The Brutal Telling (42 page)

Finally Monsieur Béliveau left with his biographies of Sartre and
Wayne Gretzky. He bowed slightly to Clara, who bowed back from her chair, never sure what to do when the courtly old man did that.

Myrna handed Clara a cool lemonade and sat in the chair opposite. The afternoon sun poured through the bookshop window. Here and there they saw a dog chase a ball for a villager, or vice versa.

“Didn’t you have your meeting this morning with Monsieur Fortin?”

Clara nodded.

“How’d it go?”

“Not bad.”

“Do you smell smoke?” asked Myrna, sniffing. Clara, alarmed, looked around. “Oh, there it is,” Myrna pointed to her companion. “Your pants are on fire.”

“Very funny.” But that was all the encouragement Clara needed. She tried to keep her voice light as she described the meeting. When Clara listed the people who would almost certainly be at the opening night at Fortin’s gallery Myrna exclaimed and hugged her friend.

“Can you believe it?”

“Fucking queer.”

“Stupid whore. Is this a new game?” laughed Myrna.

“You’re not offended by what I said?”

“Calling me a fucking queer? No.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I know you don’t mean it. Did you?”

“Suppose I did?”

“Then I’d be worried for you,” smiled Myrna. “What’s this about?”

“When we were sitting in the bistro Gabri served us and as he left Fortin called him a fucking queer.”

Myna took a deep breath. “And what did you say?”

“Nothing.”

Myna nodded. Now it was her turn to say nothing.

W
hat?”

“Woo,” repeated the Chief Inspector.

“Woo?” Olivier seemed baffled, but he’d feigned that at every turn in this interview. Beauvoir had long stopped believing anything the man said.

“Did the Hermit ever mention it?” Gamache asked.

“Mention woo?” Olivier asked. “I don’t even know what you’re asking.”

“Did you notice a spider’s web, in a corner of the cabin?”

“A spider’s web? What? No, I never noticed one. But I’ll tell you something, I’d be surprised if there was one. The Hermit kept that cabin spotless.”

“
Propre
,” said Gamache.

“
Propre
,” Olivier repeated.

“Woo, Olivier. What does it mean to you?”

“Nothing.”

“And yet it was the word on the piece of wood you took from the hand of the Hermit. After he’d been murdered.”

It was worse than Olivier had imagined, and he’d imagined pretty bad. It seemed Gamache knew everything. Or at least almost everything.

Pray God he doesn’t know it all
, thought Olivier.

“I picked it up,” Olivier admitted. “But I didn’t look at it. It was lying on the floor by his hand. When I saw there was blood on it I dropped it. It said Woo?”

Gamache nodded and leaned forward, his powerful hands lightly holding each other as his elbows rested on his knees.

“Did you kill him?”

Finally Myrna spoke. She leaned forward and took Clara’s hand.

“What you did was natural.”

“Really? Because it feels like shit.”

“Well, most of your life is shit,” said Myrna, nodding her head sagely. “So it would feel natural.”

“Har, har.”

“Listen, Fortin is offering you everything you ever dreamed of, everything you ever wanted.”

“And he seemed so nice.”

“He probably is. Are you sure he wasn’t kidding?”

Clara shook her head.

“Maybe he’s gay himself,” suggested Myrna.

Clara shook her head again. “I thought of that, but he has a wife and a couple of kids and he just doesn’t seem gay.”

Both Clara and Myrna had a finely honed gay-dar. It was, they both knew, imperfect, but it probably would have picked up the Fortin blip. But nothing. Only the immense, unmistakable object that was Gabri, sailing away.

“What should I do?” Clara asked.

Myrna remained silent.

“I need to speak to Gabri, don’t I?”

“It might help.”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

As she left she thought about what Myrna had said. Fortin was offering her everything she’d ever wanted, the only dream she’d had since
childhood. Success, recognition as an artist. All the sweeter after years in the wilderness. Mocked and marginalized.

And all she had to do was say nothing.

She could do that.

N
o, I didn’t kill him.”

But even as Olivier said it he realized the disaster of what he’d done. In lying at every turn he’d made the truth unrecognizable.

“He was already dead when I arrived.”

God, even to his own ears it sounded like a lie. I didn’t take the last cookie, I didn’t break the fine bone china cup, I didn’t steal the money from your purse. I’m not gay.

All lies. All his life. All the time. Until he’d come to Three Pines. For an instant, for a glorious few days he’d lived a genuine life. With Gabri. In their little rented wreck of an apartment above the shop.

But then the Hermit had arrived. And with him a trail of lies.

