The Brutal Telling (49 page)

“How?”

“She went into the wilderness where no one else dared to go, with just her easel.”

“And her monkey.”

“Is that a euphemism, Chief Inspector?”

Gamache laughed. “No. Go on.”

“Well, she was just very independent. And her work evolved. At first it was representational. A tree was a tree, a house a house. It was almost a documentary. She wanted to capture the Haida, you know, in their villages, before they were destroyed.”

“Most of her work was on the Queen Charlotte Islands, I understand.”

“Many of her most famous works are, yes. At some point she realized
that painting exactly what could be seen wasn’t enough. So she really let go, dropped all the conventions, and painted not just what she saw, but what she felt. She was ridiculed for it. Ironically those are now her most famous works.”

Gamache nodded, remembering the totem poles in front of the swirling, vibrant forest. “Remarkable woman.”

“I think it all started with the brutal telling,” said Clara.

“The what?”

“The brutal telling. It’s become quite well known in artistic circles. She was the youngest of five daughters and very close to her father. It was apparently a wonderful relationship. Nothing to suggest it wasn’t simply loving and supportive.”

“Nothing sexual, you mean.”

“No, just a close father-daughter bond. And then in her late teens something happened and she left home. She never spoke to him or saw him again.”

“What happened?” Gamache was slowing the car. Clara noticed this, and watched the clock approaching five to five.

“No one knew. She never told anyone, and her family said nothing. But she went from being a happy, carefree child to an embittered woman. Very solitary, not very likeable apparently. Then, near the end of her life, she wrote to a friend. In the letter she said that her father had said something to her. Something horrible and unforgivable.”

“The brutal telling.”

“That’s how she described it.”

They’d arrived. He stopped in front of her home and they sat there quietly for a moment. It was five past five. Too late. She could try, but knew Fortin wouldn’t answer.

“Thank you,” he said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“And so have you.”

“I wish that was true.” He smiled at her. But, remarkably, she seemed to be feeling better. Clara got out of the car, and instead of going inside she paused on the road then slowly started to walk. Around the village green. Round and round she strolled, until the end met the beginning and she was back where she started. And as she walked she thought about Emily Carr. And the ridicule she’d endured at the hands of gallery owners, critics, a public too afraid to go where she wanted to take them.

Deeper. Deeper into the wilderness.

Then Clara went home.

I
t was late at night in Zurich when an art collector picked up the odd little carving he’d paid so much for. The one he’d been assured was a great work of art, but more important, a great investment.

At first he’d displayed it in his home, until his wife had asked him to move it. Away. So he’d put in into his private gallery. Once a day he’d sit in there with a cognac, and look at the masterpieces. The Picassos, the Rodins and Henry Moores.

But his eyes kept going back to the jolly little carving, of the forest, and the happy people building a village. At first it had given him pleasure, but now he found it spooky. He was considering putting it somewhere else again. A closet perhaps.

When the broker had called earlier in the day and asked if he’d consider sending it back to Canada for a police investigation he’d refused. It was an investment, after all. And there was no way he could be forced. He’d done nothing wrong and they had no jurisdiction.

The broker, though, had passed on two requests from the police. He knew the answer to the first, but still he picked up the carving and looked at its smooth base. No letters, no signature. Nothing. But the other question just sounded ridiculous. Still, he’d tried. He was just about to replace the carving and e-mail that he’d found nothing when his eyes caught something light among the dark pines.

He peered closer. There, deep in the forest, away from the village, he found what the police were looking for.

A tiny wooden figure. A young man, not much more than a boy, hiding in the woods.

It was getting late. Agent Lacoste had left and Inspector Beauvoir and Agent Morin were reporting on their day.

“We checked into the Parras, the Kmeniks, the Mackus. All the Czech community,” said Beauvoir. “Nothing. No one knew the Hermit, no one saw him. They’d all heard of that violinist guy—”

“Martinù,” said Morin.

“—because he’s some famous Czech composer, but no one actually knew him.”

“I spoke to the Martinù Institute and did background checks on the Czech families,” said Morin. “They’re what they claim to be. Refugees from the communists. Nothing more. In fact, they seem more law-abiding than most. No connection at all with Martinù.”

Beauvoir shook his head. If lies annoyed the Inspector the truth seemed to piss him off even more. Especially when it was inconvenient.

“Your impression?” Gamache asked Agent Morin, who glanced at Inspector Beauvoir before answering.

“I think the violin and the music have nothing to do with the people here.”

“You may be right,” conceded Gamache, who knew they’d have to look into many empty caves before they found their killer. Perhaps this was one. “And the Parras?” he asked, though he knew the answer. If there’d been anything there Beauvoir would have told him already.

“Nothing in their background,” Beauvoir confirmed. “But . . .”

Gamache waited.

“They seemed defensive, guarded. They were surprised that the dead man was Czech. Everyone was.”

