The Brutal Telling

“That was wrong. I’ve already said that. But you provoked him. All of us. We wanted to be your friends but you made it too difficult.”

“So, you’ll be friends with us as long as what? We’re just a modest success? Have a few guests, a couple of treatments a day? Maybe a small dining room, if we’re lucky? But nothing to compete with you and Olivier?”

“That’s right,” said Gabri.

That shut Marc up.

“Listen, why do you think we don’t make croissants?” Gabri continued. “Or pies? Or any baking? We could. It’s what I love to do. But Sarah’s Boulangerie was already here. She’d lived in the village all her life. The bakery belonged to her grandmother. So we opened a bistro instead. All our croissants, and pies, and breads are baked by Sarah. We adjusted our dreams to fit the dreams already here. It’d be cheaper and more fun to bake ourselves but that’s not the point.”

“What is the point?” asked Vincent Gilbert, speaking for the first time.

“The point isn’t to make a fortune,” said Gabri, turning to him gratefully. “The point is to know what’s enough. To be happy.”

There was a pause and Gabri silently thanked the saint for creating that space for reason to return.

“Maybe you should remind your partner of that,” said Vincent Gilbert. “You talk a good line but you don’t live it. It suits you to blame my son. You dress up your behavior as moral and kindly and loving, but you know what it is?”

Vincent Gilbert was advancing, closing in on Gabri. As he neared he seemed to grow and Gabri felt himself shrink.

“It’s selfish,” Gilbert hissed. “My son has been patient. He’s hired local workers, created jobs. This is a place of healing, and you not only try to ruin it, you try to make him out to be at fault.”

Vincent stepped next to his son, having finally found the price of belonging.

There was nothing more to say, so Gabri left.

Lights glowed at windows as he made his way back into the village. Overhead ducks flew south in their V formation, away from the killing cold that was gathering and preparing to descend. Gabri sat on a tree stump by the side of the road and watched the sun set over Three Pines and thought about les temps perdus and felt very alone, without even the certainty of saints for comfort.

A beer was placed on the table for Beauvoir and Gamache nursed his Scotch. They settled into their comfortable chairs and examined the dinner menu. The bistro was deserted. Peter, Clara, Myrna and Ruth had all gone and Olivier had retreated to his kitchen. Havoc, the last of the waiters, took their order then left them to talk.

Gamache broke up a small baguette and told his second in command about his conversation with Olivier.

“So, he still says the Hermit was Czech. Do you believe him?”

“I do,” said Gamache. “At least, I believe Olivier is convinced of it. Any luck with the Caesar’s Shift?”

“None.” They’d given up when they started putting their own names in. Both slightly relieved it didn’t work.

“What’s wrong?” Gamache asked. Beauvoir had leaned back in his seat and tossed his linen napkin onto the table.

“I’m just frustrated. It seems every time we make progress it gets all muddied. We still don’t even know who the dead man was.”

Gamache smiled. It was their regular predicament. The further into a case they went the more clues they gathered. There came a time when it seemed a howl, as though they had hold of something wild that screamed clues at them. It was, Gamache knew, the shriek of something cornered and frightened. They were entering the last stages of this investigation. Soon the clues, the pieces, would stop fighting, and start betraying the murderer. They were close.

“By the way, I’m going away tomorrow,” said the Chief Inspector after Havoc brought their appetizers and left.

“Back to Montreal?” Beauvoir took a forkful of chargrilled calamari while Gamache ate his pear and prosciutto.

“A little further than that. The Queen Charlotte Islands.”

“Are you kidding? In British Columbia? Up by Alaska? Because of a monkey named Woo?”

“Well, when you put it like that . . .”

Beauvoir speared a blackened piece of calamari and dipped it in garlic sauce. “Voyons, doesn’t it strike you as, well, extreme?”

“No, it doesn’t. The name Charlotte keeps repeating.” Gamache ticked the points off on his fingers. “The Charlotte Brontë first edition, Charlotte’s Web first edition, the Amber Room panel? Made for a princess named Charlotte. The note the Hermit kept about the violin was written by a Charlotte. I’ve been trying to figure out what they could all mean, this repetition of the name Charlotte, then this afternoon Superintendent Brunel gave me the answer. The Queen Charlotte Islands. Where Emily Carr painted. Where the wood for the carvings came from. It might be a dead end, but I’d be a fool not to follow this lead.”