by Louise Penny
“Hello.” Gamache smiled.
“Chief Inspector, this is my husband, Mike.”
They shook hands.
“Did Mr. Ellis speak to you?” he asked Mike.
“No. He thanked me for opening a door for him once. He seemed polite but quiet. Like he didn’t want company.”
Gamache turned to Angela. “But he spoke to you quite a bit, it seems.”
As usual, she blushed. “Well, I guess I was the one who kept talking to him. He just seemed so alone.”
“Did he tell you anything about himself?”
“Only that he was here for a vacation and that he had a son who would love to live in a place like this. He wondered if there were many jobs for young people.”
“Chief Inspector?” Dominique Gilbert popped her head through the living room door. “There’s a phone call for you.”
“Chief,” came Beauvoir’s voice. “I know why James Hill was here.”
Chapter Eleven
Chief Inspector Gamache met Beauvoir at the bench on the village green. Around them, villagers walked dogs. They did their shopping. Some worked in their gardens. But no one stopped moving. It was too cold.
But the two men on the bench had something worse than cold to worry about. They had murder on their minds.
Gamache pulled his coat tighter around him and looked at his inspector.
“Okay,” said Beauvoir. “We ran James Hill’s fingerprints and licence plate. He lived and worked in Ottawa. With the government. In the Department of Records.”
Armand Gamache shifted a bit on the bench. The Department of Records. It was huge, of course. It kept track of Canada’s official documents. Not people’s private lives, but their public ones. Taxes, passports, court papers. Any time a Canadian came in contact with the government, the records ended up in James Hill’s department.
“He took the job fifteen years ago. Before that, he was living in Thunder Bay.”
“In northwestern Ontario?”
“Exactly. With his wife and daughter. But they were killed twenty years ago. Their car was hit by a pickup truck filled with kids.”
Gamache looked down briefly. He could not imagine surviving the loss of his own wife and daughter. How had James Hill coped?
“Here’s a picture of them.”
From a file folder Beauvoir pulled a printout of a newspaper article. It showed a young James Hill, smiling. His pretty wife, also beaming. And their daughter. Debbie. She looked like her mother. Dark hair, laughing.
Gone, in a moment.
Gamache felt an almost physical pain. A terrible loss.
He scanned the article.
Mrs. Hill and Debbie had been returning from a birthday party when their car was side-swiped. They slid off the road, down a cliff. Both died at the scene.
The other vehicle had four kids in it. Two boys. Two girls. Three were sixteen years old. One was fifteen. None seriously injured.
The chief inspector looked at Beauvoir.
“What happened?”
“The cops investigated, of course. It was clear that the kids had hit the Hill car. What wasn’t clear was who was driving.”
Gamache nodded. He could see that coming.
“By the time help arrived, the kids had gotten out of the truck. They had minor injuries, but that was all. One of them had wiped the steering wheel. To get the blood off, he said, but everyone suspected that he did it to protect whoever was driving.”
“Fingerprints,” said Gamache. “No convictions?”
“Not even an arrest. Hill spent years trying to get someone to take the blame. But the kids’ lawyers wouldn’t even let them say they were sorry. They just stopped talking.”
Gamache was silent for a moment, thinking.
“So finally James Hill moved away,” said the chief. “To Ottawa.”
“To the Department of Records,” said Beauvoir. He held up another file. “Hill was a busy man.”
Beauvoir handed the file to Gamache. In it were more reports, of more deaths. A young man killed ten years ago in Victoria. A young woman killed seven years ago in Halifax.
Both hanged.
“Arthur Ellis,” said Gamache. Beauvoir nodded.
The official executioner, alive again. And passing death sentences.
“The victims were two of the people in the truck that night,” said Beauvoir.
“Both murdered,” said Gamache. “One on the west coast, the other on the east. No police force would connect the two.”
“Exactly,” said Beauvoir. “In fact, the first was considered a suicide, but the cause of death was changed to murder later. No one was arrested.”
