The Brutal Telling

by Louise Penny

  This seemed to satisfy Sommes, who handed the carving back, but reluctantly.

  “I’d like to have met the man who did that. He was gifted.”

  “He might have been a logger. Might have helped cut down your forests.”

  “Many in my family were loggers. It happens. Doesn’t make them bad men or lifelong enemies.”

  “Do you teach other artists?” Gamache asked, casually.

  “You think maybe he came here to talk to me?” asked Sommes.

  “I think he came here. And he’s a carver.”

  “First he was a logger, now he’s a carver. Which is it, Chief Inspector?”

  It was said with humor, but the criticism wasn’t lost on Gamache. He was fishing, and he knew it. So did Sommes. So did Esther. We’re all fishermen, she’d said.

  Had he found anything on this visit? Gamache was beginning to doubt it.

  “Do you teach carving?” he persisted.

  Sommes shook his head. “Only to other Haida.”

  “The Hermit used wood from here. Does that surprise you?”

  “Not at all. Some stands are now protected, but we’ve agreed on areas that can be logged. And replanted. It’s a good industry, if managed properly. And young trees are great for the ecosystem. I advise all wood carvers to use red cedar.”

  “We should be going. The weather’s changing,” said Lavina.

  As the float plane took off and banked away from the sheltered bay Gamache looked down. It appeared as though one of the totem poles had come alive, and waved. But then he recognized it as John, who guarded the haunting place but had been afraid of the small piece of wood in Gamache’s hand. John, who’d placed himself beyond the pale.

  “He was involved in the logging dispute, you know,” Sommes shouted over the old engine.

  “Seems a good person to have on your side.”

  “And he was. On your side, I mean. John was a Mountie. He was forced to arrest his own grandmother. I can still see him as he led her away.”

  “John’s my uncle,” Lavina shouted from the cockpit. It took Gamache a moment to put it all together. The quiet, somber, solitary man he’d met, the man who watched their plane fly away, had arrested Esther.

  “And now he’s a Watchman, guarding the last of the totem poles,” said Gamache.

  “We all guard something,” said Sommes.

  Sergeant Minshall had left a message for him at the guesthouse, and an envelope. Over a lunch of fresh fish and canned corn, he opened it and drew out more photographs, printed from the sergeant’s computer. And there was an e-mail.

  Armand,

  We’ve tracked down four of the remaining carvings. There are two we still can’t find, the one Olivier sold on eBay and one of the ones auctioned in Geneva. None of the collectors has agreed to send us the actual work of art, but they did send photos (see attached). No other carving has printing underneath.

  Jérôme continues to work on your code. No luck yet.

  What do you make of these pictures? Quite shocking, don’t you think?

  I’ve been working on the items from the cabin. So far none has been reported stolen and I can’t seem to find a connection among them. I thought a gold bracelet might be Czech, but turns out to be Dacian. An astonishing find. Predates the current Romanians.

  But it’s very odd. The items don’t seem to be related. Unless that’s the key? Will have to think about it some more. I’m trying to keep the lid on these finds, but already I’m getting calls from around the world. News agencies, museums. Can’t imagine how the word spread, but it has. Mostly about the Amber Room. Wait until they find out about the rest.

  I hear you’re on the Queen Charlotte Islands. Lucky man. If you meet Will Sommes tell him I adore his work. He’s a recluse, so I doubt you’ll see him.

  Thérèse Brunel

  He pulled out the photographs and looked at them as he ate. By the time the coconut cream pie arrived he’d been over them all. He’d laid them out on the table in a fan in front of him. And now he stared.

  The tone of them had shifted. In one the figures seemed to be loading up carts, packing their homes. They seemed excited. Except the young man, who was gesturing anxiously to them to hurry. But in the next there seemed a growing unease among the people. And the last two were very different. In one the people were no longer walking. They were in huts, homes. But a few figures looked out the windows. Wary. Not afraid. Not yet. That was saved for the very last one Superintendent Brunel sent. It was the largest carving and the figures were standing and staring. Up. At Gamache, it seemed.

