The Brutal Telling

NINE

The three Sûreté officers said their good-byes and walked across the village green. It was eleven o’clock and pitch-black. Lacoste and Gamache paused to stare at the night sky. Beauvoir, a few paces ahead as always, eventually realized he was alone and stopped as well. Reluctantly he looked up and was quite surprised to see so many stars. Ruth’s parting words came back to him.

“ ‘Jean Guy’ and ‘bite me’ actually rhyme, don’t they?”

He was in trouble.

Just then a light went on above Myrna’s bookstore, in her loft. They could see her moving about, making herself tea, putting cookies on a plate. Then the light went out. “We just saw her pour a drink and put cookies on a plate,” said Beauvoir.

The others wondered why he’d just told them the obvious.

“It’s dark. To do anything inside you need light,” said Beauvoir.

Gamache thought about this string of obvious statements, but it was Lacoste who got there first.

“The bistro, last night. Wouldn’t the murderer need to put on the lights? And if he did, wouldn’t someone have seen?”

Gamache smiled. They were right. A light at the bistro must have been noticed.

He looked around to see which houses were the most likely to have seen anything. But the homes fanned out from the bistro like wings. None would have a perfect view, except the place directly opposite. He turned to look. The three majestic pines on the village green were there. They’d have seen a man take another man’s life. But there was something else directly opposite the bistro. Opposite and above.

The old Hadley house. It was a distance away, but at night, with a light on in the bistro, it was just possible the new owners could have witnessed a murder.

“There’s another possibility,” said Lacoste. “That the murderer didn’t put the lights on. He’d know he could be seen.”

“He’d use a flashlight, you mean?” asked Beauvoir, imagining the murderer in there the night before, waiting for his victim, turning a flashlight on to make his way around.

Lacoste shook her head. “That could also be seen from outside. He wouldn’t want to risk even that, I think.”

“So he’d leave the lights off,” said Gamache, knowing where this was leading. “Because he wouldn’t need lights. He’d know his way around in the dark.”

The next morning dawned bright and fresh. There was some warmth in the sun again and Gamache soon took off his sweater as he walked around the village green before breakfast. A few children, up before parents and grandparents, did some last-minute frog hunting in the pond. They ignored him and he was happy to watch them from a distance then continue his solitary and peaceful stroll. He waved at Myrna, cresting the hill on her own solitary walk.

This was the last day of summer vacation, and while it had been decades since he’d gone to school, he still felt the tug. The mix of sadness at the end of summer, and excitement to see his chums again. The new clothes, bought after a summer’s growth. The new pencils, sharpened over and over, and the smell of the shavings. And the new notebooks. Always strangely thrilling. Unmarred. No mistakes yet. All they held was promise and potential.

A new murder investigation felt much the same. Had they marred their books yet? Made any mistakes?

As he slowly circled the village green, his hands clasped behind his back and his gaze far off, he thought about that. After a few leisurely circuits he went inside to breakfast.

Beauvoir and Lacoste were already down, with frothy café au lait in front of them. They stood up as he entered the room, and he motioned them down. The aroma of maple-cured back bacon and eggs and coffee came from the kitchen. He’d barely sat down when Gabri swept out of the kitchen with plates of eggs Benedict, fruit and muffins.

“Olivier’s just left for the bistro. He’s not sure if he’ll open today,” said the large man, who looked and sounded a great deal like Julia Child that morning. “I told him he should, but we’ll see. I pointed out he’d lose money if he didn’t. That usually does the trick. Muffin?”

“S’il vous plaît,” said Isabelle Lacoste, taking one. They looked like nuclear explosions. Isabelle Lacoste missed her children and her husband. But it amazed her how this small village seemed able to heal even that hole. Of course, if you stuff in enough muffins even the largest hole is healed, for a while. She was willing to try.

Gabri brought Gamache his café au lait and when he left Beauvoir leaned forward.

“What’s the plan for today, Chief?”

“We need background checks. I want to know all about Olivier, and I want to know who might have a grudge against him.”

“D’accord,” said Lacoste.

“And the Parras. Make inquiries, here and in the Czech Republic.”

“Will do,” said Beauvoir. “And you?”

“I have an appointment with an old friend.”

Armand Gamache climbed the hill leading out of Three Pines. He carried his tweed jacket over his arm and kicked a chestnut ahead of him. The air smelled of apples, sweet and warm on the trees. Everything was ripe, lush, but in a few weeks there’d be a killing frost. And it would all be gone.

As he walked the old Hadley house grew larger and larger. He steeled himself against it. Prepared for the waves of sorrow that rolled from it, flowing over and into anyone foolish enough to get close.

But either his defenses were better than he’d expected, or something had changed.

