The Brutal Telling (27 page)

But odd as his family might be, they were nothing compared to this. In fact, that was one of the great comforts of his job. At least his family compared well to people who actually killed each other, rather than just thought about it.

“It seemed easier,” Carole said. “I was happier being a widow than a divorcee.”

“But what about me?” Marc asked.

“I thought it would be easier for you too. Easier to think your father had died.”

“How could you think that?”

“I’m sorry. I was wrong,” said his mother. “But you were twenty-five, and never close to your father. I really thought you wouldn’t care.”

“So you killed him?”

Vincent Gilbert, silent until now, laughed. “Well put.”

“Fuck off,” said Marc. “I’ll get to you in a minute.” He shifted on the prickly hay bale. His father really was a pain in the ass.

“He agreed, no matter how he’s rewritten it now. I couldn’t have done
it without his cooperation. In exchange for his freedom he agreed to be dead.”

Marc turned to his father. “Is that right?”

Now Vincent Gilbert looked less regal, less certain. “I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t well. I’d gone to India to find myself and felt the best way to do that was to shed the old life completely. Become a new man.”

“So I just didn’t exist anymore?” Marc asked. “What a fucking great family. Where have you been?”

“The Manoir Bellechasse.”

“For twenty years? You’ve been at a luxury inn for twenty years?”

“Oh, well, no. I’ve been there off and on all summer. I brought you that.” He gestured to the package sitting on a shelf in the shed. “It’s for you,” he said to Dominique. She picked it up.

“Granola,” she said. “From the Bellechasse. Thank you.”

“Granola?” asked Marc. “You come back from the dead and bring breakfast cereal?”

“I didn’t know what you needed,” said his father. “I’d heard from your mother that you’d bought a place down here so I came and watched every now and then.”

“You’re the one Roar Parra spotted in the woods,” said Dominique.

“Roar Parra? Roar? Are you kidding? Is he the troll? The dark, stocky man?”

“The nice man helping your son turn this place around, you mean?” asked Carole.

“I say what I mean.”

“Will you two please stop it.” Dominique glared at Marc’s parents. “Behave yourselves.”

“Why’re you here?” Marc finally asked.

Vincent Gilbert hesitated than sat on a nearby hay bale. “I’d kept in touch with your mother. She told me about your marriage. Your job. You seemed to be happy. But then she said you’d quit your job and moved to the middle of nowhere. I wanted to make sure you were all right. I’m not a complete fool, you know,” said Vincent Gilbert, his handsome, aristocratic face somber. “I know what a shock this is. I’m sorry. I should never have let your mother do it.”

“
Pardon?
” said Carole.

“Still, I wouldn’t have contacted you, but then that body was found and the police showed up and I thought you might need my help.”

“Yes, what about that body?” Marc asked his father, who just stared. “Well?”

“Well what? Wait a minute.” Vincent Gilbert looked from his son to Gamache, watching with interest, then back again. He laughed. “You’re kidding? You think I had something to do with it?”

“Did you?” demanded Marc.

“Do you really expect me to answer that?” The genial man in front of them didn’t just bristle, he radiated. It happened so quickly even Gamache was taken aback by the transformation. The cultured, urbane, slightly amused man suddenly overflowed with a rage so great it engulfed him then spilled off him and swallowed everyone. Marc had poked the monster, either forgetting he was in there or wanting to see if he still existed. And he had his answer. Marc stood stock still, his only reaction being a slight, telltale widening of his eyes.

And what a tale those eyes told Gamache. In them he saw the infant, the boy, the young man, afraid. Never certain what he would find in his father. Would he be loving and kind and warm today? Or would he sizzle the skin off his son? With a look, a word. Leaving the boy naked and ashamed. Knowing himself to be weak and needy, stupid and selfish. So that the boy grew an outer hull to withstand assault. But while those skins saved tender young souls, Gamache knew, they soon stopped protecting and became the problem. Because while the hard outer shell kept the hurt at bay, it also kept out the light. And inside the frightened little soul became something else entirely, nurtured only in darkness.

Gamache looked at Marc with interest. He’d poked the monster in front of him, and sure enough, it came awake and lashed out. But had he also awakened a monster inside himself? Or had that happened earlier?

Someone had left a body on their doorstep. Was it father? Or son? Or someone else?

“I expect you to answer, monsieur,” said Gamache, turning back to Vincent Gilbert and holding his hard eyes.

“Doctor,” Gilbert said, his voice cold. “I will not be diminished by you or anyone else.” He looked again at his son, then back to the Chief Inspector.

“
Désolé
,” said Gamache and bowed slightly, never taking his deep brown eyes off the angry man. The apology seemed to further enrage Gilbert, who realized one of them was strong enough to withstand insult and one of them wasn’t.

“Tell us about the body,” Gamache repeated, as though he and Gilbert were having a pleasant conversation. Gilbert looked at him with loathing. Out of the corner of his eye Gamache noticed Marc the horse approaching from the fields. He looked like something a demon might ride, bony, covered with muck and sores. One eye mad, the other eye blind. Attracted, Gamache supposed, by something finally familiar. Rage.

The two men stared at each other. Finally Gilbert snorted derision and waved, dismissing Gamache and his question as trivial. The monster retreated into his cave.

But the horse came closer and closer.

“I know nothing about it. But I thought it looked bad for Marc so I wanted to be here in case he needed me.”

“Needed you to do what?” demanded Marc. “Scare everyone half to death? Couldn’t you just ring the doorbell or write a letter?”

“I didn’t realize you’d be so sensitive.” The lash, the tiny wound, the monster smiled and retreated. But Marc had had enough. He reached over the fence and bit Vincent Gilbert on the shoulder. Marc the horse, that is.