  It was the oddest perspective. It made the viewer feel like part of the work. And not a pleasant part. He felt as though he was the reason they were so afraid.

  Because they were, now. What had Will Sommes said the night before, when he’d spotted the boy huddled inside the ship?

  Not just afraid, but terrified.

  Something terrible had found the people in his carvings. And something terrible had found their creator.

  What was odd was that Gamache couldn’t see the boy in the last two carvings. He asked the landlady for a magnifying glass and feeling like Sherlock Holmes he leaned over and minutely examined the photographs. But nothing.

  Leaning back in his chair he sipped his tea. The coconut cream pie remained untouched. Whatever terror had taken the happiness from the carvings had also stolen his appetite.

  Sergeant Minshall joined him a few minutes later and they walked once more through town, stopping at Greeley’s Construction.

  “What can I do for you?” An older man, beard and hair and eyes all gray, but his body green and powerful.

  “We wanted to talk to you about some of the workers you might’ve had back in the eighties and early nineties,” said Sergeant Minshall.

  “You’re kidding. You know loggers. They come and go. Especially then.”

  “Why especially then, monsieur?” asked Gamache.

  “This is Chief Inspector Gamache, of the Sûreté du Québec.” Minshall introduced the men and they shook hands. Gamache had the definite impression that Greeley wasn’t a man to be crossed.

  “Long way from home,” said Greeley.

  “I am. But I’m being made to feel most welcome. What was so special about that time?”

  “The late eighties and early nineties? Are you kidding? Ever heard of Lyall Island? The roadblocks, the protests? There’re thousands of acres of forest and the Haida suddenly get all upset about the logging. You didn’t hear about it?”

  “I did, but I wasn’t here. Maybe you can tell me what happened.”

  “It wasn’t the Haida’s fault. They were wound up by the shit-disturbers. Those über-environmentalists. Terrorists, nothing more. They recruited a bunch of thugs and kids who just wanted attention. It had nothing to do with the forests. Listen, it wasn’t like we were killing people, or even killing animals. We were taking down trees. Which grow back. And we were the biggest employer around. But the environmentalists got the Haida all worked up. Fed the kids a bunch of bullshit.”

  Beside Gamache, Sergeant Minshall shifted his feet. But said nothing.

  “And yet the average age of the arrested Haida was seventy-six,” said Gamache. “The elders placed themselves between the young protesters and you.”

  “A stunt. Means nothing,” Greeley snapped. “I thought you said you didn’t know anything about it.”

  “I said I wasn’t here. I’ve read the reports, but it’s not the same thing.”

  “Fucking right. Media swallowed it whole. We looked like the bad guys and all we were trying to do was log a few hundred acres that we had a right to.”

  Greeley’s voice was rising. The wound, the rage, wasn’t far beneath the surface.

  “There was violence?” asked Gamache.

  “Some. Bound to be. But we never started it. We just wanted to do our jobs.”

  “A lot of people came and went at that time? Loggers and protesters, I suppose.”

  “People
crawling all over the place. And you want help finding one?” Greeley snorted. “What was his name?”

  “I don’t know.” Gamache ignored the derisive laugh from Greeley and his people. Instead he showed the photo of the dead man. “He might have spoken with a Czech accent.” Greeley looked at it and handed it back.

  “Please look more closely,” said the Chief Inspector.

  The two men stared at each other for a moment.

  “Perhaps if you stared at the picture instead of me, monsieur.” His voice, while reasonable, was also hard.

  Greeley took it back and looked longer. “Don’t know him. He might’ve been here but who can tell? He’d have been a lot younger too, of course. Frankly he doesn’t look like a logger or any forester. Too small.”

  It was the first helpful thing Greeley had said. Gamache glanced again at the dead recluse. Three sorts of visitors were on the Queen Charlottes in that time. Loggers, environmentalists, and artists. It seemed most likely this man was the latter. He thanked Greeley and left.