Gamache stopped in a spot of sunshine and faced the house. It was a rambling Victorian trophy home, turreted, shingles like scales, wide swooping verandas and black wrought-iron rails. Its fresh paint gleamed in the sun and the front door was a cheery glossy red. Not like blood, but like Christmas. And cherries. And crisp autumn apples. The path had been cleared of brambles and solid flagstones laid. He noticed the hedges had been clipped and the trees trimmed, the deadwood removed. Roar Parra’s work.

And Gamache realized, to his surprise, that he was standing outside the old Hadley house with a smile. And was actually looking forward to going inside.

The door was opened by a woman in her mid-seventies.

“Oui?”

Her hair was steel gray and nicely cut. She wore almost no makeup, just a little around the eyes, which looked at him now with curiosity, then recognition. She smiled and opened the door wider.

Gamache offered her his identification. “I’m sorry to bother you, madame, but my name is Armand Gamache. I’m with the Sûreté du Québec.”

“I recognize you, monsieur. Please, come in. I’m Carole Gilbert.”

Her manner was friendly and gracious as she showed him into the vestibule. He’d been there before. Many times. But it was almost unrecognizable. Like a skeleton that had been given new muscles and sinew and skin. The structure was there, but all else had changed.

“You know the place?” she asked, watching him.

“I knew it,” he said, swinging his eyes to hers. She met his look steadily, but without challenge. As a chatelaine would, confident in her place and without need to prove it. She was friendly and warm, and very, very observant, Gamache guessed. What had Peter said? She’d been a nurse once? A very good one, he presumed. The best ones were observant. Nothing got past them.

“It’s changed a great deal,” he said and she nodded, drawing him farther into the house. He wiped his feet on the area rug protecting the gleaming wooden floor and followed her. The vestibule opened into a large hall with crisp new black and white tiles on the floor. A sweeping staircase faced them and archways led through to various rooms. When he’d last been here it had been a ruin, fallen into disrepair. It had seemed as though the house, disgusted, had turned on itself. Pieces were thrown off, wallpaper hung loose, floorboards heaved, ceilings warped. But now a huge cheerful bouquet sat on a polished table in the center of the hall, filling it with fragrance. The walls were painted a sophisticated tawny color, between beige and gray. It was bright and warm and elegant. Like the woman in front of him.

“We’re still working on the house,” she said, leading him through the archway to their right, down a couple of steps and into the large living room. “I say ‘we’ but it’s really my son and daughter-in-law. And the workers, of course.”

She said it with a small self-deprecating laugh. “I was foolish enough to ask if I could do anything the other day and they gave me a hammer and told me to put up some drywall. I hit a water pipe and an electrical cord.”

Her laugh was so unguarded and infectious Gamache found himself laughing too.

“Now I make tea. They call me the tea lady. Tea?”

“Merci, madame, that would be very nice.”

“I’ll tell Marc and Dominique you’re here. It’s about that poor man in the bistro, I presume?”

“It is.”

She seemed sympathetic, but not concerned. As though it had nothing to do with her. And Gamache found himself hoping it didn’t.

As he waited he looked around the room and drifted toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, where sun streamed in. The room was comfortably furnished with sofas and chairs that looked inviting. They were upholstered in expensive fabrics giving them a modern feel. A couple of Eames chairs framed the fireplace. It was an easy marriage of contemporary and old world. Whoever had decorated this room had an eye for it.

The windows were flanked by tailored silk curtains that touched the hardwood floor. Gamache suspected the curtains were almost never closed. Why shut out that view?

It was spectacular. From its position on the hill the house looked over the valley. He could see the Rivière Bella Bella wind its way through the village and out around the next mountain toward the neighboring valley. The trees at the top of the mountain were changing color. It was autumn up there already. Soon the reds and auburns and pumpkin oranges would march down the slopes until the entire forest was ablaze. And what a vantage point to see it all. And more.

Standing at the window he could see Ruth and Rosa walking around the village green, the old poet tossing either stale buns or rocks at the other birds. He could see Myrna working in Clara’s vegetable garden and Agent Lacoste walking over the stone bridge toward their makeshift Incident Room in the old railway station. He watched as she stopped on the bridge and looked into the gently flowing water. He wondered what she was thinking. Then she moved on. Other villagers were out doing their morning errands, or working in their gardens, or sitting on their porches reading the paper and drinking coffee.

From there he could see everything. Including the bistro.

Agent Paul Morin had arrived before Lacoste and was standing outside the railway station, making notes.

“I was thinking about the case last night,” he said, watching her unlock the door then following her into the chilly, dark room. She flipped on the lights and walked over to her desk. “I think the murderer must’ve turned on the lights of the bistro, don’t you? I tried walking around my house at two o’clock this morning, and I couldn’t see anything. It was pitch-black. In the city you might get streetlights through the window, but not out here. How’d he know who he was killing?”