“Listen, it’s the truth. It was Saturday night and the place was hopping. The Labor Day long weekend’s always a madhouse. But by midnight or so there were only a few stragglers. Then Old Mundin arrived with the chairs and a table. By the time he left the place was empty and Havoc was doing the final cleanup. So I decided to visit the Hermit.”

“After midnight?” Gamache asked.

“That’s normally when I went. So no one could see.”

Across from Olivier the Chief Inspector slowly leaned back, distancing himself. The gesture was eloquent. It whispered that Gamache didn’t believe him. Olivier stared at this man he’d considered a friend and he felt a tightening, a constriction.

“Weren’t you afraid of the dark?”

Gamache asked it so simply, and in that instant Olivier knew the genius of the man. He was able to crawl into other people’s skins, and burrow beyond the flesh and blood and bone. And ask questions of deceptive simplicity.

“It’s not the dark I’m afraid of,” said Olivier. And he remembered the freedom that came only after the sun set. In city parks, in darkened theaters, in bedrooms. The bliss that came with being able to shed the outer shell and be himself. Protected by the night.

It wasn’t the dark that scared him, but what might come to light.

“I knew the way and it only took about twenty minutes to walk it.”

“What did you see when you arrived?”

“Everything looked normal. There was a light in the window and the lantern on the porch was lit.”

“He was expecting company.”

“He was expecting me. He always lit the lantern for me. I didn’t realize there was anything wrong until I was in the door and saw him there. I knew he was dead, but I thought he’d just fallen, maybe had a stroke or a heart attack and hit his head.”

“There was no weapon?”

“No, nothing.”

Gamache leaned forward again.

Were they beginning to believe him, Olivier wondered.

“Did you take him food?”

Olivier’s mind revved, raced. He nodded.

“What did you take?”

“The usual. Cheese, milk, butter. Some bread. And as a treat I took some honey and tea.”

“What did you do with it?”

“The groceries? I don’t know. I was in shock. I can’t remember.”

“We found them in the kitchen. Open.”

The two men stared at each other. Then Gamache’s eyes narrowed in a look that Olivier found harrowing.

Gamache was angry.

“I was there twice that night,” he mumbled into the table.

“Louder, please,” said the Chief.

“I returned to the cabin, okay?”

“It’s time now, Olivier. Tell me the truth.”

Olivier’s breath came in short gasps, like something hooked and landed and about to be filleted.

“The first time I was there that night the Hermit was alive. We had a cup of tea and talked.”

“What did you talk about?”

Chaos is coming, old son, and there’s no stopping it. It’s taken a long time, but it’s finally here.

“He always asked about people who’d come to the village. He peppered me with questions about the outside world.”

“The outside world?”

“You know, out here. He hadn’t been more than fifty feet from his cabin in years.”

“Go on,” said Gamache. “What happened then?”

“It was getting late so I left. He offered to give me something for the groceries. At first I refused, but he insisted. When I got out of the woods I realized I’d left it behind, so I went back.” No need to tell them about the thing in the canvas bag. “When I got there he was dead.”

“How long were you gone?”

“About half an hour. I didn’t dawdle.”

He saw again the tree limbs snapping back and felt them slapping him, smelled the pine needles, and heard the crashing through the woods, like an army, running. Racing. He’d thought it was just his own noise, magnified by fear and the night. But maybe not.

“You saw and heard nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“What time was that?” Gamache asked.

“About two I guess, maybe two thirty.”

Gamache laced his fingers together. “What did you do once you realized what had happened?”

The rest of the story came out quickly, in a rush. Once he’d realized the Hermit was dead, another idea had come to Olivier. A way the Hermit might help. He’d put the body in the wheelbarrow and taken him through the woods to the old Hadley house.

“It took a while, but I finally got him there. I’d planned to leave him on the porch, but when I tried the door it was unlocked, so I laid him in the front hall.”

He made it sound gentle, but he knew it wasn’t. It was a brutal, ugly, vindictive act. A violation of a body, a violation of a friendship, a violation of the Gilberts. And finally, it was a betrayal of Gabri and their lives in Three Pines.

It was so quiet in the room he could almost believe himself alone. He looked up and there was Gamache, watching him.

“I’m sorry,” said Olivier. He scolded himself, desperate not to be the gay guy who cried. But he knew his actions had taken him far beyond cliché, or caricature.

And then Armand Gamache did the most extraordinary thing. He leaned forward so that his large, certain hands were almost touching
Olivier’s, as though it was all right to be that close to someone so vile, and he spoke in a calm, deep voice.

“If you didn’t kill the man, who else could have? I need your help.”

In that one sentence Gamache had placed himself next to Olivier. He might still be on the outer reaches of the world, but at least he wasn’t alone.

Gamache believed him.