  Once on the street he looked at his watch. If he could get Lavina to fly him to Prince Rupert he could still catch the red-eye to Montreal. But Gamache took a moment to make one more call.

  “Monsieur Sommes?”

  “Yes, Chief Inspector. Do you suspect your man might have been an eco-terrorist now?”

  “Voyons, how did you know?”

  Will Sommes laughed. “How can I help you?”

  “John the Watchman showed me his cabin in the woods. Have you seen it?”

  “I have.”

  “It’s exactly the same as our dead man’s home, across the country, in the woods of Quebec.”

  There was a pause on the line. “Monsieur Sommes?” Gamache wasn’t sure if he’d lost the connection.

  “I’m afraid that can’t mean much. My cabin is also the same. All of them are, with very few exceptions. Sorry to disappoint you.”

  Gamache hung up, anything but disappointed. He knew one thing now without question. The Hermit had been on the Queen Charlotte Islands.

  Chief Inspector Gamache only just managed to make the red-eye flight out of Vancouver. He squeezed into his middle seat and as soon as the plane took off the man in front put his seat all the way back until he was almost on Gamache’s lap. The two people on either side each claimed an arm rest, and that left the Chief Inspector seven hours to listen to the little boy across the aisle play GI Joe.

  He put on his half-moon glasses and read more about Emily Carr, her art, her travels, her “brutal telling.” He stared at her paintings of the Queen Charlotte Islands, and appreciated even more the powerful, poetic images. He stared longest at her paintings of Ninstints. She’d captured it just before the fall, when the totems were tall and straight and the longhouses weren’t yet covered by moss.

  Flying over Winnipeg he pulled out the photographs of the Hermit’s sculptures.

  He looked at them, letting his mind drift. In the background the boy had developed an entire intricate story of war and attack and heroics. Gamache thought about Beauvoir back in Three Pines, hounded by an onslaught of facts, and Ruth Zardo’s words. He closed his eyes and rested his head, thinking of the couplets Ruth kept sending, as though poetry was a weapon, which of course, it was. For her.

  and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neck

  and caress you into darkness and paradise.

  How beautiful was that, thought Gamache, drifting off to an uneasy sleep as Air Canada flew him home. And just as he nodded off another couplet floated up.

  that the deity who kills for pleasure

  will also heal,

  By the time they were flying over Toronto Gamache knew what the carvings meant, and what he had to do next.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  While Gamache had been in the mist of the Queen Charlotte Islands Clara had been in her own sort of fog. She’d spent the day circling the telephone, getting closer and closer then shooting away.

  Peter watched all this from his studio. He no longer knew what he hoped would happen. That Clara would call Fortin, or not. He no longer knew what would be best. For her, for himself.

  Peter stared at the picture on his easel. Picking up his brush, he dipped it in paint and approached. Determined to give it the detail people expected from his works. The complexity. The layers.

  He added a single dot, then stepped back.

  “Oh, God,” he sighed and stared at the fresh dot on the white canvas.

  Clara was once again approaching the telephone, via the refrigerator. Chocolate milk in one hand and Oreo cookies in the other she stared at the phone.

  Was she being willful? Obstinate? Or was she standing up for what she believed in? Was she a hero or a bitch? Strange how often it was hard to tell.

  She went into the garden and weeded without enthusiasm for a few minutes, then showered, changed, kissed Peter good-bye, got in her car and drove to Montreal. To the Galerie Fortin, to pick up her portfolio.

  On the way home she made a last-minute detour, to visit Miss Emily Carr. Clara stared at the sculpture of the frumpy, eccentric woman with the horse and the dog and the monkey. And conviction in the face of a brutal telling.

  Inspector Beauvoir met Gamache at Trudeau Airport.

  “Any word from Superintendent Brunel?” the Chief Inspector asked as Beauvoir tossed his case into the backseat.

  “She found one more carving. Some guy in Moscow has it. Won’t let it out of his hands but he sent some pictures.” Beauvoir handed an envelope to the Chief Inspector. “You? What did you find out?”

