Bury Your Dead

NINE

Armand Gamache walked briskly up the slippery sidewalk and into the park known as Place d’Armes, the bitter wind full in his face. Foot paths were worn through the deep snow criss-crossing the park. Horse-drawn carriages, the calèches, waited at the top of the park to take visitors around the old city. Behind Gamache was a row of small, picturesque stone buildings, all turned into restaurants. To his right rose the magnificent Anglican Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. Gamache knew this, from experience. But he didn’t look at it. Like everyone else, he kept his head down against the wind, only glancing up now and then to make sure he wasn’t about to hit a person or a pole. His eyes watered and the tears froze. Everyone else looked just like him, their faces round and red and glowing. Like mobile stoplights.

Losing his footing on some ice hidden under a dusting of snow he righted himself just in time, then turned his back to the wind and caught his breath. At the top of the hill, beyond the park and calèches, was the most photographed building in Canada.

The Château Frontenac hotel.

It was huge and gray, turreted and imposing, and rose as though expelled from the cliff face. Inspired by castles it was named for the first governor of Québec, Frontenac. It was both magnificent and forbidding.

Gamache walked toward the Château, past the large statue in the middle of the small park. The Monument de la Foi. A monument to Faith. For Québec had been built on Faith. And fur. But the city fathers preferred to raise a statue to martyrs than to a beaver.

Just ahead, the Château promised warmth, a glass of wine, a crusty bowl of French onion soup. Émile. But the Chief Inspector stopped just short of the shelter, and stared. Not at the Château, not at the gothic statue to Faith, but to another monument off to the left, much larger, even, than the one to Faith.

It was of a man looking out over the city he’d founded four hundred years earlier.

Samuel de Champlain.

Bare-headed, bold, stepping forward as though wanting to join them, to be a part of this city that existed only because he had. And at the base of the statue another, smaller, image. An angel, sounding a trumpet to the glory of the founder. And even Gamache, who was no great fan of nationalism, felt wonder, awe, at the unshakable vision and courage of this man to do what many had tried and failed.

To not just come to these shores to harvest furs and fish and timber, but live here. Create a colony, a community. A New World. A home.

Gamache stared until he could no longer feel his face and his fingers in his warm mitts were numb. But still he stared at the father of Québec and wondered.

Where are you? Where did they bury you? And why don’t we know?

Émile rose and waved him to their table by the window.

The two men with him also got up.

“Chief Inspector,” they said and introduced themselves.

“René Dallaire,” the tall, rotund man said, shaking Gamache’s hand.

“Jean Hamel,” the small, slim one said. Had René sported a cropped moustache the two men could have passed for Laurel and Hardy.

Gamache handed his coat to a waiter, shoving his hat, scarf and mitts into a sleeve. He sat and put his hands to his face, feeling the burning. Extreme cold left its ironic mark. It was indistinguishable from a sunburn. But within minutes it had subsided, and the circulation had returned to his hands, helped along by sitting on them.

They ordered drinks and lunch and chatted about Carnaval, about the weather, about politics. It was clear the three men knew each other well. And Gamache knew they’d all belonged to the same club for decades.

The Champlain Society.

Their drinks and a basket of rolls arrived. They sipped their Scotches and Gamache resisted the urge to take a warm roll in each hand. The men talked casually among themselves, Gamache sometimes contributing, sometimes just listening, sometimes glancing out the window.

The St-Laurent Bar was at the far end of the Château, down the gracious, wide, endless corridor, through the double doors and into another world. Unlike the rest of the mammoth hotel, this bar was modest in size and circular, being built into one of the turrets of the Château. Its curved walls were paneled in dark wood and fireplaces stood on either side. A round bar took up the center, with tables surrounding it.

That, for any normal place, would have been impressive enough but Quebec City was far from normal, and within it, the Château was unique.

For curving along the far wall of the bar were windows. Tall, framed in mahogany, wide and mullioned. Out of them opened the most splendid vista Gamache had ever seen. True, as a Québécois, no other view could ever match up. This was their Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Everest. This was Machu Picchu, Kilimanjaro, Stonehenge. It was their wonder.