“James Hill,” said Gamache. He got up from the bench and started walking slowly around the edge of the village green. Beauvoir joined him and listened as the chief thought out loud. “He got his job so he could find the four young people in the pickup. And when he found them, he killed them.”
“Didn’t just kill,” said Beauvoir. “He executed them. Sentenced them to death.”
Gamache thought of the young men and women in the truck that night. How horrible it must have been for them. Did the guilt weigh them down? Or were they so scared they hid it away? Comforted themselves with the lie that the accident wasn’t their fault.
But Gamache knew what happened when a terrible truth was buried. It didn’t just go to sleep. No. It grew. Big. It became huge. Monstrous. It ate away a person’s insides.
And left him hollow. Empty.
That’s what had happened to those four kids. That’s what had happened to James Hill, too. He’d died in the car that night, with his wife and daughter. Hill had died in spirit and Arthur Ellis had been reborn in him. Now he had one goal. To punish the young men and women who had killed his wife and daughter.
Chief Inspector Gamache put his hands behind his back and thought as he walked.
“James Hill used his position at the Department of Records to track down two of the people in the truck, and he killed them,” Gamache said. “What about the other two?”
“I think one of them is here,” said Beauvoir. “He tracked him here and intended to hang him.”
“That’s why he was asking about young men?” Gamache asked.
“Yes. But that doesn’t make sense,” said Beauvoir. “If the kids were sixteen when this happened, they’d be almost forty now. Not exactly young.”
“True. When was the last time you visited your mother?”
“Oh, Jesus, she hasn’t gotten to you, too?”
Gamache smiled. “No. I’m just wondering.”
“A couple of weeks ago. We went over for dinner. Why?”
“What did she make?”
“My favourite. What she always makes when I visit. Beef stew.”
“She’s made it for you since you were a kid, right?”
“Right. Why are we talking about my mother?”
“When our children come home, we do the same thing. Make their favourite foods. Annie had to explain the other day that pink cupcakes aren’t actually her favourite anymore. We knew that, but still we make them.”
“Is this going anywhere, or have you finally lost your mind? Sir.”
Gamache laughed. “Perhaps a bit of both. My point is that parents always see their children as children. In our heads, we know their real age, but in our hearts, they’re still kids. I think that’s what happened with Hill.”
“He sees his daughter as a child?” asked Beauvoir, a little lost.
“Probably. But I meant the kids in the pickup. The last time he saw them, they were in their teens. Their images must have been burned into his mind. He would forever see them as teens.”
“He talked about a young man,” said Beauvoir, “but he was actually looking for someone much older.”
“In his mid- to late thirties,” said Gamache. “Who are the two survivors from that truck?”
“Cindy Pane and Tim Short.”
“Tim Short,” said Gamache. “Tom Scott?”
He stopped walking and looked into the distance. “And yet, perhaps he was lying,” the chief murmured. “Covering up.”
“What did you say?” asked Beauvoir.
Gamache turned to look at him. “James Hill came here to kill someone. Execute, he would say. But it comes to the same thing. He would hang his victim from a tree. But was it a him he was looking for? Or a her?”
“He said ‘him.’ He said ‘young man.’”
“True,” said Gamache, walking again. “But he also said his name was Arthur Ellis. He lied once, maybe he lied twice.”
They walked quickly up the slope, headed to the Inn and Spa.
“You think he wasn’t looking for a man,” said Beauvoir. “He was looking for a woman.”
Chapter Twelve
Chief Inspector Gamache looked around the group at the Inn and Spa. They were all in the living room. A fire crackled in the grate, tended by Mike, the handyman. His wife, Angela, the receptionist, was there. Dominique, the owner, stood by the grand piano. She looked nervous. She’d put out tea and a plate of cookies. But she suspected that this was not a social event.
Sue Gravel, from the Bed and Breakfast, sat in the best chair. The large one by the fire. She looked sour and hugged herself, but Gamache knew the chill she felt came from within.
