The Hangman (4 page)

“What did he say?”

“It was strange. He seemed to be about to say something, but then he shook his head and left.”

Gamache turned to Gabri. “Do you have anyone staying at the Bed and Breakfast?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. A woman arrived a couple of days ago, and then last night a fellow showed up.”

“With reservations?”

“Well, the woman called ahead but the man just arrived. Took a room for a couple of days.”

“Did you tell Mr. Ellis about him?” Gamache asked.

“Well, no. He hadn’t shown up yet.”

“Poor man,” said Myrna at last. “Killing himself.”

“Can’t say I blame him,” said Gabri, looking out the window at the dreary, cold day. “Depressing weather, and worse to come.”

“The odd thing is, most suicides don’t happen in the fall or even in the winter,” said Myrna. “They happen in April, just as the weather is getting better.”

“Really?” Gabri turned to her, surprised. Gamache was not surprised. He knew that what she said was true.

“People rarely take their lives when things are at their worst,” said Myrna. “The sad fact is that they kill themselves when things are beginning to look better.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” said Gabri, who could not imagine killing anyone as wonderful as himself.

“When people are really depressed, they don’t have the energy to kill themselves,” said Myrna, who had once been a therapist in Montreal. “But as soon as they start feeling a little better, their energy comes back. They’re still depressed, but now they can act.”

“How sad he must have been,” said Gabri.

“It’s not sadness that drives most people to take their lives,” said Myrna. “It’s emptiness. Loneliness.”

Chief Inspector Gamache leaned forward. “But Mr. Ellis didn’t kill himself. He was murdered.”

Two very surprised people looked back at him.

“Someone hanged him from a tree?” Myrna asked.

“I’m afraid so. They tried to make his death look like suicide. Even wrote a note. But it was murder.”

“How horrible,” said Gabri.

“His name was Ellis?” Myrna asked.

“Mean anything to you?” Gamache asked. “Is there an Ellis family nearby?”

Both Myrna and Gabri shook their heads. Myrna got up.

“If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.” She walked away.

“Arthur Ellis,” said Gabri, almost to himself. “He sounds so normal. Seemed so normal.”

Gamache had to agree. But he also knew normal people were killed all the time. It was the murderer who wasn’t normal.

Unseen by either man, Myrna paused in the doorway of her bookstore.

She stared back at the two men, puzzled.

Chapter Seven

“Chief? It’s Beauvoir.”

Gamache stood at the bar of the bistro, holding the phone to his ear. Cell phones did not work in Three Pines. So Inspector Beauvoir had had to call the bistro to speak to his boss.

“Find anything?” Gamache asked.

“Not much,” said Beauvoir. “We searched Ellis’s room and took fingerprints. His car is in the lot. Ontario plates. The Ontario police are finding out who owns the car. Should know more soon. But I did find something interesting. That note you found in Ellis’s room?”

“Yes?”

“It was written by Ellis himself. Not the murderer. In fact, I’m not so sure there is a murderer.”

“How do you know Mr. Ellis wrote it?” asked Gamache, surprised.

“The writing matches his writing in the registration book at the Inn.”

Gamache took a long, deep breath and exhaled. This was unexpected. Was it possible that Arthur Ellis had killed himself after all?

The chief inspector closed his eyes and the cheerful bistro disappeared. Now he saw the gently swinging body in the cold, dead forest. And the clean hands. Could he have been wrong? Had Ellis climbed up the tree himself? Maybe he wiped his hands on his pants and got the dirt off.

Certainly, everything he was hearing about Mr. Ellis pointed to a lonely man who might have taken his own life.

But why come into the village and ask about young men?

No, there were questions still.

“Can you read the note to me again?”

“
If you are reading this, my body has been found
,” Beauvoir read over the phone. “
I am sorry. I hope the discovery did not upset anyone. I tried to go as far away as possible so that no children would find me. My work is finally done. I am tired, but I am at peace. Finally. I know you cannot forgive me, but perhaps you can understand.
”

There was silence as both men thought about what the note said.

“It’s a suicide note,” said the chief at last. There was no doubt. Beauvoir was right. Should he be happy, though? Relieved that this poor man at least hadn’t suffered the terror of being murdered?

No. There was nothing to be happy about here. Mr. Ellis had clearly suffered other things in his life. Sufered enough that he could no longer stand the pain.

I am tired, but I am at peace. Finally.

But there was something else he had written.

“Can you read it to me again, please?”

Gamache listened to the now-familiar words. “What did he mean by
My work is finally done
?”

“Maybe his kids were grown up, or he’d retired. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

“But the note wasn’t addressed to anyone, was it? Not to children or a wife. No one,” said Gamache.

“True. But that isn’t unusual.”

“And the note isn’t signed. That’s more unusual,” said Gamache.

“What are you getting at, chief?”

“I’m just wondering,” said Gamache. At that moment, a shadow fell across the bar where he stood talking on the bistro telephone. Looking up, he saw Myrna beside him. She had a book in her hand and a very serious look on her face.

“Can you call Dr. Harris and see if she has any autopsy results?” Gamache asked Inspector Beauvoir before hanging up and greeting Myrna. Once again he bowed slightly, and waved toward a nearby table.

“You look like you could use a drink,” he said as they sat. It was now past noon. The bistro was filling with lunch customers and the smell of fresh bread and garlic and hearty stews.

“You’ll need one, too, once you see this.”