From the bar he could see up and down the great river, the view so distant it broke into the past. From there, Gamache could see four hundred years in the past. The ships, surprisingly small and fragile, sailing down from the Atlantic, dropping anchor at the narrowest spot.

Kebek. An Algonquin word. Where the river narrows.

Gamache could almost see the sails being furled, men pulling ropes, securing lines, crawling up and down the masts. He could almost see the boats lowered into the water, and the men rowing ashore.

Did they know what they were in for? What the New World held?

Almost certainly not, or they’d never have come. Most never left, but were buried right below them, on the shores. Dying of scurvy, of exposure.

Unlike Gamache they had no Château to duck into. No warm soup and amber Scotch. He’d barely survived ten minutes in the biting, bitter wind, how had they survived days, weeks, months, with no warm clothing and barely any shelter?

Of course, the answer was obvious. They hadn’t. Most had died, slow, agonizing, dreadful deaths those first winters. What Gamache saw as he glanced out the window to the river with its gray water and ice floes, was history. His history, flowing by.

He also saw a dot in the distance. An ice canoe. Shaking his head Gamache turned his attention back to his companions.

“Why’re you looking so puzzled?” Émile asked.

The Chief Inspector nodded out the window. “An ice canoe team. The settlers had to do it. Why would someone choose to?”

“I agree,” said René, breaking up a roll and smearing butter on it. “I can barely watch them, and yet, I can’t seem to look away either.” He laughed. “I sometimes think we’re a rowboat society.”

“A what?” asked Jean.

“A rowboat. It’s why we do things like that.” He jerked his head toward the window and the dot on the river. “It’s why Québec is so perfectly preserved. It’s why we’re all so fascinated with history. We’re in a rowboat. We move forward, but we’re always looking back.”

Jean laughed and leaned away as the waiter placed a huge burger and frites in front of him. A bubbling French onion soup sat in front of Émile and Gamache was given a hot bowl of pea soup.

“I met a fellow this morning who’s training for the race,” said Gamache.

“Bet he’s in good shape,” said Émile, lifting his spoon almost over his head, trying to get the stringy, melted cheese to break.

“He is. He’s also the minister at the Presbyterian church. St. Andrews.”

“Muscular Christianity,” René chuckled.

“There’s a Presbyterian church?” asked Jean.

“And a congregation to go with it,” said Gamache. “He was saying he has a teammate for the race who’s over sixty.”

“Sixty what?” asked René. “Pounds?”

“Must be IQ,” said Émile.

“I’m hoping to meet him this afternoon. Name’s Ken Haslam. Do you know him?”

They looked at each other, but the answer was clear. No.

After lunch, over espressos, Gamache turned the conversation to the reason they were together.

“As you know, Augustin Renaud was murdered on Friday night, or early yesterday morning.”

They nodded, their good cheer subsiding. Three shrewd faces stared back at him. They were of an age, late seventies, all successful in their fields, all retired. But none had lost their edge. He could see that clearly.

“What I want to know from you is this. Could Champlain be buried beneath the Literary and Historical Society?”

They looked at each other, and finally, silently, it was decided that René Dallaire, the large, Hardy-esque man, would take the lead. The table had been cleared of all but their demi-tasses.

“I brought this along when Émile told us what you wanted to talk about.” He spread out a map, pinning it down with their cups. “I’m embarrassed to say I had no idea there was a Literary and Historical Society.”

“That’s not quite true,” said Jean to his friend. “We’re familiar with the building. It’s quite historic you know. Originally a redoubt, a military barracks in the 1700s. Then in the latter part of the century it housed prisoners of war. Then another prison was built somewhere else and the building must have fallen into private hands.”

“And now you say it’s called the Literary and Historical Society?” René spoke the English words with a heavy accent.

“Quite magnificent,” said Gamache.

René placed his substantial finger on the site of the building, by rue St-Stanislas. “That’s it, right?”

