The Brutal Telling

TWENTY-SEVEN

“We’re getting more results from the lab,” said Lacoste.

Upon his return the Chief had gathered his team at the conference table and now Agent Lacoste was handing around the printouts. “The web was made of nylon fishing line. Readily available. No prints, of course, and no trace of DNA. Whoever made it probably used surgical gloves. All they found was a little dust and a cobweb.” She smiled.

“Dust?” asked Gamache. “Do they have any idea how long it was up?”

“No more than a few days, they guess. Either that or the Hermit dusted it daily, which seems unlikely.”

Gamache nodded.

“So who put it there?” asked Beauvoir. “The victim? The murderer?”

“There’s something else,” said Lacoste. “The lab’s been looking at the wooden Woo. They say it was carved years ago.”

“Was it made by the Hermit?” Gamache asked.

“They’re working on it.”

“Any progress on what woo might mean?”

“There’s a film director named John Woo. He’s from China. Did Mission Impossible II,” said Morin seriously, as though giving them vital information.

“Woo can stand for World of Outlaws. It’s a car-racing organization.” Lacoste looked at the Chief, who stared back blankly. She looked down hurriedly at her notes for something more helpful to say. “Or there’s a video game called Woo.”

“Oh, no. I can’t believe I forgot that,” said Morin, turning to Gamache. “Woo isn’t the name of the game, it’s the name of a character in a game. The game is called King of the Monsters.”

“King of the Monsters?” Gamache thought it unlikely the Hermit or his tormentor had a video game in mind. “Anything else?”

“Well, there’s the woo cocktail,” suggested Lacoste. “Made from peach schnapps and vodka.”

“Then there’s woo-woo,” said Beauvoir. “It’s English slang.”

“Vraiment?” said Gamache. “What does it mean?”

“It means crazy.” Beauvoir smiled.

“And there’s wooing a person. Seducing them,” said Lacoste, then shook her head. They weren’t any closer.

Gamache dismissed the meeting, then walking back to his computer he typed in a word.

Charlotte.

Gabri chopped the tomatoes and peppers and onions. He chopped and he chopped and he chopped. He’d already chopped the golden plums and strawberries, the beets and pickles. He’d sharpened his knife and chopped some more.

All afternoon and into the evening.

“Can we talk now?” asked Olivier, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. It smelled so comforting, but felt so foreign.

Gabri, his back to the door, didn’t pause. He reached for a cauliflower and chopped that.

“Mustard pickles,” said Olivier, venturing into the kitchen. “My favorite.”

Clunk, clunk, clunk, and the cauliflower was tossed into the boiling pot to blanch.

“I’m sorry,” said Olivier.

At the sink Gabri scrubbed lemons, then cutting them into quarters he shoved them into a jar and sprinkled coarse salt on top. Finally he squeezed the leftover lemons and poured the juice over the salt.

“Can I help?” asked Olivier, reaching for the top of a jar. But Gabri put his body between Olivier and the jars and silently sealed them.

Every surface of the kitchen was packed with colorful jars filled with jams and jellies, pickles and chutneys. And it looked as though Gabri would keep this up forever. Silently preserving everything he could.

Clara chopped the ends off the fresh carrots and watched Peter toss the tiny new potatoes into boiling water. They’d have a simple dinner tonight of vegetables from the garden with herbs and sweet butter. It was one of their favorite meals in late summer.

“I don’t know who to feel worse for, Olivier or Gabri,” she said.

“I do,” said Peter, shelling some peas. “Gabri didn’t do anything. Can you believe Olivier’s been visiting that guy in the woods for years and didn’t tell anyone? I mean, what else isn’t he telling us?”

“Did you know he’s gay?”

“He’s probably straight and isn’t telling us.”

Clara smirked. “Now that would really piss Gabri off, though I know a couple of women who’d be happy.” She paused, knife in mid-air. “I think Olivier feels pretty horrible.”

“Come on. He’d still be doing it if the old man hadn’t been murdered.”

“He didn’t do anything wrong, you know,” said Clara. “The Hermit gave him everything.”

