The Brutal Telling
If she said nothing, she’d be safe. Except that he knew her. It would eat away at Clara’s conscience. A conscience, once aroused, could be a terrible thing.
Gabri poked his head into the back room.
“Salut. Why so serious?”
Olivier, Gamache and Beauvoir all looked at him. None was smiling.
“Wait a minute, are you telling Olivier about your visit to his father?” Gabri sat down beside his partner. “I wanna hear too. What’d he say about me?”
“We weren’t talking about Olivier’s father,” said Gamache. Across from him Olivier’s eyes were pleading for a favor Gamache couldn’t grant. “We were talking about Olivier’s relationship with the dead man.”
Gabri looked from Gamache to Olivier, then over to Beauvoir. Then back to Olivier. “What?”
Gamache and Olivier exchanged looks and finally Olivier spoke. He told Gabri about the Hermit, his visits to the cabin, and the body. Gabri listened, silent. It was the first time Beauvoir had ever seen him go more than a minute without talking. And even when Olivier stopped, Gabri didn’t start. He sat there as though he might never speak again.
But then, he did. “How could you be so stupid?”
“I’m sorry. It was dumb.”
“It was more than dumb. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about the cabin.”
“I should’ve told you, I know. But he was so afraid, so secretive. You didn’t know him—”
“I guess not.”
“—but if he’d known I’d told anyone he’d have stopped seeing me.”
“Why did you want to see him anyway? He was a hermit, in a cabin for God’s sake. Wait a minute.” There was silence while Gabri put it all together. “Why’d you go there?”
Olivier looked at Gamache, who nodded. It would all come out anyway.
“His place was full of treasure, Gabri. You wouldn’t believe it. Cash stuffed between the logs for insulation. There was leaded crystal and tapestries. It was fantastic. Everything he had was priceless.”
“I’m not. We ate off Catherine the Great’s china. The toilet paper was dollar bills.”
“No, no. It was unbelievable. And sometimes when I visited he’d give me a little something.”
“And you took it?” Gabri’s voice rose.
“Of course I took it,” Olivier snapped. “I didn’t steal it, and those things are no use to him.”
“But he was probably nuts. It’s the same as stealing.”
“That’s a horrible thing to say. You think I’d steal stuff from an old man?”
“Why not? You dumped his body at the old Hadley house. Who knows what you’re capable of.”
“Really? And you’re innocent in all this?” Olivier’s voice had grown cold and cruel. “How do you think we could afford to buy the bistro? Or the B and B? Eh? Didn’t you ever wonder how we went from living in that dump of an apartment—”
“I fixed it up. It wasn’t a dump anymore.”
“—to opening the bistro and a B and B? How did you think we could afford it suddenly?”
“I thought the antique business was going well.” There was silence. “You should’ve told me,” said Gabri, finally, and wondered, as did Gamache and Beauvoir, what else Olivier wasn’t saying.
It was late afternoon and Armand Gamache walked through the woods. Beauvoir had volunteered to go with him, but he preferred to be alone with his thoughts.
After they left Olivier and Gabri they’d returned to the Incident Room where Agent Morin had been waiting.
“I know who BM is,” he said, eagerly following them, barely allowing them to take off their coats. “Look.”
He took them over to his computer. Gamache sat and Beauvoir leaned over his shoulder. There was a black-and-white, formal, photo of a man smoking a cigarette.
“His name is Bohuslav Martinù,” said Morin. “He wrote that violin piece we found. His birthday was December the eighth, so the violin must have been a birthday present from his wife. C. Charlotte was her name.”
Gamache, while listening, was staring at one line in the biography his agent had found. Martinù had been born December 8, 1890. In Bohemia. What was now the Czech Republic.
“Did they have any children?” Beauvoir asked. He too had noticed the reference.