  “Did you realize the lines Ruth’s given you are all part of a single poem?”

  “You found that out on the Queen Charlotte Islands?”

  “Indirectly. Have you kept them?”

  “The scraps of paper? Of course not. Why? Are they important to the case?”

  Gamache sighed. He was weary. He had a distance to go that day and he couldn’t afford a stumble. Not now.

  “No. I suppose not. But it’s a shame to lose them.”

  “Yeah, you say that. Just wait until she turns her pen on you.”

  “. . . and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neck and caress you into darkness and paradise,” Gamache whispered.

  “Where to?” Beauvoir asked as they bumped along the road toward Three Pines.

  “The bistro. We need to speak to Olivier again. You looked into his finances?”

  “He’s worth about four million. One and a half from the sales of the carvings, a little over a million from the antiques the Hermit gave him and his property’s worth about a million. We’re not much further along,” said Beauvoir, grimly.

  But Gamache knew they were very close indeed. And he knew this was when the ground either became solid, or fell out from beneath them.

  The car glided to a stop in front of the bistro. The Chief Inspector had been so quiet in the passenger seat Beauvoir thought maybe he was catching a nap. He looked tired, and who wouldn’t after the long flight on Air Canada? The carrier that charged for everything. Beauvoir was convinced there’d soon be a credit card slot next to the emergency oxygen.

  The Inspector looked over and sure enough Gamache’s head was down and his eyes closed. Beauvoir hated to disturb him, he looked so peaceful. Then he noticed the Chief’s thumb softly rubbing the picture he held loosely in his hand. Beauvoir looked more closely. The Chief’s eyes weren’t closed, not altogether.

  They were narrow and staring intently at the image in his hand.

  On it was the carving of a mountain. Barren, desolate. As though it had been clear-cut. Just a few scraggly pines at its base. There was a sadness about it, Gamache felt, an emptiness. And yet there was something about this work that was very different from the others. There was also a kind of levity. He narrowed his eyes and peering closer he saw it. What he’d mistaken for another pine at the foot of the mountain wasn’t.

  It was a young man. A boy, stepping hesitantly onto the base of the carving.r />
  And where he stepped, some seedlings sprouted.

  It reminded him of Clara’s painting of Ruth. Capturing that moment when despair turned to hope. This remarkable carving was forlorn, but also strangely hopeful. And without needing to look any closer Gamache knew this boy was the one in the other works. But the fear was gone. Or had it not yet arrived?

  Rosa quacked on the village green. Today she wore a pale pink sweater set. And pearls?

  “Voyons,” said Beauvoir, jerking his head toward the duck as they got out of the car. “Can you imagine listening to that all day long?”

  “Wait till you have kids,” said Gamache, pausing outside the bistro to watch Rosa and Ruth.

  “They quack?”

  “No, but they sure make noise. And other things. Are you planning on kids?”

  “Maybe one day. Enid isn’t keen.” He stood next to the Chief and they both stared at the peaceful village. Peaceful except for the quacking. “Any word from Daniel?”

  “Madame Gamache spoke to them yesterday. All’s well. Baby should be along in a couple of weeks. We’ll be going to Paris as soon as it happens.”

  Beauvoir nodded. “That’s two for Daniel. How about Annie? Any plans?”

  “None. I think David would like a family but Annie’s not good with kids.”

  “I saw her with Florence,” said Beauvoir, remembering when Daniel had visited with the Chief Inspector’s granddaughter. He’d watched Annie holding her niece, singing to her. “She adores Florence.”

  “She claims not to want any. Frankly we don’t want to push her.”

  “Best not to interfere.”

  “It’s not that. We saw what a balls-up she made of every babysitting job she had as a kid. As soon as the child cried Annie called us and we’d have to go over. We made more money babysitting than she did. And Jean Guy.” Gamache leaned toward his Inspector and lowered his voice. “Without going into details, whatever happens never let Annie diaper me.”