The Brutal Telling

by Louise Penny

  “That would be each,” said Marc, as he turned off the lights and they walked back up the stairs.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Three hundred and twenty-five dollars per person. Before tax,” said Marc.

  Beauvoir was glad he was behind them and no one saw his face. Seemed only the wealthy got healed.

  So far, though, he hadn’t seen any signs of Varathane. He’d looked at floors, counters, doors, exclaiming over the craftsmanship, to the Gilberts’ delight. But he’d also been looking for the telltale gleam. The unnatural shine.

  Nothing.

  At the front door he debated asking them outright, but he didn’t want to show his hand just yet. He wandered around the yard, noticing the now groomed lawns, the newly planted gardens, the trees staked and sturdy.

  It all appealed to his sense of order. This was what the country should be. Civilized.

  Roar Parra appeared round the corner of the house pushing a wheelbarrow. He stopped when he saw Beauvoir.

  “Can I help you?”

  Beauvoir introduced himself and looked at the horse manure in the barrow. “More work for you, I suppose.” He fell into step with Parra.

  “I like horses. Nice to see them back. Old Mrs. Hadley used to keep them. Barns fallen down now and the trails have grown over.”

  “I hear the new owners have you cutting them again.”

  Parra grunted. “Big job. Still, my son helps when he can, and I like it. Quiet in the woods.”

  “Except for the strangers wandering around.” Beauvoir saw the wary look on Parra’s face.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Well, you told Agent Lacoste you’d seen a stranger disappearing into the woods. But it wasn’t the dead man. Who do you think it was?”

  “I musta been wrong.”

  “Now, why would you say that? You don’t really believe it, do you?”

  For once Beauvoir really looked at the man. He was covered in sweat and dirt, and manure. He was stocky and muscled. But none of that made him stupid. In fact, Beauvoir thought this man was very bright. So why had he just lied?

  “I’m tired of people looking at me like I just said I’d been kidnapped by aliens. The guy was there one moment, gone the next. I looked for him, but nothing. And no, I haven’t seen him since.”

  “Maybe he’s gone.”

  “Maybe.”

  They walked in silence. The air was filled with the musky scents of fresh harvested hay and manure.

  “I heard the new owners here are very environmentally aware.” Beauvoir managed to make it sound a reproach, something slightly silly. Some new-fangled city-folk nonsense. “Bet they won’t let you use pesticides or fertilizers.”

  “I won’t use them. Told them so. Had to teach them to compost and even recycle. Not sure they’d ever heard of it. And they still used plastic bags for their groceries, can you believe it?”

  Beauvoir, who did too, shook his head. Parra dumped the manure onto a steaming pile and turned back to Beauvoir, chuckling.

  “What?” asked Beauvoir.

  “They’re now greener than green. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Wish everyone was.”

  “So that means with all those renovations they didn’t use any toxic stuff, like Varathane.”

  Again the stocky man laughed. “Wanted to, but I stopped them. Told them about tung oil.”

  Beauvoir felt his optimism fade. Leaving Roar Parra to turn over the compost heap he went back to the house and rang the doorbell. It was time to ask them directly. The door was answered by Madame Gilbert, Marc’s mother.

  “I’d like to speak to your son again, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course, Inspector. Would you like to come in?”

  She was genteel and gracious. Unlike her son. Beneath his cheerful and friendly manner there peeked every now and then a condescension, an awareness that he had a lot and others had less. And somehow that made them less.

  “I’ll just wait. It’s a small point.”

  After she’d disappeared Beauvoir stood in the entrance admiring the fresh white paint, the polished furniture, the flowers in the hall beyond. The sense of order and calm and welcome. In the old Hadley house. He could hardly believe it. For all Marc Gilbert’s flaws, he’d been able to do all this. Light flooded through the window in the foyer and gleamed off the wooden floors.

  Gleamed.

  SIXTEEN

  By the time Madame Gilbert and Marc returned Inspector Beauvoir had the area rug up and was examining the floor of the small entrance hall.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Beauvoir looked up from where he was kneeling and gestured to them to stay where they were. Then he bent back down.

