The Brutal Telling

by Louise Penny

  It felt a little as though the world was on the verge of rotting.

  As Gamache strolled, the familiar scents and sounds receded and he was joined by John the Watchman, and Lavina who could fly, and the little boy across the aisle on Air Canada. Who also flew, and told stories.

  This murder seemed to be about treasure. But Gamache knew it wasn’t. That was just the outward appearance. It was actually about something unseen. Murder always was.

  This murder was about fear. And the lies it produced. But, more subtly, it was about stories. The tales people told the world, and told themselves. The Mythtime and the totems, that uneasy frontier between fable and fact. And the people who fell into the chasm. This murder was about the stories told by Jakob’s carvings. Of Chaos and the Furies, of a Mountain of Despair and Rage. Of betrayal. And something else. Something that horrified even the Mountain.

  And at its heart there was, Gamache now knew, a brutal telling.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The search parties had already been over the structure a couple of times, but they looked again. Even more closely this time. Beneath floorboards, beneath eaves, behind paintings. They looked and they looked and they looked.

  And finally, they found.

  It was behind the bricks in the huge stone fireplace. Behind what seemed a perpetual fire. The fire had had to be extinguished and the smoldering logs removed. But there the Sûreté team found first one, then two, then four loose bricks. Removed, they revealed a small compartment.

  Inspector Beauvoir reached a gloved hand in carefully, but not before smearing soot on his arm and shoulder.

  “I have something,” he said. All eyes were on him. Everyone stared as his arm slowly came out of the cavity. On the table in front of the Chief Inspector he placed a silver candelabra. A menorah. Even Beauvoir, who knew nothing about silver, recognized it as something remarkable. It was simple and refined and old.

  This menorah had survived sieges, pogroms, slaughters, the holocaust. People had cherished it, hidden it, guarded it, prayed before it. Until one night in a forest in Quebec, someone had ruined it.

  The menorah had killed a man.

  “Paraffin?” Inspector Beauvoir pointed to bits of translucent material stuck to it. Mixed with dried blood. “He made his own candles. That’s what the paraffin in the cabin was for, not just preserves but candles.” The Chief nodded.

  Beauvoir returned to the hearth and put his arm back down the black hole. They watched his face and finally saw that slight change, the surprise. As his hand hit something else.

  He placed a small burlap bag beside the menorah. No one spoke, until finally Chief Inspector Gamache asked a question of the man sitting opposite him.

  “Have you looked inside?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  There was another long pause, but Gamache didn’t hurry him. There was no rush now.

  “I didn’t have time. I just grabbed it out of the Hermit’s cabin and hid it along with the candlestick, thinking I could take a closer look in the morning. But then the body was discovered and there was too much attention.”

  “Is that why you lit the fires, Olivier? Before the police arrived?”

  Olivier hung his head. It was over. Finally.

  “How’d you know where to look?” he asked.

  “I didn’t, at first. But sitting here watching the search I remembered you’d said the bistro used to be a hardware store. And that the fireplaces had to be rebuilt. They were the only new thing in the room, though they looked old. And I remembered the fires, lit on a damp but not cold morning. The first thing you did when the body was discovered. Why?” He nodded toward the things on the table. “To make sure we wouldn’t find those.”

  Armand Gamache leaned forward, toward Olivier on the other side of the menorah and the burlap bag. Beyond the pale. “Tell us what happened. The truth this time.”

  Gabri sat beside Olivier, still in shock. He’d been amused at first when the Sûreté search party had shown up, moved from the Parra place back to the bistro. He had made a few feeble jokes. But as the search became more and more invasive Gabri’s amusement had faded, replaced by annoyance, then anger. And now shock.

  But he’d never left Olivier’s side, and he didn’t now.

  “He was dead when I found him. I admit, I took those.” Olivier gestured to the items on the table. “But I didn’t kill him.”

  “Be careful, Olivier. I’m begging you to be careful.” Gamache’s voice held an edge that chilled even the Sûreté officers.