Gamache bent over the map, as did they all, narrowly avoiding knocking heads. He nodded agreement.

“Then there can be no doubt. You agree?” René Dallaire looked at Jean and Émile.

They agreed.

“I can guarantee you,” René looked Gamache in the eye. “Samuel de Champlain is not buried there.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“When you arrived at the Château, did you happen to notice the statue of Champlain out front?”

“I did. Hard to miss.”

“C’est vrai. That’s not simply a monument to the man, but it marks the exact spot he died.”

“As exact as we can get, anyway,” said Jean. René shot him a small, annoyed look.

“How do you know that’s where he died?” Gamache asked. Now it was Émile’s turn to answer.

“There’re reports written by his lieutenants and the priests. He died after a short illness on Christmas Day, 1635, during a storm. It’s one of the few things we know about Champlain without a doubt. The fortress was right there, where the statue is.”

“But he wouldn’t have been buried right where he died, would he?” asked Gamache.

René unfolded another map or, at least, a reproduction and placed it on top of the modern city map. It was little more than an illustration.

“This was drawn in 1639, four years after Champlain died. It’s not much different than the Québec he would have known.” The map showed a stylized fort, a parade grounds in front, and a scattering of buildings around. “This is where he died.” His finger landed on the fort. “It’s where the statue now stands. And this is where they buried Champlain.”

René Dallaire’s thick finger pointed to a small building a few hundred yards from the fort.

“The chapel. The only one in Québec at the time. There’re no official records but it seems obvious Champlain would have been buried there, either right in the chapel or in a cemetery beside it.”

Gamache was perplexed. “So, if we know where he was buried, what’s the mystery? Where is he? And why aren’t there any official records of the burial of the most important man in the colony?”

“Ahh, but nothing is ever straightforward is it?” said Jean. “The chapel burned a few years later, destroying all the records.”

Gamache thought about that. “A fire would burn the records, yes, but not a buried body. We should still have found him by now, no?”

René shrugged. “Yes, we should have. There’re a number of theories, but the most likely is that they buried him in the cemetery, not the chapel, so the fire wouldn’t have disturbed him at all. Over time the colony grew—”

René paused but his hands were expressive. He opened them wide. The other two men were also silent, eyes down.

“Are you saying they put a building on top of Champlain?” Gamache asked.

The three men looked unhappy but none contradicted him until Jean spoke.

“There is another theory.”

Émile sighed. “Not that again. There’s no proof.”

“There’s no proof of any of this,” Jean pointed out. “I agree it’s a guess. You just don’t want to believe it.”

Émile was silent. It seemed Jean had made a direct hit. The little man turned to Gamache. “The other theory is that as Quebec City grew there was a huge amount of building work, as René says. But along with it was excavation, digging down beneath the frost line before they put up the new buildings. The city was booming, and things went up in a hurry. They didn’t have time to worry about the dead.”

Gamache was beginning to see where this was going. “So the theory is that they didn’t build on top of Champlain.”

Jean shook his head slowly. “No. They dug him up along with hundreds of others and dumped him in a landfill somewhere. They didn’t mean to, they just didn’t know.”

Gamache was silent, stunned. Would the Americans have done that to Washington? Or the British to Henry the Eighth?

“Could that have happened?” He turned, naturally, to Émile Comeau who shrugged, then finally nodded.

“It is possible, but Jean’s right. None of us wants to admit it.”

“To be fair,” said Jean. “It is the least likely of the theories.”

“The point is,” said René, looking at the map again. “This is the limit of the original settlement in 1635.” He twirled his finger over the old map, then swept it aside and found the same place on the modern map. “Pretty much from where we’re sitting now, in the Château, to a radius of a few hundred yards. They’d keep it small. Easier to defend.”

“And what would the rest have been?” asked Gamache, beginning to understand what they were saying.

“Nothing,” said Jean. “Forest. Rock.”

“And where the Literary and Historical Society is now?”

“Woods.” René brought the old map out and placed his finger on a big blank space, far from any habitation.

