by Louise Penny
He noticed her bemused look. Laughing at him? He thought not. More likely poking gentle fun at herself and the services of the spa. Her son Marc and his wife Dominique had bought the run-down place a year or so ago and turned it into this magnificent inn and spa. And had invited his mother, Carole Gilbert, to move from Quebec City to Three Pines, to help them run it.
“I can see how you might think so, since I’ve worn my Tai Chi outfit.” He opened his arms so she could see the full splendor of his ski suit. She laughed. “I’ve actually come to ask a favor. May I borrow one of your snowmobiles? I understand you have some for your guests.”
“That’s true, we do. I’ll get Roar Parra to help you.”
“Merci. I thought I’d go into the woods, to the cabin.”
He watched her as he spoke, hoping for a reaction, and got one. The gracious woman became glacial. Interesting how a moment before she’d seemed calm, content, relaxed. And now, while hardly anything had physically changed she suddenly seemed to be made of ice. A chill radiated from her.
“Is that so? Why?”
“Just to see it again. Something to do.”
She examined him closely, her eyes reptilian. Then the mask descended and she once again became the gentille grande dame of the manor house.
“In this weather?” She glanced outside to the falling snow.
“If snow kept me from doing things I’d get nothing done in winter,” he said.
“That’s true,” she admitted. Reluctantly? he wondered. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard, but my husband is living there now.”
“Is that so?” He hadn’t heard. But he did hear her say “husband,” not “former husband.” They’d been separated for years, until Vincent Gilbert had suddenly shown up, uninvited, at the inn and spa at almost exactly the same time the Hermit’s body had appeared.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer a mud wrap?” she asked. “It’s quite similar to an hour with Vincent, I find.”
He laughed. “Non, madame, merci. Will he mind if I drop in?”
“Vincent? I’m afraid I’ve given up trying to figure out how his mind works.” But she relented a little and smiled at the melting man. “I’m sure he’ll be delighted for the company. But you’d better hurry, before it gets too late.”
It was already two in the afternoon. It would be dark by four.
And when the winter sun set on a Québec forest, monsters crawled out of the shadows. Not the B-grade movie monsters, not zombies or mummies or space aliens. But older, subtler wraiths. Invisible creatures that rode in on plunging temperatures. Death by freezing, death by exposure, death by going even a foot off the path, and getting lost. Death, ancient and patient, waited in Québec forests for the sun to set.
“Come with me.”
Carole Gilbert, petite and refined, put on her bulbous coat and joined the alien army. They walked around the side of the inn and spa, through large soft flakes of snow. In the middle distance Inspector Beauvoir could see cross-country skiers striding across the field on well-marked paths. In a few minutes they’d be inside, sipping buttery rum toddies or hot chocolate by the fire, their cheeks rosy, their noses running, rubbing their feet to get the circulation back.
If they were staying at the inn they’d be healthy and wealthy and warm.
And he’d be heading deep into the forest, racing the setting sun, to a cabin where a murder had happened and an asshole now lived.
“Roar,” Carole Gilbert called and the short, squat man in the shed straightened up. His hair and eyes were almost black and he was powerfully built.
“Madame Gilbert,” he said, nodding to her. Not in an obsequious manner, but with respect. And Inspector Beauvoir realized this woman would naturally receive respect because she treated others with it. As she did now with this woodsman.
“You remember Inspector Beauvoir, I believe.”
There was an awkward hesitation before Roar Parra put out his hand. Beauvoir wasn’t surprised. He and the rest of the homicide team had made this man’s life miserable. He, his wife Hanna and son Havoc had been the chief suspects in the murder of the Hermit.
The Inspector looked at their former suspect. A man familiar with the forest, a man who’d been cutting a trail, straight for the recluse’s cabin. He was Czech. The dead man was Czech. His son Havoc worked for Olivier and could have followed him one night through the woods and found the cabin, and found the treasure.
The Hermit had amassed his treasures almost certainly by stealing them from people in the Eastern Bloc when the walls were crumbling. When communism was crumbling, when people were desperate to get out, to the West.
