by Louise Penny
“Bordering?” asked René. “He was the capital of the state of madness. Augustin Renaud was the Emperor of it. Bordering,” he muttered.
“Maybe,” said Émile, staring down at the old map again. “Maybe he wasn’t looking for Champlain. Maybe there was another reason he was there.”
“Like what?”
“Well,” his mentor looked at him. “It is a literary society. Maybe he was looking for a book.”
Gamache smiled. Maybe. He got up and paused as the waiter fetched his coat. Looking down at the modern map he noticed something.
“The old chapel, the one that burned. Where would it have been on this map?”
René put out his finger one more time and pointed.
It landed on the Notre-Dame Basilica, the mighty church where the great and good used to pray. As the waiter helped Gamache into his parka René leaned over and whispered, “Speak to Père Sébastien.”
Jean-Guy Beauvoir waited.
He wasn’t very good at it. First he looked as though he didn’t care, then he looked as though he had all the time in the world. That lasted about twenty seconds. Then he looked annoyed. That was more successful and lasted until Olivier Brulé arrived a quarter hour later.
It had been a few months since he’d last seen Olivier. Prison changed some men. Well, it changed all men. But externally some showed it more than others. Some actually seemed to flourish. They lifted weights, bulked up, exercised for the first time in years, ate three square meals. They even thrived, though few would admit it, on the regimen, the structure. Many had never had that in their lives, and so they’d wandered off course.
Here their course was clearer.
Though most, Beauvoir knew, withered in confinement.
Olivier walked through the doors, wearing his prison blues. He was in his late thirties and of medium build. His hair was cut far shorter than Beauvoir had ever seen, but it disguised the fact he was balding. He looked pale but healthy. Beauvoir felt a revulsion, as he did in the presence of all murderers. For that’s what he knew in his heart Olivier was.
No, he sharply reminded himself. I need to think of this man as innocent. Or at least, as not guilty.
But try as he might he saw a convict.
“Inspector,” said Olivier, standing at the far end of the visitors’ room, unsure what to do.
“Olivier,” said Beauvoir and smiled, though judging by the look on Olivier’s face it was probably more of a sneer. “Please. Call me Jean-Guy. I’m here privately.”
“Just a social call?” Olivier sat at a table across from Beauvoir. “How’s the Chief Inspector?”
“He’s in Quebec City for Carnaval. I’m expecting to have to bail him out any minute.”
Olivier laughed. “There’s more than one fellow in here who arrived via Carnaval. Apparently the ‘I was drunk on Caribou’ defense isn’t all that effective.”
“I’ll alert the Chief.”
They both laughed, a little longer than necessary, then fell into an uneasy silence. Now that he was there Beauvoir wasn’t sure what to say.
Olivier stared at him, waiting.
“I wasn’t totally honest with you just now,” Beauvoir began. He’d never done anything like this before and felt as though he’d wandered into a wilderness and hated Olivier all the more for making him do that. “I’m on leave as you know, so this really isn’t an official call but . . .”
Olivier waited, better at it than Beauvoir. Finally he raised his brows in a silent, “go on.”
“The Chief asked me to look into a few aspects of your case. I don’t want you to get your hopes up—” But he could see it was already too late for that. Olivier was smiling. Life seemed to have returned to him. “Really, Olivier, you can’t expect anything to come from this.”
“Why not?”
“Because I still think you did it.”
That shut him up, Beauvoir was happy to see. Still, there swirled around Olivier a residue of hope. Was this just cruel? Beauvoir hoped so. The Inspector leaned on the metal table. “Listen, there’re just a few questions. The Chief asked me to be absolutely certain, that’s all.”
“You might think I did it, but he doesn’t, does he?” said Olivier, triumphant.
“He isn’t so sure, and he wants to be sure. Wants to make certain he—we—didn’t make a mistake. Look, if you tell anyone about this, anyone at all, it’s off. You understand?” Beauvoir’s eyes were hard.