  “It’s the truth.” Olivier shut his eyes, almost believing if he couldn’t see them they weren’t there. The silver menorah and squalid little sack wouldn’t be sitting on a table in his bistro. The police wouldn’t be there. Just he and Gabri. Left in peace.

  Finally he opened his eyes, to see the Chief Inspector looking directly at him.

  “I didn’t do it, I swear to God, I didn’t do it.”

  He turned to Gabri who stared back, then took his hand and turned to the Chief Inspector. “Look, you know Olivier. I know Olivier. He didn’t do this.”

  Olivier’s eyes darted from one to the other. Surely there was a way out? Some crack, even the tiniest one, he could squeeze through.

  “Tell me what happened,” Gamache repeated.

  “I already did.”

  “Again,” said Gamache.

  Olivier took a deep breath. “I left Havoc to close up and went to the cabin. I stayed for about forty-five minutes, had a cup of tea, and when I left he wanted to give me a little creamer. But I forgot it. When I got back to the village I realized what I’d done and was angry. Pissed off that he kept promising me that,” he jabbed his finger at the sack, “but never gave it to me. Only small stuff.”

  “That creamer was valued at fifty thousand dollars. It belonged to Catherine the Great.”

  “But it wasn’t that.” Again Olivier shot a look at the bag. “When I returned the Hermit was dead.”

  “You told us the sack was gone.”

  “I lied. It was there.”

  “Had you seen the menorah before?”

  Olivier nodded. “He used it all the time.”

  “For worship?”

  “For light.”

  “It’s also almost certainly priceless. You knew that, I suppose.”

  “You mean that’s why I took it? No, I took it because it had my fingerprints all over it. I’d touched it hundreds of times, lighting candles, putting new ones in.”

  “Walk us through it,” said Gamache, his voice calm and reasonable.

  And as Olivier spoke the scene unfolded before them. Of Olivier arriving back at the cabin. Seeing the door partly open, the sliver of light spilling onto the porch. Olivier pushing the door open and seeing the Hermit there. And blood. Olivier’d approached, stunned, and picked up the object by the Hermit’s hand. And seeing the blood, too late, he’d dropped it. It had bounced under the bed to be found by Agent Lacoste. Woo.

  Olivier had also seen the menorah, toppled over on the floor. Coated with blood.

  He’d backed out of the room, onto the porch, preparing to run. Then he stopped. In front of him was the horrible scene. A man he knew and had come to care about, violently dead. And behind him the dark forest, and the trail running through it.

  And caught between the two?

  Olivier.

  He’d collapsed into the rocking chair on the porch to think. His back to the terrible scene in the cabin behind him. His thoughts stretching forward.

  What to do?

  The problem, Olivier knew, was the horse trail. He’d known it for weeks. Since the Gilberts unexpectedly bought the old Hadley house, and even more unexpectedly decided to reopen the bridle paths.

  “Now I understand why you hated them so much,” said Gabri softly. “It seemed such an overreaction. It wasn’t just the competition with the bistro and B and B, was it?”

  “It was the trails. I was afraid, angry at them for getting Roar t
o open them. I knew he’d find the cabin and it’d all be over.”

  “What did you do?” asked Gamache.

  And Olivier told them.

  He’d sat on the porch for what seemed ages, thinking. Going round and round the situation. And finally he’d arrived at his coup de grâce. He decided the Hermit could do him one more favor. He could ruin Marc Gilbert and stop the trails, all at once.

  “So I put him in the wheelbarrow and took him to the old Hadley house. I knew if another body was found there it would kill the business. No inn and spa, then no horse trails. Roar would stop work. The Gilberts would leave. The paths would grow over.”

  “And then what?” asked Gamache, again. Olivier hesitated.

  “I could take what I wanted from the cabin. It would all work out.”

  Three people stared at him. None with admiration.

  “Oh, Olivier,” said Gabri.

  “What else could I do?” he pleaded with his partner. “I couldn’t let them find the place.” How to explain how reasonable, brilliant even, this all seemed at two thirty in the morning. In the dark. With a body ten feet away.