Gamache ordered Myrna a beer and looked at the book she had placed on the wooden table between them. It had a hard cover. Gamache picked it up and scanned it, as Myrna sipped her beer. It was a murder mystery by a Canadian writer. Barbara Fradkin. It looked very good, and Gamache thought he might buy it, but he
wondered why Myrna had come back to the bistro just for this.

He lowered the book and looked at her.

She took it back, turned it over, and placed one very large finger on a large sentence on the back cover.

“Winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Mystery in Canada.”

Gamache’s eyes widened, and he looked at Myrna, who was smiling slightly.

“I knew the name was familiar,” she said. “You kept calling him Mr. Ellis, but the name didn’t click until I was leaving and heard Gabri say ‘Arthur Ellis.’” I went through my books, and there I found it. Arthur Ellis. It’s an award. For murder mysteries.”

“Is it a coincidence?” Gamache asked.

“You tell me.”

Gamache stared at the book. As the head of homicide for the Quebec Provincial Police, he’d come to realize that coincidences almost never happened in murder cases.

“Was Arthur Ellis a mystery writer, too? Is that why the award is named for him?”

“No. This is where things gets strange.”

“Stranger than they already are?” he asked.

“Lots,” said Myrna. “Arthur Ellis was the name of Canada’s official executioner. He hanged people.”

Chapter Eight

Fifteen minutes later, Inspector Beauvoir joined Gamache in the bookstore. As soon as Beauvoir walked through the door, Gamache handed him the book. The chief had on his half-moon reading glasses and looked at the inspector over them.

Beauvoir took the book, and Gamache went back to the computer screen on Myrna’s desk. Myrna herself was reading over the chief’s shoulder.

Inspector Beauvoir looked at the murder mystery in his hand. He was confused.

“Was it a copycat murder? Is the answer in here?” He held up the book. “Did this Barbara Fradkin kill Mr. Ellis?”

Once again, Gamache looked up, this time with a small smile. “I don’t think so, but that book certainly holds a clue. With Myrna’s help, I’ve found Arthur Ellis.”

Gamache got up and offered his seat to his second-in-command. Beauvoir sat and looked at the computer screen. On it was a black-and-white photo of a middle-aged man. It was taken in 1912. He had on round glasses, an old-fashioned hat, and a suit. He looked like a banker.

But he wasn’t.

He was Arthur Ellis.

As Inspector Beauvoir read, his breathing all but stopped. Finally, he sat back from the screen. He looked up at Chief Inspector Gamache and Myrna.

“What does it mean?” he asked, almost to himself. “It can’t be the same Arthur Ellis.”

That would make the man 150 years old. A zombie. A vampire. But not immortal.

For Arthur Ellis had just died. Hanged in the woods.

“It means,” said Gamache, leading the inspector into the bistro, “that we have a mystery on our hands.”

“No shit,” said Beauvoir.

Over a lunch of steak and fries, the two men discussed what they had found.

“So, Arthur Ellis killed people,” said Beauvoir, popping a salted fry into his mouth.

“He executed them,” Gamache corrected. “There is a fine line between the two. He was Canada’s official hangman.”

Beauvoir shook his head, remembering the photo of the mild-looking man. Had he really killed, executed, hundreds of men and women in the early 1900s? Hired by the Canadian government to hang them?

“Hell of a job.” Beauvoir wondered how that went down at dinner parties. Or on first dates.

“He came from a long line of executioners,” said the chief, taking a sip of beer. “Learned it from his father in England. His family had been hanging people for three hundred years.”

“Lucky us, to get him,” said Beauvoir.

“Arthur Ellis wasn’t his real name,” said Gamache. “He wanted to hide who he really was. He knew people hated and feared the executioner. They wanted someone to do the job, but they didn’t want to know that person.”

Beauvoir nodded. He’d read the story on the Web, just as the chief inspector had. He knew the rest. That after a long, successful career, Arthur Ellis had made a mistake.

A Terrible mistake.

He was to hang a woman in Montreal, in 1935. But he got her weight wrong, and instead of breaking her neck, the drop took her head off.

It was his last execution. He couldn’t do the job anymore. He died three years later in Montreal. A broken, lonely man.

The waiter took away their empty plates.

Beauvoir leaned forward. “How is it that Arthur Ellis was found hanging in the woods outside Three Pines this morning?”

That was the question.

The chief inspector put down his mug of beer. “I don’t know. The official hangman chose Arthur Ellis as an alias a hundred years ago. I think our dead man chose the same alias. He chose Arthur Ellis for a reason.”

Beauvoir looked into the deep, thoughtful eyes of his boss. And he knew Gamache was right.

“He was here to execute someone?” Beauvoir asked.

Gamache stood up, paid, and made for the door.

“I think so.”

They walked across the bridge to the old railway station, where Gamache’s team had set up an office. Phones were ringing, and urgent messages awaited both men.

Ten minutes later, Beauvoir pulled a chair up to the chief inspector’s desk. Gamache removed his reading glasses, finished his phone call, and looked at his inspector.

“Dr. Harris found bruises under the rope marks on the body,” said Gamache. “The man was strangled, probably by a belt. Then he was hanged. She’s confirmed it. Our man was murdered.”

“And I know who he was,” said Beauvoir. “His name was James Hill. Ontario’s motor vehicles branch confirmed it. We traced his licence plate.”

“Good. We’re getting there.”

For the rest of the afternoon, Inspector Beauvoir tracked down all the information he could on James Hill. Where he worked, lived. His family. His friends.