Nothing.

There was no way they’d have buried Champlain that far from civilization.

There was no way the father of Québec could be in the basement of the Lit and His.

“So,” Gamache leaned back. “Why was Augustin Renaud there?”

“Because he was mad?” asked Jean.

“He was you know,” said Émile. “Champlain loved Québec, to the exclusion of everything else in his life. It was all he knew, all he lived for. And Renaud loved Champlain with the same devotion. A devotion bordering on madness.”

“Bordering?” asked René. “He was the capital of the state of madness. Augustin Renaud was the Emperor of it. Bordering,” he muttered.

“Maybe,” said Émile, staring down at the old map again. “Maybe he wasn’t looking for Champlain. Maybe there was another reason he was there.”

“Like what?”

“Well,” his mentor looked at him. “It is a literary society. Maybe he was looking for a book.”

Gamache smiled. Maybe. He got up and paused as the waiter fetched his coat. Looking down at the modern map he noticed something.

“The old chapel, the one that burned. Where would it have been on this map?”

René put out his finger one more time and pointed.

It landed on the Notre-Dame Basilica, the mighty church where the great and good used to pray. As the waiter helped Gamache into his parka René leaned over and whispered, “Speak to Père Sébastien.”

Jean-Guy Beauvoir waited.

He wasn’t very good at it. First he looked as though he didn’t care, then he looked as though he had all the time in the world. That lasted about twenty seconds. Then he looked annoyed. That was more successful and lasted until Olivier Brulé arrived a quarter hour later.

It had been a few months since he’d last seen Olivier. Prison changed some men. Well, it changed all men. But externally some showed it more than others. Some actually seemed to flourish. They lifted weights, bulked up, exercised for the first time in years, ate three square meals. They even thrived, though few would admit it, on the regimen, the structure. Many had never had that in their lives, and so they’d wandered off course.

Here their course was clearer.

Though most, Beauvoir knew, withered in confinement.

Olivier walked through the doors, wearing his prison blues. He was in his late thirties and of medium build. His hair was cut far shorter than Beauvoir had ever seen, but it disguised the fact he was balding. He looked pale but healthy. Beauvoir felt a revulsion, as he did in the presence of all murderers. For that’s what he knew in his heart Olivier was.

No, he sharply reminded himself. I need to think of this man as innocent. Or at least, as not guilty.

But try as he might he saw a convict.

“Inspector,” said Olivier, standing at the far end of the visitors’ room, unsure what to do.

“Olivier,” said Beauvoir and smiled, though judging by the look on Olivier’s face it was probably more of a sneer. “Please. Call me Jean-Guy. I’m here privately.”

“Just a social call?” Olivier sat at a table across from Beauvoir. “How’s the Chief Inspector?”

“He’s in Quebec City for Carnaval. I’m expecting to have to bail him out any minute.”

Olivier laughed. “There’s more than one fellow in here who arrived via Carnaval. Apparently the ‘I was drunk on Caribou’ defense isn’t all that effective.”

“I’ll alert the Chief.”

They both laughed, a little longer than necessary, then fell into an uneasy silence. Now that he was there Beauvoir wasn’t sure what to say.

Olivier stared at him, waiting.

“I wasn’t totally honest with you just now,” Beauvoir began. He’d never done anything like this before and felt as though he’d wandered into a wilderness and hated Olivier all the more for making him do that. “I’m on leave as you know, so this really isn’t an official call but . . .”

Olivier waited, better at it than Beauvoir. Finally he raised his brows in a silent, “go on.”

“The Chief asked me to look into a few aspects of your case. I don’t want you to get your hopes up—” But he could see it was already too late for that. Olivier was smiling. Life seemed to have returned to him. “Really, Olivier, you can’t expect anything to come from this.”

“Why not?”

“Because I still think you did it.”

That shut him up, Beauvoir was happy to see. Still, there swirled around Olivier a residue of hope. Was this just cruel? Beauvoir hoped so. The Inspector leaned on the metal table. “Listen, there’re just a few questions. The Chief asked me to be absolutely certain, that’s all.”

