Louise Penny: Bury Your Dead

Émile read through them while Gamache sipped his wine and ate cheese and baguette, relaxing in the room as familiar and comfortable as his own.

“All from that Gabri man,” said Émile at last, patting the small pile of letters beside him. “How often does he write?”

“Every day.”

“Every day? Is he obsessed with you? A threat?” Émile leaned forward, his eyes suddenly keen, all humor gone.

“No, not at all. He’s a friend.”

“Why would Olivier move the body?” Émile read from one of the letters. “It doesn’t make sense. He didn’t do it, you know. He says the same thing in each letter.” Émile picked up a few and scanned them. “What does he mean?”

“It was a case I investigated last autumn, over the Labor Day weekend. A body was found in Olivier’s bistro in Three Pines. The victim had been hit once on the back of the head, killed.”

“Once?”

His mentor had immediately picked up on the significance of that. A single, catastrophic blow. It was extremely rare. A person, if hit once, was almost certainly hit often, the murderer in a rage. He’d rain blow after blow on his victim. Almost never did they find just one blow, hard enough to kill. It meant someone was filled with enough rage to power a terrible blow, but enough control to stop there. It was a frightening combination.

“The victim had no identification, but we finally found a cabin hidden in the woods, where he lived and where he’d been murdered. Émile, you should have seen what was in there.”

Émile Comeau had a vivid imagination, fed by decades of grisly discoveries. He waited for Gamache to describe the terrible cabin.

“It was filled with treasure.”

“Treasure?”

“I know,” smiled Gamache, seeing Émile’s face. “We weren’t expecting it either. It was unbelievable. Antiques and artifacts. Priceless.”

He had his mentor’s full attention. Émile sat forward, his lean hands holding each other, relaxed and alert. Once a hunter of killers, always that, and he could smell blood. Everything Gamache knew about homicide he’d learned from this man. And more besides.

“Go on,” said Comeau.

“There were signed first editions, ancient pottery, leaded glass thousands of years old. There was a panel from the Amber Room and dinnerware once belonging to Catherine the Great.”

And a violin. In a breath Gamache was back in that cabin watching Agent Paul Morin. Gangly, awkward, young, picking up the priceless violin, tucking it under his chin and leaning into it. His body suddenly making sense, as though bred to play this instrument. And filling the rustic, log cabin with the most beautiful, haunting Celtic lament.

“Armand?”

“Sorry,” Gamache came back to the stone home in Quebec City. “I was just remembering something.”

His mentor examined him. “All right?”

Gamache gave a nod and smiled. “A tune.”

“You found out who killed this recluse though?”

“We did. The evidence was overwhelming. We found the murder weapon and other things from the cabin in the bistro.”

“Olivier was the murderer?” Émile lifted the letters and Gamache nodded.

“It was hard for everyone to believe, hard for me to believe, but it was the truth.”

Émile watched his companion. He knew Armand well. “You liked him, this Olivier?”

“He was a friend. Is a friend.”

Gamache remembered again sitting in the cheery bistro, holding the evidence that damned his friend. The terrible realization that Olivier was indeed the murderer. He’d taken the man’s treasure from his cabin. But more than that. He’d taken the man’s life.

“You said the body was found in the bistro, but he was murdered in his own cabin? Is that what Gabri means? Why would Olivier move the body from the cabin to the bistro?”

Gamache didn’t say anything for a long time, and Émile gave him that time, sipping his wine, thinking his own thoughts, staring into the soft flames and waiting.

Finally Gamache looked at Émile. “Gabri asks a good question.”

“Are they partners?”

Gamache nodded.

“Well, he just doesn’t want to believe Olivier did it. That’s all.”

“That’s true, he doesn’t. But the question is still good. If Olivier murdered the Hermit in a remote cabin, why move the body to a place it would be found?”

“And his own place at that.”

“Well, no, that’s where it gets complicated. He actually moved it to a nearby inn and spa. He admits to moving the body, to try to ruin the spa. He saw it as a threat.”

“So you have your answer.”

“But that’s just it,” said Gamache, turning so that his whole body faced Émile. “Olivier says he found the Hermit already dead and decided to use the body as a kind of weapon, to hurt the competition. But he says if he’d actually murdered the man he’d never have moved the body. He’d have left it there, or taken it into the woods to be eaten by coyotes. Why would a murderer kill someone then make sure the body was found?”

“But wait a second,” said Émile, trying to piece it together. “You said the body was found in Olivier’s own bistro. How did that happen?”

“A bit awkward for Olivier that,” said Gamache. “The owner of the inn and spa had the same idea. When he found the body, he moved it to the bistro, to try to ruin Olivier.”

“Nice neighborhood. Quite a Merchants’ Association.”

Gamache nodded. “It took a while but we eventually found the cabin and the contents and the evidence the Hermit had been killed there. All the forensics confirmed only two people had spent time in the cabin. The Hermit, and Olivier. And then we found items from the cabin hidden in Olivier’s bistro, including the murder weapon. Olivier admitted to stealing them—”

“Foolish man.”

“Greedy man.”

“You arrested him?”

Gamache nodded, remembering that terrible day when he knew the truth and had to act on it. Seeing Olivier’s face, but worse, seeing Gabri’s.

And then the trial, the evidence, the testimony.

The conviction.

Gamache looked down at the pile of letters on the sofa. One every day since Olivier had been sentenced. All cordial, all with the same question.

Why would Olivier move the body?

“You keep calling this man ‘the Hermit.’ Who was he?”

“A Czech immigrant named Jakob, but that’s all we know.”

Émile stared at him, then nodded. It was unusual not to identify a murder victim but not unheard of, particularly one who so clearly didn’t want to be identified.

The two men moved into the dining room with its wall of exposed stone, open plan kitchen and aroma of roasting lamb and vegetables. After dinner they bundled up, put Henri on a leash and headed into the bitterly cold night. Their feet crunching on the hard snow, they joined the crowds heading out the great stone archway through the wall, to Place d’Youville and the ceremony opening the Carnaval de Québec.

In the midst of the festivities, as fiddlers sawed away and kids skated and the fireworks lit the sky over the old city Émile turned to Gamache.

“Why did Olivier move the body, Armand?”

Gamache steeled himself against the thrashing explosions, the bursts of light, the people crowding all around, shoving and shrieking.

Across the abandoned factory he saw Jean-Guy Beauvoir fall, hit. He saw the gunmen above them, shooting, in a place that was supposed to be almost undefended.

He’d made a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake.

THREE

The next morning, Saturday, Gamache took Henri and walked through gently falling snow up rue Ste-Ursule for breakfast at Le Petit Coin Latin. Waiting for his omelette , a bowl of café au lait in front of him, he read the weekend papers and watched the revelers head to the creperies along rue St-Jean. It was fun to be both a part of it and apart from it, warm and toasty in the bistro just off the beaten track with Henri at his side.