They’d entrusted their family treasures, guarded and hidden for generations of communist rule, to the wrong man. To the Hermit, before he was a hermit, when he was a man with a plan. To steal from them. But he’d stolen more than antiquities and works of art. He’d stolen hope, he’d stolen trust.
Had he stolen from Roar and Hanna Parra? Had they found him?
Had they killed him?
Carole Gilbert had left and the two men were alone in the shed.
“Why’re you heading back to the cabin?”
There was nothing subtle about this brick of a man.
“Just curious. You have a problem with that?”
They stared at each other.
“Are you here to cause trouble?”
“I’m here to relax. A nice trip through the woods, that’s all. If you don’t hurry it’ll get too late.”
Was that Parra’s goal, Beauvoir wondered as he put the helmet over his toque and straddled the machine, revving the motors. Was he deliberately going slow in the hopes Beauvoir would get stuck in the woods, after nightfall?
No, he decided. Too refined. This was a man who whacked his enemies on the head. As the Hermit had died.
With a wave Beauvoir was away, feeling the powerful machine vibrating beneath him. He’d been on dozens of Ski-Doos in the past decade, since joining homicide. He loved them. The noise, the power, the freedom. The bracing cold and snow on his face. His body, insulated by the suit, was toasty and warm, almost too warm. He could feel the perspiration.
Beauvoir gripped the handles and leaned into a corner, the heavy machine following him. But something was different.
Something was wrong.
Not with the machine, but with him. He felt a familiar ache in his abdomen.
Surely not. He was just sitting on the machine, it wasn’t like he was doing any real work.
Deeper along the narrow path he went, into the woods. Without leaves the forest looked cold and bare. The shadows were sharp and long as was the pain now, in his stomach, in his side, shooting down into his groin.
Beauvoir breathed deeply but the pain grew worse.
Finally he had to stop.
Clutching his middle he slowly fell forward, his arm folding over the handles of the idling Ski-Doo. His head dropped and rested on his arm. He tried to concentrate on the vibration, on the calming, deep, predictable, civilized sound. But his world had collapsed to a single sensation.
Pain.
An agonizing, familiar pain. One he’d thought was gone forever, but it had found him again in the darkening woods in winter.
Closing his eyes he concentrated on his breath, hearing it, feeling it. Long, relaxed breath in. Long, relaxed breath out.
How big a mistake was this? An hour, perhaps slightly more, until the woods were in darkness. Would anyone sound an alarm? Would he be missed? Would Roar Parra simply go home? Would Carole Gilbert lock the door and toss another log on the fire?
Then he felt a hand on his face and jerked his head up. But the hand restrained him. Not violently, but certainly. Beauvoir’s eyes flew open and he looked into very blue ones.
“Don’t move, just lie still.”
The man was old. His face worn, but his eyes sharp. His bare hand, which had started on Beauvoir’s face now slipped quickly beneath the scarf and collar and turtleneck to Beauvoir’s pulse.
“Shh,” the man said. And Beauvoir shushed.
He knew who this man was. Vincent Gilbert. Dr. Gilbert.
The asshole.
But Gamache, and Myrna, Old Mundin and others claimed he was also a saint.
Beauvoir hadn’t seen it. The man had seemed all asshole to him when they’d investigated the murder of the Hermit.
“Come with me.” Gilbert reached across Beauvoir and turned the Ski-Doo off, then he put his long arms around Beauvoir and gradually helped him up. The two men walked, slowly, along the path, Beauvoir pausing for breath now and then. He threw up once. Gilbert took his own scarf and cleaned Beauvoir’s face and waited. And waited. In the snow and cold, until Beauvoir could go on. Then carefully, wordlessly, they limped deeper into the woods, Beauvoir leaning heavily on the tall, elderly asshole.
His eyes closed, Beauvoir concentrated on putting one plodding foot in front of the other. He felt the pain radiating from his side but he also felt the kiss of the snowflakes on his face and tried to concentrate on that. Then the sensations changed. The snow stopped touching his face, and he heard his footsteps echo on wood.
They were at the log cabin. He almost wept, with exhaustion and relief.
Opening his eyes as they entered he saw, a million miles across the single room, a large bed. It was covered with a warm duvet and soft pillows.
