The Brutal Telling (21 page)

“Olivier got an MBA from the Université de Montréal and took a job at the Banque Laurentienne,” Agent Lacoste continued, reading from her notes. “He handled high-end corporate clients. Apparently very successfully too. Then he quit.”

“Why?” asked Beauvoir.

“Not sure. I have a meeting at the bank tomorrow, and I’ve also set up an appointment with Olivier’s father.”

“What about his personal life?” Gamache asked.

“I talked to Gabri. They started living together fourteen years ago. Gabri’s a year younger. Thirty-seven. He was a fitness instructor at the local YMCA.”

“Gabri?” asked Beauvoir, remembering the large, soft man.

“Happens to the best of us,” said Gamache.

“After Olivier quit the bank they gave up their apartment in Old Montreal and moved down here, took over the bistro and lived above it, but it wasn’t a bistro then. It’d been a hardware store.”

“Really?” asked Beauvoir. He couldn’t imagine the bistro as anything else. He tried to see snow shovels and batteries and lightbulbs hanging from the exposed beams or set up in front of the two stone fireplaces. And failed.

“But listen to this.” Lacoste leaned forward. “I got this by digging into the land registry records. Ten years ago Olivier bought not just his bistro, but the B and B. But he didn’t stop there. He bought it all. The general store, the bakery, his bistro and Myrna’s bookstore.”

“Everything?” asked Beauvoir. “He owns the village?”

“Just about. I don’t think anyone else knows. I spoke to Sarah at her boulangerie and to Monsieur Béliveau at the general store. They said they rented from some guy in Montreal. Long-term leases, reasonable rates. They send their checks to a numbered company.”

“Olivier’s a numbered company?” asked Beauvoir.

Gamache was taking all this in, listening closely.

“How much did he pay?” asked Beauvoir.

“Seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars for the lot.”

“Good God,” said Beauvoir. “That’s a lot of bread. Where’d he get the money? A mortgage?”

“No. Paid cash.”

“You say his mother’s dead, maybe it was his inheritance.”

“Doubt it,” said Lacoste. “She only died five years ago, but I’ll look into it when I’m in Montreal.”

“Follow the money,” said Beauvoir. It was a truism in crime investigations, particularly murder. And there was suddenly a great deal of money to follow. Beauvoir finished scribbling on his sheets on the wall, then told them about the coroner’s findings.

Morin listened, fascinated. So this was how murderers were found. Not by DNA tests and petrie dishes, ultraviolet scans or anything else a lab could produce. They helped, certainly, but this was their real lab. He looked across the table to the other person who was just listening, saying nothing.

Chief Inspector Gamache took his deep brown eyes off Inspector Beauvoir for a moment and looked at the young agent. And smiled.

A
gent Lacoste headed for Montreal shortly after the meeting broke up. Agent Morin left for home and Beauvoir and Gamache walked slowly back over the stone bridge and into the village. They strolled past the darkened bistro and met Olivier and Gabri on the wide veranda of the B and B.

“I left a note for you,” said Gabri. “Since the bistro’s closed we’re all going out for dinner and you’re invited.”

“Peter and Clara’s again?” asked Gamache.

“No. Ruth,” said Gabri and was rewarded with their stunned looks. He’d have thought someone had drawn a gun on the two large Sûreté officers. Chief Inspector Gamache looked surprised but Beauvoir looked afraid.

“You might want to put on your athletic protector,” Gabri whispered to Beauvoir, as they passed on the veranda steps.

“Well, I’m sure as hell not going. You?” asked Beauvoir when they went inside.

“Are you kidding? Pass up a chance to see Ruth in her natural habitat? Wouldn’t miss it.”

Twenty minutes later the Chief Inspector had showered, called Reine-Marie and changed into slacks, blue shirt and tie and a camel-hair cardigan. He found Beauvoir in the living room with a beer and potato chips.

“Sure you won’t change your mind,
patron
?”

It was tempting, Gamache had to admit. But he shook his head.

“I’ll keep a candle in the window,” said Beauvoir, watching the Chief leave.

Ruth’s clapboard home was a couple of houses away and faced the green. It was tiny, with a porch in front and two gables on the second floor. Gamache had been in it before, but always with his notebook out, asking questions. Never as a guest. As he entered all eyes turned and as one they made for him, Myrna reaching him first.

“For pity’s sake, did you bring your gun?”

“I don’t have one.”

“What d’you mean, you don’t have one?”

“They’re dangerous. Why do you want it?”

“So you can shoot her. She’s trying to kill us.” Myrna grabbed Gamache’s sleeve and pointed to Ruth who was circulating among her guests wearing a frilly apron and carrying a bright orange plastic tray.

“Actually,” said Gabri, “she’s trying to kidnap us and take us back to 1950.”

“Probably the last time she entertained,” said Myrna.

“Hors d’oeuvre, old fruit?” Ruth spotted her new guest and bore down upon him.

Gabri and Olivier turned to each other. “She means you.”

Incredibly, she actually meant Gamache.

“Lord love a duck,” said Ruth, in a very bad British accent. Behind Ruth waddled Rosa.

“She started speaking like that as soon as we arrived,” said Myrna, backing away from the tray and knocking over a stack of
Times Literary Supplement
s. Gamache could see saltine crackers sliding around on the orange tray, smeared with brown stuff he hoped was peanut butter. “I remember reading something about this,” Myrna continued. “People speaking in accents after a brain injury.”

“Is being possessed by the devil considered a brain injury?” asked Gabri. “She’s speaking in tongues.”

“Cor blimey,” said Ruth.

But the most striking feature of the room wasn’t the hoop lamps, the teak furniture, genteel British Ruth with her dubious offering, nor was it the sofas covered in books and newspapers and magazines, as was the green shag carpet. It was the duck.