“I understand.”
“I mean it, Olivier. Especially Gabri. You can’t tell him anything.”
Olivier hesitated.
“If you tell him he’ll tell others. He couldn’t help but. Or at the very least his mood will change and people’ll notice. If I’m going to ask questions, dig some more, it has to be subtle. If someone else killed the Hermit I don’t want them on their guard.”
This made sense to Olivier, who nodded. “I promise.”
“Bon. You need to tell me again what happened that night. And I need the truth.”
The air crackled between the two men.
“I told you the truth.”
“When?” Beauvoir demanded. “Was it the second or third version of the story? If you’re in here you did it to yourself. You lied at every turn.”
It was true, Olivier knew. He’d lied all his life about everything, until the habit became who he was. It didn’t even occur to him to tell the truth. So when all this happened of course he’d lie.
Too late he’d realized what that did. It made the truth unrecognizable. And while he was very good, very glib, at lying, all his truths sounded like falsehoods. He blushed, stumbled for words, got confused when telling the truth.
“All right,” he said to Beauvoir. “I’ll tell you what happened.”
“The truth.”
Olivier gave a single, curt, nod.
“I met the Hermit ten years ago, when Gabri and I first arrived in Three Pines and were living above the shop. He wasn’t a hermit yet. He’d still leave his cabin and get his own supplies, but he looked pretty ragged. We were renovating the shop. I hadn’t turned it into a bistro, it was just an antique store back then. One day he showed up and said he wanted to sell something. I wasn’t very happy. It seemed he wanted a favor from me. Looking at the guy I figured it was some piece of junk he found on the side of the road but when he showed it to me I knew it was special.”
“What was it?”
“A miniature, a tiny portrait, in profile. Some Polish aristocrat, I think. Must have been painted with a single hair. It was beautiful. Even the frame it was in was beautiful. I agreed to buy it from him in exchange for a bag of groceries.”
He’d told the story so often Olivier was almost immune to the disgust in people’s faces. Almost.
“Go on,” said Beauvoir. “What did you do with the portrait?”
“Took it to Montreal and sold it on rue Notre-Dame, the antique district.”
“Can you remember which shop?” Beauvoir pulled out his notebook and a pen.
“Not sure if it’s still there. They change a lot. It was called Temps Perdu.”
Beauvoir made a note. “How much did you get for it?”
“Fifteen hundred dollars.”
“And the Hermit kept coming back?”
“Kept offering me things. Some fantastic, some not so great but still better than I’m likely to find in most attics or barns. At first I sold them through that antiques shop but then realized I could get more on eBay. Then one day the Hermit arrived looking really bad. Skinny, and stressed. He said, ‘I’m not coming back, old son. I can’t.’ This was a disaster for me. I’d come to pretty much rely on his stuff. He said he didn’t want to be seen anymore, then he invited me to his cabin.”
“You went?”
Olivier nodded. “I had no idea he lived in the woods. He was way the hell and gone. Well, you know it.”
Beauvoir did. He’d spent the night there with the asshole saint.
“When we finally got there I c
ouldn’t believe it.” For a moment Olivier was transported to that magical moment when he’d first stepped into the scruffy old man’s log cabin. And into a world where ancient glass was used for milk, a Queen’s china was used for peanut butter sandwiches and priceless silk tapestries hung on walls to keep the drafts out.
“I visited him every two weeks. By then I’d turned the antique shop into a bistro. Every second Saturday night after the bistro closed I’d sneak up to the cabin. We’d talk and he’d give me something for the groceries I’d bring.”
“What did Charlotte mean?” Beauvoir asked. It was Chief Inspector Gamache who’d noticed the strange repetition of “Charlotte.” There were references to the name all over the Hermit’s cabin, from the book Charlotte’s Web, to a first-edition Charlotte Brontë, to the rare violin. Everyone else had missed it, except the Chief.