  “Do you know how this looks?” rasped Gabri.

  Olivier nodded and hung his head.

  Gabri turned to Chief Inspector Gamache. “He’d never have done it if he’d actually killed the man. You wouldn’t, would you? You’d want to hide the murder, not advertise it.”

  “Then what happened?” Gamache asked. Not ignoring Gabri but not wanting to be sidetracked either.

  “I took the wheelbarrow back, picked up those two things and left.”

  They looked at the table. The most damning items. And the most precious. The murder weapon and the sack.

  “I brought them back here and hid them in the space behind the fireplace.”

  “You didn’t look in the bag?” Gamache asked again.

  “I thought I’d have plenty of time, when all the attention was on the Gilbert place. But then when Myrna found the body here the next morning I almost died. I couldn’t very well dig the things out. So I lit the fires, to make sure you wouldn’t look in there. For days after there was too much attention on the bistro. And by then I just wanted to pretend they didn’t exist. That none of this had happened.”

  Silence met the story.

  Gamache leaned back and watched Olivier for a moment. “Tell me the rest of the story, the one the Hermit told in his carvings.”

  “I don’t know the rest. I won’t know until we open that.” Olivier’s eyes were barely able to look away from the sack.

  “I don’t think we need to just yet.” Gamache sat forward. “Tell me the story.”

  Olivier looked at Gamache, flabbergasted. “I’ve told you all I know. He told me up to the part where the army found the villagers.”

  “And the Horror was approaching, I remember. Now I want to hear the end.”

  “But I don’t know how it ends.”

  “Olivier?” Gabri looked closely at his partner.

  Olivier held Gabri’s gaze then looked over at Gamache. “You know?”

  “I know,” said Gamache.

  “What do you know?” asked Gabri, his eyes moving from the Chief Inspector to Olivier. “Tell me.”

  “The Hermit wasn’t the one telling the story,” said Gamache.

  Gabri stared at Gamache, uncomprehending, then over at Olivier. Who nodded.

  “You?” Gabri whispered.

  Olivier closed his eyes and the bistro faded. He heard the mumbling of the Hermit’s fire. Smelled the wood of the log cabin, the sweet maple wood from the smoke. He felt the warm tea mug in his hands, as he had hundreds of times. Saw the violin, gleaming in the firelight. Across from him sat the shabby man, in clean and mended old clothing surrounded by treasure. The Hermit was leaning forward, his eyes glowing and filled with fear. As he listened. And Olivier spoke.

  Olivier opened his eyes and was back in the bistro. “The Hermit was afraid of something, I knew that the first time I met him in this very room. He became more and more reclusive as the years passed until he’d hardly leave his cabin to go into town. He’d ask me for news of the outside world. So I’d tell him about the politics and the wars, and some of the things happening locally. Once I told him about a concert at the church here. You were singing,” he looked at Gabri, “and he wanted to go.”

  There he was, at the point of no return. Once spoken, these words could never be taken back.

  “I couldn’t let that happen. I didn’t want anyone else to meet him, to maybe make friends with him. So I told the Hermit the concert had been canceled. He wanted to know why. I don’t know what came over me, but I started making up this story about the Mountain and the villagers and the boy stealing from it, and running away and hiding.”

  Olivier stared down at the edge of the table, focusing on it. He could see the grain of the wood where it had been worn smooth. By hands touching it, rubbing it, resting on it, for generations. As his did now.

  “The Hermit was scared of something, and the stories made him more afraid. He’d become unhinged, impressionable. I knew if I told him about terrible things happening outside the forest he’d believe me.”

  Gabri leaned away, to get the full picture of his partner. “You did that on purpose? You made him so afraid of the outside world he wouldn’t leave? Olivier.”

  The last word was exhaled, as though it stank.

  “But there was more to it than that,” said Gamache, quietly. “Your stories not only kept the Hermit prisoner, and his treasure safe from anyone else, but they also inspired the carvings. I wonder what you thought when you saw the first.”