“Nice place,” said young Paul Goulet. He had returned from his bicycle ride just in time to change and join them.
They all looked at Chief Inspector Gamache, who stood by the fireplace. Waiting.
Finally the last member of the group arrived.
Tom Scott looked surprised to see so many people. He paused, then sat in a chair by the door. Outside of the circle made by the other people.
“Why are we here?” Dominique asked.
She was polite but puzzled.
“We’re here to catch a killer,” said Gamache. He looked at each of them. Some were afraid. Some were annoyed. Some were amused.
And one was a murderer.
“Last night, one of your guests was killed,” he said to Dominique. “He’d arrived the day before and signed himself in as Arthur Ellis. He spent the day in Three Pines, asking questions. He seemed most interested in young men of the area. But Arthur Ellis had a secret. And like most people with secrets, he told a lot of lies.”
Gamache looked beyond the circle of chairs. To the one on the outside. To Tom Scott.
“This morning, while supposedly jogging, you found his body hanging from a tree. You called for help. But then you did something very curious. Actually, you didn’t do something. You didn’t try to get him down.”
“He was obviously dead,” snapped Tom.
“And yet most people would try,” said the chief. “It would be a natural reaction. Unless you already knew he was dead. And had been for some time.”
Gamache turned back to the room.
“Like most murders, this one was about secrets and lies. But hidden below all those lies was an emotion. Sorrow. A sorrow so great it turned into a monster. And that monster finally consumed the man.”
The chief paused. All eyes were on him. The only sound was the mumbling of the fire.
“And that is when Arthur Ellis was born. Or, rather, reborn.”
The people in the room looked at each other.
“What do you mean?” asked Angela.
“Arthur Ellis was not his real name. His real name was James Hill.”
Gamache watched them. Paul shifted in his seat. Angela blushed, of course. Mike poked the fire. Sue? She dropped her eyes and clutched herself even tighter.
“James Hill had lost his wife and child in an accident twenty years ago, when they were hit by a truck. No one was arrested. There was no trial or even an apology. No one was held responsible. And yet his wife and child were dead.”
Now they looked at each other, eyes darting from face to face.
“An injustice had been done,” said Gamache. “And James Hill, full of rage, came up with a plan. He would track down each and every person in that truck, and he would kill them.”
Gamache picked up the file from the table in front of him.
“Over the years, he tracked down two of them. They were found hanged.”
“Psycho,” said Tom Scott.
“But why did he change his name to Arthur Ellis?” Dominique asked.
“Arthur Ellis was the alias of Canada’s official hangman,” said the chief inspector. “James Hill used the same alias when he was on the trail of his next victim.”
“Oh, God,” said Angela. Mike sat and put his arms around her.
“There is a murderer in this room. A person who has been involved in at least three deaths. The young Hill family, twenty years ago, and now the murder of the father. James Hill.”
“But you say he came here to kill someone,” said Paul. “Who?”
“That’s the question,” agreed Gamache. “Who had James Hill found in Three Pines? Which of the young people from the pickup? One man and one woman were left. Which of them was it?”
“Mr. Ellis was asking about young men,” said Angela. “Was that why? But that doesn’t make sense. He wouldn’t be young anymore.”
“Ellis lied,” said Gamache. “There has been a lot of lying in this case.”
His gaze came to rest on Tom Scott.
“He lied about his name,” the chief continued. “He lied about why he was here. Could he also have been lying about looking for a man? Maybe it was a woman. Maybe he wanted to put his victim at ease. Throw her off.”
Gamache turned to Sue Gravel.
“Maybe he was looking for a woman. Or” — now he shifted his gaze to Paul Goulet — “maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe one of the people in the truck twenty years ago had had a child of his own. And maybe James Hill wanted to hurt him the way he’d been hurt. By killing, not the man himself, but his child.”