“You might think I did it, but he doesn’t, does he?” said Olivier, triumphant.

“He isn’t so sure, and he wants to be sure. Wants to make certain he—we—didn’t make a mistake. Look, if you tell anyone about this, anyone at all, it’s off. You understand?” Beauvoir’s eyes were hard.

“I understand.”

“I mean it, Olivier. Especially Gabri. You can’t tell him anything.”

Olivier hesitated.

“If you tell him he’ll tell others. He couldn’t help but. Or at the very least his mood will change and people’ll notice. If I’m going to ask questions, dig some more, it has to be subtle. If someone else killed the Hermit I don’t want them on their guard.”

This made sense to Olivier, who nodded. “I promise.”

“Bon. You need to tell me again what happened that night. And I need the truth.”

The air crackled between the two men.

“I told you the truth.”

“When?” Beauvoir demanded. “Was it the second or third version of the story? If you’re in here you did it to yourself. You lied at every turn.”

It was true, Olivier knew. He’d lied all his life about everything, until the habit became who he was. It didn’t even occur to him to tell the truth. So when all this happened of course he’d lie.

Too late he’d realized what that did. It made the truth unrecognizable. And while he was very good, very glib, at lying, all his truths sounded like falsehoods. He blushed, stumbled for words, got confused when telling the truth.

“All right,” he said to Beauvoir. “I’ll tell you what happened.”

“The truth.”

Olivier gave a single, curt, nod.

“I met the Hermit ten years ago, when Gabri and I first arrived in Three Pines and were living above the shop. He wasn’t a hermit yet. He’d still leave his cabin and get his own supplies, but he looked pretty ragged. We were renovating the shop. I hadn’t turned it into a bistro, it was just an antique store back then. One day he showed up and said he wanted to sell something. I wasn’t very happy. It seemed he wanted a favor from me. Looking at the guy I figured it was some piece of junk he found on the side of the road but when he showed it to me I knew it was special.”

“What was it?”

“A miniature, a tiny portrait, in profile. Some Polish aristocrat, I think. Must have been painted with a single hair. It was beautiful. Even the frame it was in was beautiful. I agreed to buy it from him in exchange for a bag of groceries.”

He’d told the story so often Olivier was almost immune to the disgust in people’s faces. Almost.

“Go on,” said Beauvoir. “What did you do with the portrait?”

“Took it to Montreal and sold it on rue Notre-Dame, the antique district.”

“Can you remember which shop?” Beauvoir pulled out his notebook and a pen.

“Not sure if it’s still there. They change a lot. It was called Temps Perdu.”

Beauvoir made a note. “How much did you get for it?”

“Fifteen hundred dollars.”

“And the Hermit kept coming back?”

“Kept offering me things. Some fantastic, some not so great but still better than I’m likely to find in most attics or barns. At first I sold them through that antiques shop but then realized I could get more on eBay. Then one day the Hermit arrived looking really bad. Skinny, and stressed. He said, ‘I’m not coming back, old son. I can’t.’ This was a disaster for me. I’d come to pretty much rely on his stuff. He said he didn’t want to be seen anymore, then he invited me to his cabin.”

“You went?”

Olivier nodded. “I had no idea he lived in the woods. He was way the hell and gone. Well, you know it.”

Beauvoir did. He’d spent the night there with the asshole saint.

“When we finally got there I couldn’t believe it.” For a moment Olivier was transported to that magical moment when he’d first stepped into the scruffy old man’s log cabin. And into a world where ancient glass was used for milk, a Queen’s china was used for peanut butter sandwiches and priceless silk tapestries hung on walls to keep the drafts out.

“I visited him every two weeks. By then I’d turned the antique shop into a bistro. Every second Saturday night after the bistro closed I’d sneak up to the cabin. We’d talk and he’d give me something for the groceries I’d bring.”