  The floor had been Varathaned. It was smooth and hard and clear and glossy. Except for one small smudge. He stood up and brushed off his knees.

  “Do you have a cordless phone?”

  “I’ll get it,” said Marc.

  “Perhaps your mother wouldn’t mind.” Beauvoir looked at Carole Gilbert who nodded and left.

  “What is it?” Marc asked, leaning in and staring at the floor.

  “You know what it is, Monsieur Gilbert. Yesterday your wife said you never used Varathane, that you were trying to be as eco-friendly as possible. But that wasn’t true.”

  Marc laughed. “You’re right. We did use Varathane here. But that was before we knew there was something better to use. So we stopped.”

  Beauvoir stared at Marc Gilbert. He could hear Carole returning with the phone, her heels clicking on the wooden floors.

  “I use Varathane,” said the Inspector. “I’m not as environmentally aware as you, I guess. I know it takes about a day to set. But it really isn’t completely hard for a week or so. This Varathane isn’t months old. You didn’t start with it, did you? This was just done within the last week.”

  Gilbert finally looked flustered. “Look, I Varathaned it one night when everyone else was asleep. It was last Friday. That’s good wood and it’s going to get more wear than any other place in the inn, so I decided to use Varathane. But just there. Nowhere else. I don’t think Dominique or Mama even know.”

  “Don’t you use this door all the time? It is the main entrance, after all.”

  “We park around the side and use the kitchen door. We never use the front. But our guests will.”

  “Here’s the phone.” Carole Gilbert had reappeared. Beauvoir thanked her and called the bistro.

  “Is Chief Inspector Gamache there, s’il vous plaît?” he asked Olivier.

  “Oui?” He heard the Chief’s deep voice.

  “I’ve found something. I think you need to come up. And bring a Scene of Crime kit, please.”

  “Scene of Crime? What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Marc, getting irritated now.

  But Beauvoir had stopped answering questions.

  Within minutes Gamache and Morin arrived and Beauvoir showed them the polished floor. And the little scuff mark marring the perfect shine.

  Morin took photographs, then, gloves on and tweezers ready, he took samples.

  “I’ll get these to the lab in Sherbrooke right away.”

  Morin left and Gamache and Beauvoir turned back to the Gilberts. Dominique had arrived home with groceries and had joined them.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  They were standing in the large hall now, away from the entrance, with its yellow police tape and rolled-up carpet.

  Gamache was stern, all semblance of the affable man gone. “Who was the dead man?”

  Three stunned people stared back.

  “We’ve told you,” said Carole. “We don’t know.”

  Gamache nodded slowly. “You did say that. And you also said you’d never seen anyone fitting his description, but you had. Or at least one of you had. And one of you knows exactly what that lab report will tell us.”

  They stared at each other now.

  “The dead man was here, lying in your entrance, on Varathane not qu
ite hardened. He had it stuck to his sweater. And your floor has part of his sweater stuck to it.”

  “But this is ridiculous,” said Carole, looking from Gamache to Beauvoir. She too could shape-shift, and now the gracious chatelaine became a formidable woman, her eyes angry and hard. “Leave our home immediately.”

  Gamache bowed slightly and to Beauvoir’s amazement he turned to go, catching Beauvoir’s eye.

  They walked down the dirt road into Three Pines.

  “Well done, Jean Guy. Twice we searched that house and twice we missed it.”

  “So why are we leaving? We should be up there, interviewing them.”

  “Perhaps. But time is on our side. One of them knows we’ll have proof, probably before the day’s out. Let him stew. Believe me, it’s no favor I’ve done them.”

  And Beauvoir, thinking about it, knew that to be true.

  Just before lunch Marc Gilbert arrived at the Incident Room.

  “May I speak to you?” he asked Gamache.

  “You can speak to all of us. There’re no secrets anymore, are there, Monsieur Gilbert?”

  Marc bristled but sat in the chair indicated. Beauvoir nodded to Morin to join them with his notebook.