Rosa was wearing a dress.

“Duck and cover,” said Gabri. “Literally.”

“Our Rosa.” Ruth had put down the peanut-buttered crackers and was now offering celery sticks stuffed with Velveeta.

Gamache watched and wondered if he’d have to make a couple of calls. One to the Humane Society, the other to the psych ward. But neither Rosa nor Ruth seemed upset. Unlike their guests.

“Would you like one?” Clara offered him a ball covered with what looked like seeds.

“What is it?” he asked.

“We think it’s suet, for the birds,” said Peter.

“And you’re offering it to me?” Gamache asked.

“Well, someone should eat it so it doesn’t hurt her feelings.” Clara nodded to Ruth, just disappearing into the kitchen. “And we’re too afraid.”

“
Non, merci
,” he smiled and went in search of Olivier. As he passed the kitchen he looked in and saw Ruth opening a can. Rosa was standing on the table watching her.

“Now, we’ll just open this,” she mumbled. “Maybe we should smell it? What do you think?”

The duck didn’t seem to be thinking anything. Ruth smelled the open can anyway. “Good enough.”

The old poet wiped her hands on a towel then reached out and lifted the edge of Rosa’s dress to replace a ruffled feather, smoothing it down.

“May I help?” Gamache asked from the door.

“Well, aren’t you a love.”

Gamache winced, expecting her to throw a cleaver after that. But she just smiled and handed him a plate of olives, each stuffed with a section of canned mandarin orange. He took it and returned to the party. Not surprisingly he was greeted as though he’d joined the dark side. He was very grateful Beauvoir wasn’t there to see Ruth, nuttier and more Anglo than usual, Rosa wearing a dress and himself offering food that would almost certainly kill or cripple anyone foolish enough to eat it.

“Olive?” he asked Olivier.

The two men looked down at the plate.

“Does that make me the mandarin?” asked Gabri.

“You need to get your head out of your own asshole,” said Olivier.

Gabri opened his mouth, but the warning looks on everyone’s faces made him shut it again.

Peter, standing a little way off from the conversation and nursing the glass of water Ruth had offered him, smiled. It was much the same thing Clara had said when he’d told her he’d felt violated by the police search.

“Why?” she’d asked.

“Didn’t you? I mean, all those strangers looking at your art.”

“Isn’t that what we call a show? There were more people looking this afternoon than I’ve had most of my career. Bring on more cops. Hope they brought their checkbooks.” She laughed, and clearly didn’t care. But she could see he did. “What’s the matter?”

“The picture isn’t ready to be seen.”

“Look, Peter, you make it sound as though this is something to do with your art.”

“Well, it is.”

“They’re trying to find a murderer, not an artist.”

And there it had sat, like most uncomfortable truths. Between them.

Gamache and Olivier had wandered away from the group, into a quiet corner.

“I understand you bought your building a few years ago.”

Olivier colored slightly, surprised by the question. He instinctively and furtively scanned the room, making sure they weren’t overheard.

“I thought it was a good investment. I’d saved some money from my job, and business here was good.”

“Must have been. You paid almost three-quarters of a million dollars.”

“I bet it’s worth a million today.”

“Could be. But you paid cash. Was business all that good?”

Olivier shot a look around but no one could hear them. Still he lowered his voice.

“The bistro and B and B are doing very well, for now anyway, but it’s the antiques end that’s been the surprise.”

“How so?”

“Lots of interest in Quebec pine, and lots of great finds.”

Gamache nodded. “We spoke to the Poiriers this afternoon.”

Olivier’s face hardened. “Look, what they say just isn’t true. I didn’t screw their mother. She wanted to sell. Was desperate to sell.”

“I know. We spoke to her too. And the Mundins. The furniture must have been in very bad shape.”

Olivier relaxed a little.

“It was. Years sitting in damp, freezing barns and the attic. Had to chase the mice out. Some were warped almost beyond repair. Enough to make you weep.”

“Madame Poirier says you came by her home later with a new bed. That was kind.”

Olivier dropped his eyes. “Yeah, well, I wanted to thank her.”

Conscience, thought Gamache. This man had a huge and terrible conscience riding herd on a huge and terrible greed.

“You said the bistro and B and B were doing well, for now. What did you mean?”

Olivier looked out the window for a moment, then back at Gamache.

“Hi ho, dinner everyone,” sang Ruth.

“What should we do?” Clara whispered to Myrna. “Can we run for it?”

“Too late. Either Ruth or the duck would get us for sure. The only thing to do is hunker down and pray for daylight. If the worst happens, play dead.”

Gamache and Olivier rose, the last in for dinner.

“I suppose you know what they’re doing up at the old Hadley house?” When Gamache didn’t answer Olivier continued. “They’ve almost completely gutted the place and are turning it into an inn and spa. Ten massage rooms, meditation and yoga classes. They’ll do a day spa and corporate retreats. People’ll be crawling all over the place, and us. It’ll ruin Three Pines.”

“Three Pines?”

“All right,” snapped Olivier. “The bistro and the B and B.”

They joined the others in the kitchen and sat at Ruth’s white plastic garden table.

“Incoming,” warned Gabri as Ruth put a bowl in front of each of them.

Gamache looked at the contents of his bowl. He could make out canned peaches, bacon, cheese and Gummi Bears.

“They’re all the things I love,” said Ruth, smiling. Rosa was sitting next to her on a nest of towels, her beak thrust under the sleeve of her dress.

“Scotch?” Ruth asked.

“Please.” Six glasses were thrust forward and Ruth poured each a Scotch, into their dinners.

About three centuries and many lifetimes later they left, staggering into the quiet, cool night.

“Toodle-oo,” waved Ruth. But Gamache was heartened to hear, just as the door closed: “Fuckers.”