“What did Charlotte mean?” Beauvoir asked. It was Chief Inspector Gamache who’d noticed the strange repetition of “Charlotte.” There were references to the name all over the Hermit’s cabin, from the book Charlotte’s Web, to a first-edition Charlotte Brontë, to the rare violin. Everyone else had missed it, except the Chief.

Olivier was shaking his head. “Nothing, it meant nothing. Or, at least, not anything I know about. He never mentioned the name.”

Beauvoir stared at him. “Careful, Olivier. I need the truth.”

“I have no reason to lie anymore.”

For any rational person that would be true, but Olivier had behaved so irrationally Beauvoir wondered if he was capable of anything else.

“The Hermit had scratched the name Charlotte in code under one of those wooden sculptures he’d made,” Beauvoir pointed out. He could see the carvings, deeply disturbing works showing people fleeing some terror. And under three of his works the Hermit had carved words in code.

Charlotte. Emily. And under the last one? The one that showed Olivier in a chair, listening, he’d carved that one, short, damning word.

Woo.

“And ‘Woo’?” Beauvoir asked. “What did that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well it meant something,” snapped Beauvoir. “He put it under the carving of you.”

“That wasn’t me. It doesn’t look like me.”

“It’s a carving not a photograph. It’s you and you know it. Why did he write ‘Woo’ under it?”

But it wasn’t just under the carving. Woo had appeared in the web and in that piece of wood, covered in the Hermit’s blood, that had bounced under the bed. Into a dark corner. A piece of red cedar carved, according to the forensic experts, years before.

“I’m asking you again, Olivier, what did ‘Woo’ mean?”

“I don’t know.” Now Olivier was exasperated but he took a breath and regained himself. “Look, I told you. He said it a couple of times, but under his breath. At first I thought it was just a sigh. It sounded like a sigh. Then I realized he was saying ‘Woo.’ He only said it when he was afraid.”

Beauvoir stared at him. “I’m going to need more than that.”

Olivier shook his head. “There is no more than that. That’s all I know. I’d tell you more, if I could. Honestly. It meant something to him, but he never explained, and I never asked.”

“Why not?”

“It didn’t seem important.”

“It was clearly important to him.”

“Yes, but not to me. I’d have asked if it meant he’d give me more of his treasures, but that didn’t seem to be the case.”

And Beauvoir heard the truth in that, the humiliating, shameful truth. He shifted imperceptibly in his seat, and as he did his perception shifted just a little.

Maybe, maybe, this man really was telling the truth. Finally.

“You visited him for years, but near the end something changed. What happened?”

“That Marc Gilbert bought the old Hadley house and decided to turn it into an inn and spa. That would’ve been bad enough, but his wife Dominique decided they needed horses and asked Roar Parra to reopen the trails. One of the trails led right past the Hermit’s cabin. Eventually Parra would find the cabin and everyone would know about the Hermit and his treasure.”

“What did you do?”

“What could I do? I’d spent years trying to convince the Hermit to give me that thing he kept in the canvas sack. He promised it to me, kept teasing me with it. I wanted it. I’d earned it.”

A whiny tone had crept into Olivier’s voice and made itself at home. A tone not often let out in public, preferring privacy.

“Tell me again about the thing in the sack.”

“You know it, you’ve seen it,” said Olivier, then took a deep breath and regrouped. “The Hermit had everything on display, all his antiquities, all those beautiful things but one thing he kept hidden. In the sack.”

“And you wanted it.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Beauvoir considered. It was true. It was human nature to want the one thing denied you.

The Hermit had teased Olivier with it but he hadn’t appreciated who he was dealing with. The depth of Olivier’s greed.

“So you killed him and stole it.”

That was the Crown’s case. Olivier had killed the demented old man for his treasure, the one he kept hidden, the one found in Olivier’s bistro along with the murder weapon.

“No.” Olivier leaned forward suddenly, as though charging Beauvoir. “I went back for it, I admit that, but he was already dead.”

“And what did you see?” Beauvoir asked the question quickly, hoping to trip him up in the rush.