And all Beauvoir wanted to do was make it across the room, so much larger than he remembered, to the bed at the very far end.
“Almost there,” whispered Dr. Gilbert.
Beauvoir stared at the bed, willing it to come to him, as he and Gilbert inched their way across the wooden floorboards. Until, finally, finally. There.
Dr. Gilbert sat him on the side and while Beauvoir sagged, his head lolling for the pillow, the doctor held him upright and undressed him.
Only then did he let Beauvoir slowly subside, until his weary head hit the pillow and the soft flannel sheets were pulled snug around him and finally, finally, the duvet.
And Beauvoir drifted off to sleep, smelling sweet maple smoke from the hearth, and homemade soup and feeling the warmth close in around him as out the window he saw the snow piling up and the darkness arriving.
Beauvoir awoke a few hours later, coming back to consciousness slowly. His side ached, as though he’d been kicked hard, but the nausea had passed. A hot water bottle had been placed in the bed and he found himself hugging it, curled around it.
Sleepily, lazily, he lay in the bed and slowly the room came into focus.
Vincent Gilbert was sitting in a large easy chair by the fireplace. He was reading a book, a glass of red wine on the table beside him, his slippered feet resting on a hassock.
The cabin seemed at once familiar but different.
The walls were still log, the windows and hearth unchanged. Rugs were scattered around the floorboards, but no longer the fine, hand-stitched Oriental rugs the Hermit had. These were rag rugs, also homemade, but much closer to home.
A few paintings hung on the walls, but not the masterpieces the Hermit had collected, and hidden here. Now they were modest examples of Québécois artists. Fine but not, perhaps, spectacular.
The glass Dr. Gilbert used looked like any other glass, not the cut leaded crystal they’d found here after the murder.
But the biggest change was where the Hermit had had silver and gold and fine bone china candelabras to provide light, Dr. Gilbert had a lamp. An electric lamp. And on the table next to Gilbert, Beauvoir noticed a phone.
Electricity had been brought deep into the forest to power this rustic little cabin.
Then Beauvoir remembered why he’d made the trek into the woods.
It was to see once again where the murder had been committed. He looked over to the door and noticed a rug there, right where the bloodstain had been. Might still be.
Death had come to this peaceful little cabin, but in what form? Olivier or someone else. And driven by what? As Chief Inspector Gamache impressed upon them, murder was never about a gun or a knife or a blow to the head, it was what powered that thrust.
What had taken the Hermit’s life? Greed, as the Crown prosecution and Gamache contended? Or was it something else? Fear? Rage? Revenge? Jealousy?
The treasures discovered here had been remarkable, but not the most amazing part of the case. The cabin had produced something else, something far more disquieting.
A word, woven into a spider’s web. Up in the corner of the cabin, where the shadows were the deepest.
Woo.
The word had also been found carved, not well, into a piece of bloodstained wood. It had tumbled from the dead man’s hand and ended up under the bed as though cowering there. A little wooden word. Woo.
But what did it mean?
Had the Hermit made the word?
It didn’t seem likely, since he was a master carver and the wooden Woo was rustic, child-like.
The prosecution had concluded Olivier had put Woo into the web and carved it in wood as part of his campaign to terrify the Hermit, keep him hiding in the cabin. And Olivier had admitted, finally, that had been his goal, to convince the mad old man that the outside world was dangerous. Filled with demons and Furies and terrible, terrible beings.
Chaos is coming, old son, the Hermit had whispered to Olivier the last night of his life. Olivier had done his job well. The Hermit was well and truly terrified.
But while admitting to everything else, Olivier denied two things.
Killing the Hermit.
And making the word, Woo.
The court hadn’t believed him. Olivier had been found guilty and sentenced to prison. It was a case Chief Inspector Gamache had painstakingly, painfully, built against his friend. A case Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir had collaborated on and believed in.
And one the Chief now asked him to dismantle and put together again. Only this time seeing if the same evidence could exonerate Olivier and point to someone else.
Like the man in the cabin with him.
Gilbert looked up and smiled.