Olivier was shaking his head. “Nothing, it meant nothing. Or, at least, not anything I know about. He never mentioned the name.”
Beauvoir stared at him. “Careful, Olivier. I need the truth.”
“I have no reason to lie anymore.”
For any rational person that would be true, but Olivier had behaved so irrationally Beauvoir wondered if he was capable of anything else.
“The Hermit had scratched the name Charlotte in code under one of those wooden sculptures he’d made,” Beauvoir pointed out. He could see the carvings, deeply disturbing works showing people fleeing some terror. And under three of his works the Hermit had carved words in code.
Charlotte. Emily. And under the last one? The one that showed Olivier in a chair, listening, he’d carved that one, short, damning word.
Woo.
“And ‘Woo’?” Beauvoir asked. “What did that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well it meant something,” snapped Beauvoir. “He put it under the carving of you.”
“That wasn’t me. It doesn’t look like me.”
“It’s a carving not a photograph. It’s you and you know it. Why did he write ‘Woo’ under it?”
But it wasn’t just under the carving. Woo had appeared in the web and in that piece of wood, covered in the Hermit’s blood, that had bounced under the bed. Into a dark corner. A piece of red cedar carved, according to the forensic experts, years before.
“I’m asking you again, Olivier, what did ‘Woo’ mean?”
“I don’t know.” Now Olivier was exasperated but he took a breath and regained himself. “Look, I told you. He said it a couple of times, but under his breath. At first I thought it was just a sigh. It sounded like a sigh. Then I realized he was saying ‘Woo.’ He only said it when he was afraid.”
Beauvoir stared at him. “I’m going to need more than that.”
Olivier shook his head. “There is no more than that. That’s all I know. I’d tell you more, if I could. Honestly. It meant something to him, but he never explained, and I never asked.”
“Why not?”
“It didn’t seem important.”
“It was clearly important to him.”
“Yes, but not to me. I’d have asked if it meant he’d give me more of his treasures, but that didn’t seem to be the case.”
And Beauvoir heard the truth in that, the humiliating, shameful truth. He shifted imperceptibly in his seat, and as he did his perception shifted just a little.
Maybe, maybe, this man really was telling the truth. Finally.
“You visited him for years, but near the end something changed. What happened?”
“That Marc Gilbert bought the old Hadley house and decided to turn it into an inn and spa. That would’ve been bad enough, but his wife Dominique decided they needed horses and asked Roar Parra to reopen the trails. One of the trails led right past the Hermit’s cabin. Eventually Parra would find the cabin and everyone would know about the Hermit and his treasure.”
“What did you do?”
“What could I do? I’d spent years trying to convince the Hermit to give me that thing he kept in the canvas sack. He promised it to me, kept teasing me with it. I wanted it. I’d earned it.”
A whiny tone had crept into Olivier’s voice and made itself at home. A tone not often let out in public, preferring privacy.
“Tell me again about the thing in the sack.”
“You know it, you’ve seen it,” said Olivier, then took a deep breath and regrouped. “The Hermit had everything on display, all his antiquities, all those beautiful things but one thing he kept hidden. In the sack.”
“And you wanted it.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
Beauvoir considered. It was true. It was human nature to want the one thing denied you.
The Hermit had teased Olivier with it but he hadn’t appreciated who he was dealing with. The depth of Olivier’s greed.
“So you killed him and stole it.”
That was the Crown’s case. Olivier had killed the demented old man for his treasure, the one he kept hidden, the one found in Olivier’s bistro along with the murder weapon.
“No.” Olivier leaned forward suddenly, as though charging Beauvoir. “I went back for it, I admit that, but he was already dead.”
“And what did you see?” Beauvoir asked the question quickly, hoping to trip him up in the rush.
“The cabin door was open and I saw him lying on the floor. There was blood. I thought he’d just hit his head, but when I got closer I could see he was dead. There was a piece of wood I’d never seen before by his hand. I picked it up.”