“What do you think?” asked the Chief.

Beauvoir wiped a weary hand across his face. “I can’t put it all together, but I think it fits somehow.”

“You think there is a connection?” pressed Gamache.

“How can there not be? The dead man was Czech, the sheet music, the priceless violin, and there’s a big Czech community here including two people who could have found the cabin. Unless . . .”

“Yes?”

Beauvoir leaned forward, his nervous hands clasped together on the table. “Suppose we’ve got it wrong. Suppose the dead man wasn’t Czech.”

“You mean, that Olivier was lying?” said Gamache.

Beauvoir nodded. “He’s lied about everything else. Maybe he said it to take us off the trail, so that we’d suspect others.”

“But what about the violin and the music?”

“What about it?” Beauvoir was gaining momentum. “There’re lots of other things in that cabin. Maybe Morin’s right.” Though he said it in the same tone he’d use to say maybe a chimp was right. With a mixture of awe at witnessing a miracle, and doubt. “Maybe the music and violin have nothing to do with it. After all, there were plates from Russia, glass from other places. The stuff tells us nothing. He could’ve been from anywhere. We only have Olivier’s word for it. And maybe Olivier wasn’t exactly lying. Maybe the guy did speak with an accent, but it wasn’t Czech. Maybe it was Russian or Polish or one of those other countries.”

Gamache leaned back, thinking, then he nodded and sat forward. “It’s possible. But is it likely?”

This was the part of investigating he liked the most, and that most frightened him. Not the cornered and murderous suspect. But the possibility of turning left when he should have gone right. Of dismissing a lead, of giving up on a promising trail. Or not seeing one in his rush to a conclusion.

No, he needed to step carefully now. Like any explorer he knew the danger wasn’t in walking off a cliff, but in getting hopelessly lost. Muddled. Disoriented by too much information.

In the end the answer to a murder investigation was always devastatingly simple. It was always right there, obvious. Hiding in facts and evidence and lies, and the misperceptions of the investigators.

“Let’s leave if for now,” he said, “and keep an open mind. The Hermit might have been Czech, or not. Either way there’s no denying the contents of his cabin.”

“What did Superintendent Brunel have to say? Any of it stolen?” asked Beauvoir.

“She hasn’t found anything, but she’s still looking. But Jérôme Brunel’s been studying those letters under the carving and he thinks they’re a Caesar’s Shift. It’s a type of code.”

He explained how a Caesar’s Shift worked.

“So we just need to find the key word?” asked Beauvoir. “Should be simple enough. It’s Woo.”

“Nope. Tried that one.”

Beauvoir went to the sheet of foolscap on the wall and uncapped the magic marker. He wrote the alphabet. Then the marker hovered.

“How about violin?” asked Morin. Beauvoir looked at him again as at an unexpectedly bright chimp. He wrote
violin
on a separate sheet of paper. Then he wrote
Martinù
,
Bohuslav
.

“Bohemia,” suggested Morin.

“Good idea,” said Beauvoir. Within a minute they had a dozen possibilities, and within ten minutes they’d tried them all and found nothing.

Beauvoir tapped his Magic Marker with some annoyance and stared at the alphabet, as though it was to blame.

“Well, keep trying,” said Gamache. “Superintendent Brunel is trying to track down the rest of the carvings.”

“Do you think that’s why he was killed?” asked Morin. “For the carvings?”

“Perhaps,” said Gamache. “There’s not much some people wouldn’t do for things that valuable.”

“But when we found the cabin it hadn’t been searched,” said Beauvoir. “If you find the guy, find the cabin, go there and kill him, wouldn’t you tear the place apart to find the carvings? And it’s not like the murderer had to worry about disturbing the neighbors.”

“Maybe he meant to but heard Olivier returning and had to leave,” said Gamache.

Beauvoir nodded. He’d forgotten about Olivier coming back. That made sense.

“That reminds me,” he said, sitting down. “The lab report came in
on the whittling tools and the wood. They say the tools were used to do the sculptures but not to carve Woo. The grooves didn’t match, but apparently the technique didn’t either. Definitely different people.”

It was a relief to have something definite about this case.

“But red cedar was used for all of them?” Gamache wanted to hear the confirmation.

Beauvoir nodded. “And they’re able to be more specific than that, at least with the Woo carving. They can tell by looking at water content, insects, growth rings, all sorts of things, where the wood actually came from.”

Gamache leaned forward and wrote three words on a sheet of paper. He slid it across the table and Beauvoir read and snorted. “You talked to the lab?”

“I talked to Superintendent Brunel.”

He told them then about Woo, and Emily Carr. About the Haida totem poles, carved from red cedar.

Beauvoir looked down at the Chief’s note.

Queen Charlotte Islands
, he’d written.

And that’s what the lab had said. The wood that became Woo had started life as a sapling hundreds of years earlier, on the Queen Charlotte Islands.