  “I did almost throw it away, when he gave it to me. But then I convinced myself it was a good thing. The stories were inspiring him. Helping him create.”

  “Carvings with walking mountains, and monsters and armies marching his way? You must have given the poor man nightmares,” said Gabri.

  “What did Woo mean?” Gamache asked.

  “I don’t know, not really. But sometimes when I told the story he’d whisper it. At first I thought it was just an exhale, but then I realized he was saying a word. Woo.”

  Olivier imitated the Hermit saying the word, under his breath. Woo.

  “So you made the spider’s web with the word in it, to mimic Charlotte’s Web, a book he’d asked you to find.”

  “No. How could I do that? I wouldn’t even know how to start.”

  “And yet Gabri told us you’d made your own clothes as a kid. If you wanted to, you could figure it out.”

  “No,” Olivier insisted.

  “And you admitted the Hermit taught you how to whittle, how to carve.”

  “But I wasn’t any good at it,” said Olivier, pleading. He could see the disbelief in their faces.

  “It wasn’t very well made. You carved Woo.” Gamache forged forward. “Years ago. You didn’t have to know what it meant, only that it meant something to the Hermit. Something horrible. And you kept that word, to be used one day. As countries warehouse the worst of weapons, against the day it might be needed. That word carved in wood was your final weapon. Your Nagasaki. The last bomb to drop on a weary and frightened and demented man.

  “You played on his sense of guilt, magnified by isolation. You guessed he’d stolen those things so you made up the story of the boy and the Mountain. And it worked. It kept him there. But it also inspired him to produce those carvings, which ironically turned out to be his greatest treasure.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “You just kept him prisoner. How could you?” said Gabri.

  “I didn’t say anything he wasn’t willing to believe.”

  “You don’t really think that?” said Gabri.

  Gamache glanced at the items on the table. The menorah, used to murder. And the small sack. The reason for murder. He couldn’t put it off any longer. It was time for his own brutal telling. He stood.

  “Olivier Brulé,” said Chief Inspector Gamache, his voice weary and
his face grim, “I’m arresting you on a charge of murder.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The frost was thick on the ground when Armand Gamache next appeared in Three Pines. He parked his car by the old Hadley house and took the path deeper and deeper into the woods. The leaves had fallen from the trees and lay crisp and crackling beneath his feet. Picking one up he marveled, not for the first time, at the perfection of nature where leaves were most beautiful at the very end of their lives.

  He paused now and then, not to get his bearings because he knew where he was going and how to get there, but to appreciate his surroundings. The quiet. The soft light now allowed through the trees and hitting ground that rarely saw the sun. The woods smelled musky and rich and sweet. He walked slowly, in no rush, and after half an hour came to the cabin. He paused on the porch, noticing again with a smile the brass number above the door.

  Then he entered.

  He hadn’t seen the cabin since all the treasures had been photographed, fingerprinted, catalogued and taken away.

  He paused at the deep burgundy stain on the plank floor.

  Then he walked round the simple room. He could call this place home, he knew, if it had only one precious thing. Reine-Marie.

  Two chairs for friendship.

  As he stood quietly, the cabin slowly filled with glittering antiques and antiquities and first editions. And with a haunting Celtic melody. The Chief Inspector again saw young Morin turn the violin into a fiddle, his loose limbs taut, made for this purpose.

  Then he saw the Hermit Jakob, alone, whittling by the fire. Thoreau on the inlaid table. The violin leaning against the river rock of the hearth. This man who was his own age, but appeared so much older. Worn down by dread. And something else. The thing that even the Mountain feared.

  He remembered the two carvings hidden by the Hermit. Somehow different from the rest. Distinguished by the mysterious code beneath. He’d really thought the key to breaking the Caesar’s Shift had been Charlotte. Then he’d been sure the key was seventeen. That would explain those odd numbers over the door.

  But the Caesar’s Shift remained unbroken. A mystery.