  “I’ve come voluntarily, you can see that,” said Marc.

  “I can,” said Gamache.

  Marc Gilbert had walked down to the old railway station, slowly. Going over and over what he’d tell them. It had sounded good when he’d talked to the trees and stones and the ducks flying south. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  “Look, I know this sounds ridiculous.” He started with the one thing he’d promised himself not to say. He tried to concentrate on the Chief Inspector, not that ferret of an assistant, or the idiot boy taking notes. “But I found the body just lying there. I couldn’t sleep so I got up. I was heading to the kitchen to make myself a sandwich when I saw him. Lying there by the front door.”

  He stared at Gamache who was watching him with calm, interested brown eyes. Not accusing, not even disbelieving. Just listening.

  “It was dark, of course, so I turned on a light and went closer. I thought it might be a drunk who’d staggered up the hill from the bistro, saw our place and just made himself comfortable.”

  He was right, it did sound ridiculous. Still the Chief said nothing.

  “I was going to call for help but I didn’t want to upset Dominique or my mother, so I crept closer to the guy. Then I saw his head.”

  “And you knew he’d been murdered,” said Beauvoir, not believing a word of this.

  “That’s it.” Marc turned grateful eyes to the Inspector, until he saw the sneer, then he turned back to Gamache. “I couldn’t believe it.”

  “So a murdered man shows up in your house in the middle of the night. Didn’t you lock the door?” asked Beauvoir.

  “We do, but we’re getting a lot of deliveries and since we never use that door ourselves I guess we forgot.”

  “What did you do, Monsieur Gilbert?” Gamache asked, his voice soothing, reasonable.

  Marc opened his mouth, shut it and looked down at his hands. He’d promised himself when it got to this part he wouldn’t look away, or down. Wouldn’t flinch. But now he did all three.

  “I thought about it for a while, then I picked the guy up and carried him down into the village. To the bistro.”

  There it was.

  “Why?” Gamache asked.

  “I was going to call the police, actually had the phone in my hand,” he held out his empty hand to them as though that was proof, “but then I got to thinking. About all the work we’d put into the place. And we’re so close, so close. We’re going to open in just over a month, you know. And I realized it would be all over the papers. Who’d want to relax in an inn and spa where someone had just been killed?”

  Beauvoir hated to say it, but he had to agree. Especially at those prices.

  “So you dumped him in the bistro?” he asked. “Why?”

  Now Gilbert turned to him. “Because I didn’t want to put him into someone else’s home to be found. And I knew Olivier kept the key under a planter by the front door.” He could see their skepticism, but plowed ahead anyway. “I took the dead guy down, left him on the floor of the bistro and came home. I moved a rug up from the spa area to cover where the guy had been. I knew no one would miss it downstairs. Too much else going on.”

  “This is a dangerous time,” said Gamache, staring at Marc. “We could charge you with obstruction, with indignities to a body, with hampering the investigation.”

  “With murder,” said Beauvoir.

  “We need the full truth. Why did you take the body to the bistro? You could have left him in the woods.”

  Marc sighed. He didn’t think they’d press this point. “I thought about it, but there were lots of kids in Three Pines for the long weekend and I didn’t want any of them finding him.”

  “Noble,” said Gamache, with equilibrium. “But that wasn’t likely to happen, was it? How often do kids play in the woods around your place?”

  “It happens. Would you run that risk?”

  “I would call the police.”

  The Chief let that sentence do its job. It stripped Marc Gilbert of any pretension to higher ground. And left him exposed before them. For a man who, at best, did something unconscionable. At worst he murdered a man.

  “The truth,” said Gamache, almost in a whisper.

  “I took the body to the bistro so that people would think he’d been killed there. Olivier’s treated us like shit since we arrived.”

  “So you paid him back by putting a body there?” asked Beauvoir. He could think of a few people he’d like to dump bodies on. But never would. This man did. That spoke of his hatred of Olivier. A rare, and surprising, degree of hatred. And his resolve.