“The cabin door was open and I saw him lying on the floor. There was blood. I thought he’d just hit his head, but when I got closer I could see he was dead. There was a piece of wood I’d never seen before by his hand. I picked it up.”

“Why?” The word was snapped out.

“Because I wanted to see.”

“See what?”

“What it was.”

“Why?”

“In case it was important.”

“Important. Explain.”

Now it was Beauvoir who was leaning forward, almost crawling across the metal table. Olivier didn’t lean back. The two men were in each other’s faces, almost shouting.

“In case it was valuable.”

“Explain.”

“In case it was another one of his carvings, okay?” Olivier almost screamed, then threw himself back into his chair. “Okay? There. I thought it might be one of his carvings and I could sell it.”

This hadn’t come out in court. Olivier had admitted he’d picked up the wood carving, but said he’d dropped it as soon as he’d seen blood on it.

“Why’d you drop it?”

“Because it was a worthless piece of junk. Something a kid would do. I only noticed the blood later.”

“Why did you move the body?”

It was the question that hounded Gamache. The question that had brought Beauvoir back to this case. Why, if he’d killed the man, would Olivier put him into a wheelbarrow and take him like so much compost through the woods? And dump him in the front hall of the new inn and spa.

“Because I wanted to screw Marc Gilbert. Not literally.”

“Seems pretty literal to me,” said Beauvoir.

“I wanted to ruin his fancy inn. Who’d pay a fortune to stay in a place where someone had just been murdered?”

Beauvoir leaned back, examining Olivier for a long moment.

“The Chief Inspector believes you.”

Olivier closed his eyes and exhaled.

Beauvoir held up his hand. “He thinks you did do it to ruin Gilbert. But in ruining Gilbert you’d also have stopped the horse trails and if you stopped Parra from opening the paths, no one would find the cabin.”

“All that’s true. But if I killed him, why would I let everyone know there’d been a murder?”

“Because the paths were close. The cabin, and the murder, would have been discovered within days anyway. Your only hope was to stop the trails. Stop the discovery of the cabin.”

“By putting the dead man on display? There was nothing left to hide then.”

“There was the treasure.”

They stared at each other.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir sat in his car mulling over the interview. Nothing really new had come out of it but Gamache had advised him to believe Olivier this time, take him at his word.

Beauvoir couldn’t bring himself to do it. He could pretend to, could go through the motions. He could even try to convince himself that Olivier was indeed telling the truth, but he’d be lying to himself.

He pulled the car out of the parking lot and headed toward rue Notre-Dame and the Temps Perdu. Lost time. Perfect. Because that’s what this is, he thought as he negotiated the light Sunday afternoon traffic in Montreal. A waste of time.

As he drove he went back over the case. Only Olivier’s fingerprints were found in the cabin. No one else even knew the Hermit existed.

The Hermit. It was what Olivier called him, always called him.

Beauvoir parked across the street from the antique shop. It was still there, cheek by jowl with other antique shops up and down rue Notre-Dame, some high end, some little more than junk shops.

Temps Perdu looked pretty high end.

Beauvoir reached for the car door handle, then paused, staring into space for a moment, whipping through the interview. Looking for a word, a single, short, word. Then he flipped through his notes.

Not there either. He closed his notebook and getting out of the car he crossed the street and entered the shop. There was only one window, at the front. As he made his way further back, past the pine and oak furniture, past the chipped and cracked paintings on the walls, past the ornaments, the blue and white plates, past the vases and umbrella stands, it got darker. Like going into a well-furnished cave.

“May I help you?”

An elderly man sat at the very back, at a desk. He wore glasses and peered at Beauvoir, assessing him. The Inspector knew the look, but he was normally the one giving it.

The two men assessed each other. Beauvoir saw a slim man, well but comfortably dressed. Like his merchandise, he seemed old and refined and he smelled a little of polish.

The antique dealer saw a man in his mid to late thirties. Pale, perhaps a little stressed. Not out for a lazy Sunday stroll through the antique district. Not a buyer.

A man, perhaps, in need of something. Probably a toilet.