“Why?” The word was snapped out.
“Because I wanted to see.”
“See what?”
“What it was.”
“Why?”
“In case it was important.”
“Important. Explain.”
Now it was Beauvoir who was leaning forward, almost crawling across the metal table. Olivier didn’t lean back. The two men were in each other’s faces, almost shouting.
“In case it was valuable.”
“Explain.”
“In case it was another one of his carvings, okay?” Olivier almost screamed, then threw himself back into his chair. “Okay? There. I thought it might be one of his carvings and I could sell it.”
This hadn’t come out in court. Olivier had admitted he’d picked up the wood carving, but said he’d dropped it as soon as he’d seen blood on it.
“Why’d you drop it?”
“Because it was a worthless piece of junk. Something a kid would do. I only noticed the blood later.”
“Why did you move the body?”
It was the question that hounded Gamache. The question that had brought Beauvoir back to this case. Why, if he’d killed the man, would Olivier put him into a wheelbarrow and take him like so much compost through the woods? And dump him in the front hall of the new inn and spa.
“Because I wanted to screw Marc Gilbert. Not literally.”
“Seems pretty literal to me,” said Beauvoir.
“I wanted to ruin his fancy inn. Who’d pay a fortune to stay in a place where someone had just been murdered?”
Beauvoir leaned back, examining Olivier for a long moment.
“The Chief Inspector believes you.”
Olivier closed his eyes and exhaled.
Beauvoir held up his hand. “He thinks you did do it to ruin Gilbert. But in ruining Gilbert you’d also have stopped the horse trails and if you stopped Parra from opening the paths, no one would find the cabin.”
“All that’s true. But if I killed him, why would I let everyone know there’d been a murder?”
“Because the paths were close. The cabin, and the murder, would have been discovered within days anyway. Your only hope was to stop the trails. Stop the discovery of the cabin.”
“By putting the dead man on display? There was nothing left to hide then.”
“There was the treasure.”
They stared at each other.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir sat in his car mulling over the interview. Noth
ing really new had come out of it but Gamache had advised him to believe Olivier this time, take him at his word.
Beauvoir couldn’t bring himself to do it. He could pretend to, could go through the motions. He could even try to convince himself that Olivier was indeed telling the truth, but he’d be lying to himself.
He pulled the car out of the parking lot and headed toward rue Notre-Dame and the Temps Perdu. Lost time. Perfect. Because that’s what this is, he thought as he negotiated the light Sunday afternoon traffic in Montreal. A waste of time.
As he drove he went back over the case. Only Olivier’s fingerprints were found in the cabin. No one else even knew the Hermit existed.
The Hermit. It was what Olivier called him, always called him.
Beauvoir parked across the street from the antique shop. It was still there, cheek by jowl with other antique shops up and down rue Notre-Dame, some high end, some little more than junk shops.
Temps Perdu looked pretty high end.
Beauvoir reached for the car door handle, then paused, staring into space for a moment, whipping through the interview. Looking for a word, a single, short, word. Then he flipped through his notes.
Not there either. He closed his notebook and getting out of the car he crossed the street and entered the shop. There was only one window, at the front. As he made his way further back, past the pine and oak furniture, past the chipped and cracked paintings on the walls, past the ornaments, the blue and white plates, past the vases and umbrella stands, it got darker. Like going into a well-furnished cave.
“May I help you?”
An elderly man sat at the very back, at a desk. He wore glasses and peered at Beauvoir, assessing him. The Inspector knew the look, but he was normally the one giving it.
The two men assessed each other. Beauvoir saw a slim man, well but comfortably dressed. Like his merchandise, he seemed old and refined and he smelled a little of polish.
The antique dealer saw a man in his mid to late thirties. Pale, perhaps a little stressed. Not out for a lazy Sunday stroll through the antique district. Not a buyer.