  Marc Gilbert looked at his hands, looked out the window, moved his gaze around the walls of the old railway station. And finally he rested on the large man across from him.

  “That’s what I did. I shouldn’t have done it, I know.” He shook his head in wonderment at his own stupidity. Then he looked up suddenly as the silence grew. His eyes were sharp and bright. “Wait a minute. You don’t think I killed the man, do you?”

  They said nothing.

  Gilbert looked from one to the other. He even looked at the idiot agent with the poised pen.

  “Why would I do that? I don’t even know who he is.”

  Still they said nothing.

  “Really. I’d never seen him before.”

  Finally Beauvoir broke the silence. “And yet there he was in your house. Dead. Why would a strange body be in your house?”

  “You see?” Gilbert thrust his hand toward Beauvoir. “You see? That’s why I didn’t call the cops. Because I knew that’s what you’d think.” He put his head into his hands as though trying to contain his scrambling thoughts. “Dominique’s going to kill me. Oh, Jesus. Oh, God.” His shoulders sagged and his head hung, heavy from the weight of what he’d done and what was still to come.

  Just then the phone rang. Agent Morin reached for it. “Sûreté du Québec.”

  The voice on the other end spoke hurriedly and was muffled.

  “Désolé,” said Morin, feeling bad because he knew he was interrupting the interrogation. “I don’t understand.” Everyone was looking at him. He colored and tried to listen closely, but he still couldn’t make out what was being said. Then he heard and the color in his face changed. “Un instant.”

  He covered the mouthpiece. “It’s Madame Gilbert. There’s a man on their land. She saw him in the woods at the back.” Morin listened again at the phone. “She says he’s approaching the house. What should she do?”

  All three men stood up.

  “Oh my God, he must have seen me leave and knows they’re alone,” said Marc.

  Gamache took the phone. “Madame Gilbert, is the back door locked? Can you get to it now?” He waited. “Good. Where is he now?” He listened, then began striding to the door, Inspector Be
auvoir and Marc Gilbert running beside him. “We’ll be there in two minutes. Take your mother-in-law and lock yourselves in an upstairs bathroom. That one you took me to. Yes, with the balcony. Lock the doors, close the curtains. Stay there until we come to get you.”

  Beauvoir had started the car and Gamache slammed the door and handed the phone back to Morin. “Stay here. You too.”

  “I’m coming,” said Gilbert, reaching for the passenger door.

  “You’ll stay here and talk to your wife. Keep her calm. You’re delaying us, monsieur.”

  Gamache’s voice was intense, angry.

  Gilbert grabbed the phone from Morin as Beauvoir gunned the car and they took off over the stone bridge, around the common and up du Moulin, to stop short of the old Hadley house. They were there in less than a minute. They got quickly and quietly out of the car.

  “Do you have a gun?” Beauvoir whispered as they ran, crouched, to the corner of the house. Gamache shook his head. Really, thought Beauvoir. There were times he just felt like shooting the Chief himself.

  “They’re dangerous,” said Gamache.

  “Which is why he,” Beauvoir jerked his head toward the back of the property, “probably has one.”

  Gamache brought his hand up and Beauvoir was silent. The Chief motioned in one direction, then disappeared around the side of the house. Beauvoir ran past the front door and around the far side. Both making for the back, where Dominique had seen the man.

  Hugging the wall and staying low Gamache edged along. There was a need for speed. The stranger had been here for at least five minutes, uninterrupted. He could be in the house by now. A lot can happen in a minute, never mind five.

  He edged around a bush and got to the far end of the large old house. There he saw movement. A man. Large. In a hat and gloves and field coat. He was close to the house, close to the back door. If he got inside their job would be far more difficult. So many places to hide. So much closer to the women.

  As the Chief Inspector watched the man looked around then made for the French doors into the kitchen.

  Gamache stepped out from the wall.

  “Hold it,” he commanded. “Sûreté du Québec.”

  The man stopped. His back was to Gamache and he couldn’t see whether Gamache had a gun. But neither could Gamache see if he had one.