“This shop,” Beauvoir began. He didn’t want to sound like an investigator, but suddenly realized he didn’t know how to sound like anything else. It was like a tattoo. Indelible. He smiled and softened his tone. “I have a friend who used to come here, but that was years ago. Ten years or more. It’s still called Temps Perdu, but has it changed hands?”

“No. Nothing’s changed.”

And Beauvoir could believe it.

“Were you here then?”

“I’m always here. It’s my shop.” The elderly man stood and put out his hand. “Fréderic Grenier.”

“Jean-Guy Beauvoir. You might remember my friend. He sold you a few things.”

“Is that right? What were they?”

The man, Beauvoir noticed, didn’t ask Olivier’s name, just what he sold. Is that how shopkeepers saw people? He’s the pine table? She’s the chandelier? Why not? That’s how he saw suspects. She’s the knifing. He’s the shotgun.

“I think he said he sold you a miniature painting.”

Beauvoir watched the man closely. The man was watching him closely.

“He might have. You say it was ten years ago. That’s a long time. Why’re you asking?”

Normally Beauvoir would have whipped out his Sûreté homicide ID, but he wasn’t on official business. And he didn’t have a ready answer.

“My friend just died and his widow wonders if you sold it. If not she’d buy it back. It’d been in the family for a long time. My friend sold it when he needed money, but that’s no longer a problem.”

Beauvoir was quite pleased with himself, though not altogether surprised. He lived with lies all the time, had heard thousands. Why shouldn’t he be good at it himself?

The antique dealer watched him, then nodded. “That sometimes happens. Can you describe the painting?”

“It was European and very fine. Apparently you paid him fifteen hundred dollars for it.”

Monsieur Grenier smiled. “Now I remember. It was a lot of money, but worth it. I didn’t often pay that much for such a small piece. Exquisite. Polish, I believe. Unfortunately I sold it on. He came in with a few other things after that, if I remember. A carved cane that needed work. It was a little cracked. I gave it to my restorer then sold it too. Went quickly. Those sorts of things do. I’m sorry. I remember him now. Young, blond. You say his wife wanted the things back?”

Beauvoir nodded.

The man frowned. “That must have come as a surprise to his partner. The man, as I remember, was gay.”

“Yes. I was trying to be delicate. In fact, I’m his partner.”

“I’m sorry to hear of your loss. But at least you had a chance to get married.”

The man pointed to Beauvoir’s wedding band.

Time to leave.

That had certainly, thought Beauvoir once back in the car and driving over the Champlain Bridge, been les temps perdu. Except for announcing that his husband, Olivier, had died nothing of significance had happened.

He was almost back in Three Pines when he remembered what had been bothering him after the interview with Olivier. The word that had been missing.

Pulling off to the side of the road he dialed the prison and was eventually connected to Olivier.

“People will begin to talk, Inspector.”

“You have no idea,” said Beauvoir. “Listen, during the trial and investigation you said the Hermit didn’t tell you anything about himself, except that he was Czech and his name was Jakob.”

“Yes.”

“There’s a large Czech community around Three Pines, including the Parras.”

“Yes.”

“And quite a few of his pieces came from former Eastern Bloc countries. Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia. You testified that your impression was he’d stolen their family treasures, then skipped to Canada in the confusion when communism was collapsing. You thought he was hiding from his countrymen, the people he stole from.”

“Yes.”

“And yet, through our whole interview today you never once called him Jakob. Why was that?”

There was a long pause now.

“You won’t believe me.”

“Chief Inspector Gamache ordered me to believe you.”

“That’s a comfort.”

“Listen, Olivier, this is your only hope. Your last hope. The truth, now.”

“His name wasn’t Jakob.”

Now it was Beauvoir’s turn to fall silent.

“What was it?” he finally asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Are we back there?”

“You didn’t seem to believe me the first time when I said I didn’t know his name, so I made one up. One that sounded Czech.”

Beauvoir was almost afraid to ask the next question. But he did.

“Was he even Czech?”

“No.”