“I suppose if he’d invited the victim there, then it was pretty clear. He’d kill the only other person in the bistro.”

“I realize that,” said Morin, drawing his chair up to her desk. “But murder’s a serious business. You don’t want to get it wrong. It was a massive hit to the head, right?”

Lacoste typed her password into her computer. Her husband’s name. Morin was so busy consulting his notes and talking she was sure he hadn’t noticed.

“I don’t think that’s as easy as it looks,” he continued, earnestly. “I tried it last night too. Hit a cantaloupe with a hammer.”

Now he had her full attention. Not only because she wanted to know what had happened, but because anyone who’d get up at two in the morning to smack a melon in the dark deserved attention. Perhaps even medical attention.

“And?”

“The first time I just grazed it. Had to hit it a few times before I got it just right. Pretty messy.”

Morin wondered, briefly, what his girlfriend would think when she got up and noticed the fruit with holes smashed in it. He’d left a note, but wasn’t sure that helped.

I did this, he’d written. Experimenting.

He perhaps should have been more explicit.

But the significance wasn’t lost on Agent Lacoste. She leaned back in her chair and thought. Morin had the brains to be quiet.

“So what do you think?” she finally asked.

“I think he must have turned the lights on. But it’d be risky.” Morin seemed dissatisfied. “It doesn’t make sense to me. Why kill him in the bistro when you have thick forests just feet away? You could slaughter tons of people in there and no one would notice. Why do it where the body would be found and you could be seen?”

“You’re right,” said Lacoste. “It doesn’t make sense. The Chief thinks it might have something to do with Olivier. Maybe the murderer chose the bistro on purpose.”

“To implicate him?”

“Or to ruin his business.”

“Maybe it was Olivier himself,” said Morin. “Why not? He’d be just about the only one who could find his way around without lights. He had a key to the place—”

“Everyone had a key to the place. Seems there were sets floating all over the township, and Olivier kept one under the urn at the front door,” said Lacoste.

Morin nodded and didn’t seem surprised. It was still the country way, at least in the smaller villages.

“He’s certainly a main suspect,” said Lacoste. “But why would he kill someone in his own bistro?”

“Maybe he surprised the guy. Maybe the tramp broke in and Olivier found him and killed him in a fight,” said Morin.

Lacoste was silent, waiting to see if he’d work it all the way through. Morin steepled his hands and leaned his face into them, staring into space. “But it was the middle of the night. If he saw someone in the bistro wouldn’t he have called the cops, or at least woken his partner? Olivier Brulé doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d grab a baseball bat and rush off alone.”

Lacoste exhaled and looked at Agent Morin. If the light was just right, catching this slight young man’s face just so, he looked like an idiot. But he clearly wasn’t.

“I know Olivier,” said Lacoste, “and I’d swear he was stunned by what he’d found. He was in shock. Hard to fake and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t faking it. No. When Olivier Brulé woke up yesterday morning he didn’t expect to find a body in his bistro. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t involved somehow. Even unwittingly. The Chief wants us to find out more about Olivier. Where he was born, his background, his family, his schools, what he did before coming here. Anyone who might have a grudge against him. Someone he pissed off.”

“This is more than being pissed off.”

“How do you know?” asked Lacoste.

“Well, I get pissed off, and I don’t kill people.”

“No, you don’t. But I presume you’re fairly well balanced, except for that melon incident.” She smiled and he reddened. “Look, it’s a huge mistake to judge others by ourselves. One of the first things you learn with Chief Inspector Gamache is that other people’s reactions aren’t ours. And a murderer’s are even more foreign. This case didn’t begin with the blow to the head. It started years ago, with another sort of blow. Something happened to our murderer, something we might consider insignificant, trivial even, but was devastating to him. An event, a snub, an argument that most people would shrug off. Murderers don’t. They ruminate; they gather and guard resentments. And those resentments grow. Murders are about emotions. Emotions gone bad and gone wild. Remember that. And don’t ever think you know what someone else is thinking, never mind feeling.”

It was the first lesson she’d been taught by Chief Inspector Gamache, and the first one she’d now passed on to her own protégé. To find a murderer you followed clues, yes. But you also followed emotions. The ones that stank, the foul and putrid ones. You followed the slime. And there, cornered, you’d find your quarry.

There were other lessons, lots of others. And she’d teach him them as well.

That’s what she’d been thinking on the bridge. Thinking and worrying about. Hoping she’d be able to pass to this young man enough wisdom, enough of the tools necessary to catch a killer.

“Nathaniel,” said Morin, getting up and going over to his own computer. “Your husband’s name or your son’s?”

“Husband,” said Lacoste, a little nonplussed. He’d seen after all.

The phone rang. It was the coroner. She had to speak to Chief Inspector Gamache urgently.