Paul Goulet stood up. Across the room, Inspector Beauvoir tensed. Ready to tackle Goulet if he threatened the chief. But Goulet simply stared, his eyes narrow and cold.
“So what are you saying, Chief Inspector?” Dominique asked. “That he could have been looking for a man or a woman or a young person or an older person? Doesn’t exactly narrow it down.”
“No,” admitted Gamache. “But this does.”
From the file he took a slim piece of paper and read.
If you are reading this, my body has been found. I am sorry. I hope the discovery did not upset anyone. I tried to go as far away as possible so that no children would find me.
My work is finally done. I am tired, but I am at peace. Finally.
I know you cannot forgive me, but perhaps you can understand.
“I wondered why it wasn’t addressed to anyone. Some suicide letters aren’t signed. But most are at least addressed to someone. This man had no one to write to. No family. But he did want people to know that it was over. And that’s the key.”
Gamache put the note on the coffee table, next to the cookies.
“My work is finally done,” he quoted. “What did he mean by that?”
“That he’d killed the last person from that truck, obviously,” said Paul.
“Exactly.” Gamache turned to him.
There was silence in the room. Every eye was on the chief inspector.
“I am arresting you for the murder of James Hill,” he said. He stepped forward, as did Inspector Beauvoir. Just in time to catch Angela and Mike as they tried to flee.
Chapter Thirteen
Armand Gamache swirled the scotch in his glass. Around the table sat Dominique, Myrna, and Gabri.
“How did you know?” Dominique asked.
“It was really the only answer. They were the right age...”
“But a lot of people were the right age,” Myrna interrupted.
“True. But there was something else,” said Gamache. “His work was done. He planned to kill himself. He had no reason to live.”
They thought about that while Gamache waited. Finally, Gabri
lowered his beer and smiled, but without humour. His sad smile did not reach his eyes.
“His work was done because he had found, not one, but two,” said Gabri. “He’d found the last two kids from the pickup.”
Gamache nodded.
“Angela and Mike had moved away and married. When they learned what had happened to their two friends, they realized that the killer would be after them. So they changed their names and moved here. Working for cash, so there’d be less of a trail.”
“How did James Hill find them?” Myrna asked, taking a fistful of nuts.
“His job at the Department of Records. He knew they’d married. But there were no records after that. They disappeared. Then Mike made a mistake. He applied for a social insurance number using his old name. He needed it to get the money left to him in his parents’ will.”
“The SIN number,” said Dominique. “Ironic.”
“James Hill knew Mike was somewhere in the area,” said Gamache. “But he didn’t know where. He booked into the Inn and Spa and started looking.”
“Not realizing that Mike was right there,” said Dominique. “Didn’t he recognize him?”
“Would you?” asked Gabri. “A guy changes a lot from sixteen to thirty-six. Except me, of course.”
“Of course,” said Myrna, rolling her eyes.
“James Hill did not recognize either of them,” said Gamache. “But they recognized him immediately. He’d been in his late twenties when the accident happened. He’d have aged, but not changed all that much. They realized Hill had probably killed their friends, which was why they had changed their names and moved to this tiny village. And they kept alert, watching for Hill. In case he ever found them.”
“What a terrible life,” said Myrna.
“When James Hill checked into the Inn and Spa, Angela recognized him and told Mike. They decided to act, before Hill could. They’re claiming self-defence.”
“But why did they hang him?” asked Myrna. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to just knock him on the head?”
“They had to make it look like suicide. Angela had searched Hill’s room while he was in Three Pines and found his suicide note. Angela had been friendly with him. Then last night she mentioned that something was wrong with her car. She hoped he’d offer to drive her home. He did. But Tom Scott almost messed it all up. Tom heard Angela say her car had broken down, and he offered to drive her. She managed to put Tom off. When they got into Hill’s car, Mike was hiding in the back seat, and he strangled Hill. Mike was a big, strong guy, and Hill was older and slender. No match. Mike carried Hill through the woods, and together he and Angela got him into the tree.”