“So he says.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the Hermit’s dead. Isn’t that convenient?”

Clara stopped chopping. “What’re you saying?”

“Nothing. I’m just angry.”

“Why? Because he didn’t tell us?”

“Aren’t you pissed off?”

“A little. But I think I’m more amazed. Listen, we all know Olivier likes the finer things.”

“You mean he’s greedy and tight.”

“What amazes me is what Olivier did with the body. I just can’t imagine him lugging it through the woods and dumping it in the old Hadley house,” said Clara. “I didn’t think he had the strength.”

“I didn’t think he had the anger,” said Peter.

Clara nodded. Neither did she. And she also wondered what else their friend hadn’t told them. All this, though, had also meant that Clara couldn’t possibly ask Gabri about being called a “fucking queer.” Over dinner she explained this to Peter.

“So,” she concluded, her plate almost untouched, “I don’t know what to do about Fortin. Should I go into Montreal and speak to him directly about this, or just let it go?”

Peter took another slice of baguette, soft on the inside with a crispy crust. He smeared the butter to the edges, covering every millimeter, evenly. Methodically.

Watching him Clara felt she’d surely scream or explode, or at the very least grab the fucking baguette and toss it until it was a grease stain on the wall.

Still Peter smoothed the knife over the bread. Making sure the butter was perfect.

What should he tell her? To forget it? That what Fortin said wasn’t that bad? Certainly not worth risking her career. Just let it go. Besides, saying something almost certainly wouldn’t change Fortin’s mind about gays, and might just turn him against Clara. And this wasn’t some tiny show Fortin was giving her. This was everything Clara had dreamed of. Every artist dreamed of. Everyone from the art world would be there. Clara’s career would be made.

Should he tell her to let it go, or tell Clara she had to speak to Fortin? For Gabri and Olivier and all their gay friends. But mostly for herself.

But if she did that Fortin might get angry, might very well cancel her show.

Peter dug the tip of the knife into a hole in the bread to get the butter out.

He knew what he wanted to say, but he didn’t know if he’d be saying it for his sake, or for Clara’s.

“Well?” she asked, and heard the impatience in her voice. “Well?” she asked more softly. “What do you think?”

“What do you think?”

Clara searched his face. “I think I should just let it go. If he says it again maybe then I’ll say something. It’s a stressful time for all of us.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

Clara looked down at her uneaten plate. She’d heard the hesitation in Peter’s voice. Still, he wasn’t the one risking everything.

Rosa quacked a little in her sleep. Ruth eased the little flannel night-shirt off the duck and Rosa fluttered her wings then went back to sleep, tucking her beak under her wing.

Olivier had come to visit, flushed and upset. She’d cleared old New Yorkers off a chair and he’d sat in her front room like a fugitive. Ruth had brought him a glass of cooking sherry and a celery stick smeared with Velveeta and sat with him. For almost an hour they sat, not speaking, until Rosa entered the room. She waddled in wearing a gray flannel blazer. Ruth saw Olivier’s lips press together and his chin pucker. Not a sound escaped. But what did escape were tears, wearing warm lines down his handsome face.

And then he told her what had happened. About Gamache, about the cabin, about the Hermit and his belongings. About moving the body and owning the bistro, and the boulangerie and almost everything else in Three Pines.

Ruth didn’t care. All she could think of was what she’d give in exchange for words. To say something. The right thing. To tell Olivier that she loved him. That Gabri loved him and would never, ever leave. That love could never leave.

She imagined herself getting up and sitting beside him, and taking his trembling hand and saying, “There, there.”

There, there. And softly rubbing his heaving back until he caught his breath.

Instead she’d poured herself more cooking sherry and glared.

Now, with the sun set and Olivier gone, Ruth sat in her kitchen in the white plastic garden chair at the plastic table she’d found at the dump. Sufficiently drunk, she pulled the notebook close and with Rosa quietly quacking in the background, a small knit blanket over her, Ruth wrote:

And then kissing Rosa on the head she limped up the stairs to bed.