“Hello,” he said, closing the book and getting up slowly. Beauvoir had to remember this tall, slender man, with the white hair and searching eyes was in his late seventies.
Gilbert sat on the side of the bed and smiled reassuringly. “May I?” he asked Beauvoir before touching him. Beauvoir nodded. “I’ve spoken to Carole and told her you’d be spending the night,” Dr. Gilbert said, pulling down the duvet. “She said she’d call the B and B and let Gabri know. No need to worry.”
“Merci.”
Gilbert’s warm, sure hands were pressing against Beauvoir’s abdomen.
Beauvoir had been prodded countless times in the past two months, especially those first days. It seemed his new alarm clock. Every few hours he awoke, dazed from medication, to someone else shoving their cold hands against his stomach.
None felt like Gilbert. Beauvoir winced a few times, despite his pledge not to. The pain took him by surprise. As soon as he showed signs of discomfort Gilbert’s hands stopped, pausing to let Beauvoir catch his breath, then they moved on.
“You probably shouldn’t have taken the Ski-Doo out,” Gilbert smiled, replacing the bed sheets and duvet, “but I imagine you know that already. The bullet itself did some damage, but the longer-term effect is from a sort of shock wave the impact creates. Did your doctors explain that?”
Beauvoir shook his head.
“Perhaps they were too busy. The bullet went straight through your side. You probably lost quite a bit of blood.”
Beauvoir nodded, trying to keep the images at bay.
“It didn’t hit your internal organs,” Dr. Gilbert continued. “But the waves from the impact bruised the tissue. That’s what you’ll feel if you push yourself too hard, like this afternoon. But you’re healing well.”
“Merci,” said Beauvoir. It helped to understand.
And Beauvoir knew then the man was a saint. He’d been touched by any number of medical men and women. All healers,
all well intentioned, some kind, some rough. All made it clear they wanted him to live, but none had made him feel that his life was precious, was worth saving, was worth something.
Vincent Gilbert did. His healing went beyond the flesh, beyond the blood. Beyond the bones.
Gilbert patted the covers and made to get up, but hesitated. He picked up a small bottle of pills on the bedside table. “I found these in your pocket.”
Beauvoir reached out but Gilbert closed them in his hand and searched Beauvoir’s face. There was a long pause. Finally Gilbert relented and opened his fist. “Be careful with these.”
Beauvoir took the bottle and shook out a pill.
“Perhaps half,” said Dr. Gilbert, reaching for it.
Beauvoir watched Dr. Gilbert skillfully snap a small OxyContin in two.
“I keep them just in case,” Beauvoir said, swallowing the tiny half pill as Gilbert handed him clean pajamas.
“In case you do something foolish?” asked Gilbert with a smile. “You might need another bottle.”
“Har har,” said Beauvoir. But already he could feel the warmth spreading and the pain dulling and any sting there might have been in Gilbert’s comment drifted away.
As he dressed, Beauvoir watched the doctor in the kitchen spooning soup into two bowls and cutting fresh baked bread.
“Les Canadiens are playing tonight, aren’t they?” Gilbert returned with the food and made Beauvoir comfortable sitting up in bed. “Want to watch?”
“Please.”
Within moments they were eating soup, baguette and watching Les Canadiens slaughter New York.
“Too salty,” snapped Gilbert. “I told Carole not to put so much salt in the food.”
“Tastes fine to me.”
“Then you have no taste. Raised on poutine and burgers.”
Beauvoir looked at Dr. Gilbert expecting to see a smile. Instead his handsome face was sour, angry. Entitled, petulant, petty.
The asshole was back. Or, more likely, had been there all along in deceptively easy company with the saint.
SEVEN
Armand Gamache rose quietly in the night, putting on his bedside lamp and dressing warmly. Henri watched all this with his tail swishing and the tennis ball in his mouth. They tiptoed down the narrow, winding wood stairs that seemed carved into the center of the old home. Émile had put him on the top floor, in what had been the master bedroom. It was a magnificent loft space with wood beams and dormer windows out each side of the roof. Émile had explained that he no longer felt comfortable on the steep, narrow stairs, worn by hundreds of years of feet, and did Armand mind?