“What the hell?” Gilbert yelped and jumped out of the way, his hand on his slimy shoulder.

“Are you going to arrest him?” Marc asked Gamache.

“Are you going to press charges?”

Marc stared at his father, then at the wreck of a creature behind him. Black, wretched, probably half mad. And Marc the man smiled.

“No. Go back to being dead, Dad. Mom was right. It is easier.”

He turned and strode back to his home.

W
hat a family,” said Beauvoir. They were strolling into the village. Agent Morin had gone ahead to the Incident Room, and they’d left the Gilberts to devour each other. “Still, there does seem a sort of equilibrium about this case.”

“What do you mean?” asked Gamache. Off to their left he noticed Ruth Zardo leaving her home followed by Rosa wearing a sweater. Gamache had written a thank-you note for the dinner the night before and stuck it in her rusty mailbox during his morning stroll. He watched as she collected it, glanced at it, and stuck it into the pocket of her ratty old cardigan.

“Well, one man’s dead and another comes alive.”

Gamache smiled and wondered if it was a fair exchange. Ruth spotted them just as Beauvoir spotted her.

“Run,” he hissed to the Chief. “I’ll cover you.”

“Too late, old son. The duck’s seen us.”

And indeed, while Ruth seemed happy to ignore them, Rosa was waddling forward at an alarming pace.

“She appears to like you,” said Ruth to Beauvoir, limping behind the duck. “But then she does have a birdbrain.”

“Madame Zardo,” Gamache greeted her with a smile while Beauvoir glared.

“I hear that Gilbert fellow put the body in Olivier’s Bistro. Why haven’t you arrested him?”

“You heard that already?” asked Beauvoir. “Who told you?”

“Who hasn’t? It’s all over the village. Well? Are you going to arrest Marc Gilbert?”

“For what?” asked Beauvoir.

“Murder for one. Are you nuts?”

“Am I nuts? Who’s the one with a duck in a sweater?”

“And what would you have me do? Let her freeze to death when winter comes? What kind of man are you?”

“Me? Speaking of nuts, what was with that note you had Olivier give me? I can’t even remember what it said, but it sure didn’t make sense.”

“You think not?” the wizened old poet snarled.

“
Maybe there’s something in all of this I missed.
”

Gamache quoted the lines and Ruth turned cold eyes on him. “That was a private message. Not meant for you.”

“What does it mean, madame?”

“You figure it out. And this one too.” Her hand dived into her other pocket and came out with another slip of paper, neatly folded. She handed it to Beauvoir and walked toward the bistro.

Beauvoir looked at the perfect white square in his palm, then closed his fingers over it.

The two men watched Ruth and Rosa walk across the village green. At the far end they saw people entering the bistro.

“She’s crazy, of course,” said Beauvoir as they walked to the Incident Room. “But she did ask a good question. Why didn’t we arrest anyone?
Between father and son we could’ve been filling out arrest sheets all afternoon.”

“To what end?”

“Justice.”

Gamache laughed. “I’d forgotten about that. Good point.”

“No, really sir. There was everything from trespassing to murder we could have charged them with.”

“We both know the victim wasn’t murdered in that foyer.”

“But that doesn’t mean Marc Gilbert didn’t kill him somewhere else.”

“And put him in his own house, then picked him up again and took him to the bistro?”

“The father could have done it.”

“Why?”

Beauvoir thought about that. He couldn’t believe that family wasn’t guilty of something. And murder seemed right up their alley. Though it seemed most likely they’d kill each other.

“Maybe he wanted to hurt his son,” said Beauvoir. But that didn’t seem right. They paused on the stone bridge over the Rivière Bella Bella and the Inspector stared over the side, thinking. The sun bounced off the water and he was momentarily mesmerized by the movement. “Maybe it’s just the opposite,” he began, feeling his way forward. “Maybe Gilbert wanted back in his son’s life but needed an excuse. For anyone else I would think that was ridiculous but he has an ego and it might not have let him just knock and apologize. He needed an excuse. I could see him killing a vagrant, someone he considered so far beneath him. Someone he could use for his purpose.”

“And what would that be?” asked Gamache, also staring into the clear waters beneath them.

Beauvoir turned to the Chief, noticing the reflected light playing on the man’s face. “To be reunited with his son. But he’d need to be seen as the savior, not just as some deadbeat dad crawling back to the family.”

Gamache turned to him, interested. “Go on.”

“So he killed a vagrant, a man no one would miss, put him in his son’s vestibule and waited for the fireworks, figuring he could sweep in and take command of the family when it needed help.”

“But then Marc moved the body and there was no excuse,” said Gamache.

“Until now. The timing is interesting. We discover the body was in the old Hadley house and an hour later dad appears.”

Gamache nodded, his eyes narrowing, and once again he looked into the flowing waters of the river. Beauvoir knew the Chief well enough to know he was walking slowly now through the case, picking his way along the slippery rocks, trying to make out a path obscured by deceit and time.

Beauvoir unfolded the paper in his hands.

I just sit where I’m put, composed

of stone, and wishful thinking:

“Who’s Vincent Gilbert, sir? You seemed to know him.”

“He’s a saint.”

Beauvoir laughed, but seeing Gamache’s serious face he stopped. “What do you mean?”

“There’re some people who believe that.”

“Seemed like an asshole to me.”

“The hardest part of the process. Telling them apart.”

“Do you believe he’s a saint?” Beauvoir was almost afraid to ask.

Gamache smiled suddenly. “I’ll leave you here. What do you say to lunch in the bistro in half an hour?”

Beauvoir looked at his watch. Twelve thirty-five. “Perfect.”

He watched the Chief walk slowly back across the bridge and into Three Pines. Then he looked down again, at the rest of what Ruth had written.