speaking for the first time.

“The point isn’t to make a fortune,” said Gabri, turning to him gratefully. “The point is to know what’s enough. To be happy.”

There was a pause and Gabri silently thanked the saint for creating that space for reason to return.

“Maybe you should remind your partner of that,” said Vincent Gilbert. “You talk a good line but you don’t live it. It suits you to blame my son. You dress up your behavior as moral and kindly and loving, but you know what it is?”

Vincent Gilbert was advancing, closing in on Gabri. As he neared he seemed to grow and Gabri felt himself shrink.

“It’s selfish,” Gilbert hissed. “My son has been patient. He’s hired local workers, created jobs. This is a place of healing, and you not only try to ruin it, you try to make him out to be at fault.”

Vincent stepped next to his son, having finally found the price of belonging.

There was nothing more to say, so Gabri left.

Lights glowed at windows as he made his way back into the village. Overhead ducks flew south in their V formation, away from the killing cold that was gathering and preparing to descend. Gabri sat on a tree stump by the side of the road and watched the sun set over Three Pines and thought about
les temps perdus
and felt very alone, without even the certainty of saints for comfort.

A
beer was placed on the table for Beauvoir and Gamache nursed his Scotch. They settled into their comfortable chairs and examined the dinner menu. The bistro was deserted. Peter, Clara, Myrna and Ruth had all gone and Olivier had retreated to his kitchen. Havoc, the last of the waiters, took their order then left them to talk.

Gamache broke up a small baguette and told his second in command about his conversation with Olivier.

“So, he still says the Hermit was Czech. Do you believe him?”

“I do,” said Gamache. “At least, I believe Olivier is convinced of it. Any luck with the Caesar’s Shift?”

“None.” They’d given up when they started putting their own names in. Both slightly relieved it didn’t work.

“What’s wrong?” Gamache asked. Beauvoir had leaned back in his seat and tossed his linen napkin onto the table.

“I’m just frustrated. It seems every time we make progress it gets all muddied. We still don’t even know who the dead man was.”

Gamache smiled. It was their regular predicament. The further into a case they went the more clues they gathered. There came a time when it seemed a howl, as though they had hold of something wild that screamed clues at them. It was, Gamache knew, the shriek of something cornered and frightened. They were entering the last stages of this investigation. Soon the clues, the pieces, would stop fighting, and start betraying the murderer. They were close.

“By the way, I’m going away tomorrow,” said the Chief Inspector after Havoc brought their appetizers and left.

“Back to Montreal?” Beauvoir took a forkful of chargrilled calamari while Gamache ate his pear and prosciutto.

“A little further than that. The Queen Charlotte Islands.”

“Are you kidding? In British Columbia? Up by Alaska? Because of a monkey named Woo?”

“Well, when you put it like that . . .”

Beauvoir speared a blackened piece of calamari and dipped it in garlic sauce. “
Voyons
, doesn’t it strike you as, well, extreme?”

“No, it doesn’t. The name Charlotte keeps repeating.” Gamache ticked the points off on his fingers. “The Charlotte Brontë first edition,
Charlotte’s Web
first edition, the Amber Room panel? Made for a princess named Charlotte. The note the Hermit kept about the violin was written by a Charlotte. I’ve been trying to figure out what they could all mean, this repetition of the name Charlotte, then this afternoon Superintendent Brunel gave me the answer. The Queen Charlotte Islands. Where Emily Carr painted. Where the wood for the carvings came from. It might be a dead end, but I’d be a fool not to follow this lead.”

“But who’s doing the leading? You or the murderer? I think they’re leading you away. I think the murderer is here, in Three Pines.”

“So do I, but I think the murder began on the Queen Charlotte Islands.”

Beauvoir huffed, exasperated. “You’re taking a bunch of clues and putting them together to suit your purpose.”

“What are you suggesting?”

Beauvoir needed to watch himself now. Chief Inspector Gamache was more than his superior. They had a relationship that went deeper than any other Beauvoir had. And he knew Gamache’s patience had its limits.

“I think you see what you want to see. You see things that aren’t really there.”

“You mean just aren’t visible.”

“No, I mean aren’t there. To leap to one conclusion isn’t the end of the world, but you’re leaping all over the place and where does it take you? The end of the fucking world. Sir.”

Beauvoir glanced out the window, trying to cool down. Havoc removed their plates and Beauvoir waited for him to leave before continuing. “I know you love history and literature and art and that the Hermit’s cabin must seem like a candy shop, but I think you’re seeing a whole lot more in this case than exists. I think you’re complicating it. You know I’d follow you anywhere, we all would. You just point, and I’m there. I trust you that much. But even you can make mistakes. You always say that murder is, at its core, very simple. It’s about an emotion. That emotion is here, and so’s the murderer. We have plenty of clues to follow without thinking about a monkey, a hunk of wood and some godforsaken island to hell and gone across the country.”

“Finished?” Gamache asked.

Beauvoir sat upright and took a deep breath. “There may be more.”

Gamache smiled. “I agree with you, Jean Guy, the murderer is here. Someone here knew the Hermit, and someone here killed him. You’re right. When you strip away all the shiny baubles it’s simple. A man ends up with antiquities worth a fortune. Perhaps he stole them. He wants to hide so he comes to this village no one knows about. But even that isn’t enough. He takes it a step further and builds a cabin deep in the woods. Is he hiding from the police? Maybe. From something or someone worse? I think so. But he can’t do it on his own. If nothing else he needs news. He needs eyes and ears on the outside. So he recruits Olivier.”

“Why him?”

“Ruth said it tonight.”

“More Scotch, asshole?”

“Well, that too. But she said Olivier was greedy. And he is. So was the Hermit. He probably recognized himself in Olivier. That greed. That need to own. And he knew he could have a hold over Olivier. Promising him more and better antiques. But over the years something happened.”

“He went nuts?”

“Maybe. But maybe just the opposite. Maybe he went sane. The place he built to hide became a home, a haven. You felt it. There was something peaceful, comforting even, about the Hermit’s life. It was simple. Who doesn’t long for that these days?”

Their dinners arrived and Beauvoir’s gloom lifted as the fragrant boeuf bourguignon landed in front of him. He looked across at the Chief Inspector smiling down at his lobster Thermidor.

“Yes, the simple life in the country.” Beauvoir lifted his red wine in a small toast.