Louise Penny - Bury Your Dead

Old didn’t care. No one would find the body except Olivier and he suspected Olivier would say nothing. He liked the man very much, but knew him for what he was.

Greedy.

Olivier would take the treasure and leave the body and everyone would be happy. A man already lost to the world would be slowly swallowed by the forest. Olivier would have his treasure, and Old would have his life back.

His obligation to his father discharged.

“It was the first thing I ever made,” said Old. “I whittled Woo and gave it to my father. After he died I couldn’t bear to look at it anymore so I put it in the sack. But I brought it out that night. One last time.”

Old Mundin turned to his family. All his energy spent, his brilliance fading. He placed his hand on his sleeping son’s back and spoke.

“I’m so sorry. My father taught me everything, gave me everything. This man killed him, shoved him onto the river in spring.”

Clara grimaced, imagining a death like that, imagining the horror as the ice began to crack. As it did now beneath The Wife.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir went to the bistro door and opened it. Along with a swirl of snow two large Sûreté officers entered.

“Can you leave us, please?” Beauvoir asked of the villagers, and slowly, stunned, they put their winter coats on and left. Clara and Peter took The Wife and Charles back to their home, while Inspector Beauvoir finished the interview with Old Mundin.

An hour later the police cars drew away, taking Old. Michelle accompanied him, but not before stopping at the inn and spa to hand Charles over to the only other person he loved.

The asshole saint. Dr. Gilbert. Who tenderly took the boy in his arms and held him for a few hours, safe against the bitter cold world pounding at the door.

“Hot toddy?”

Peter handed one to Beauvoir, who sat in a deep, comfortable chair in their living room. Gabri sat on the sofa in a daze. Clara and Myrna were also there, drinks in their hands, in front of the fireplace.

“What I don’t get,” said Peter, perching on an arm of the sofa, “is where all those amazing antiques came from in the first place. The Hermit stole them and took them into the woods, but where did Old’s father get them to begin with?”

Beauvoir sighed. He was exhausted. Always happier with physical activity, it constantly amazed him how grueling intellectual activity could also be.

“For all that Old Mundin loved his father, he didn’t know him well,” said Beauvoir. “What kid does? I think we’ll find that Mundin made some trips to the Eastern Bloc, as communism was falling. He convinced a lot of people to trust him with their family treasures. But instead of keeping them safe, or sending people the money, he just disappeared with their treasures.”

“Stole them himself?” Clara asked.

Beauvoir nodded.

“The Hermit’s murder was never about the treasure,” said Beauvoir. “Old Mundin could care less about it. In fact, he came to hate it. That’s why it was left in the cabin. He didn’t want the treasure. The only thing he took was the Hermit’s life.”

Beauvoir looked into the fire and remembered his interrogation of Old, in the deserted bistro, where it had all begun months ago. He heard about the death of Mundin’s father. How Old’s heart had broken that day. But into that crack young Old had shoved his rage, his pain, his loss but that wasn’t enough. But once he placed his intention there his heart beat again. With a purpose.

When Olivier had been arrested Old Mundin had wrestled with his conscience, but had finally decided this was fate, this was Olivier’s punishment for greed, for helping a man he knew very well was at best a thief and at worst, worse.

“You play the fiddle?” Beauvoir had asked Old, when they were alone in the bistro, after the others had left. “I understand you perform at the Canada Day picnics?”

“Yes.”

“Your father taught you that too?”

“He did.”

Beauvoir nodded. “And he taught you about antiques and carpentry and restoration?”

Old Mundin nodded.

“You lived in old Quebec City, at number sixteen rue des Ramparts?”

Mundin stared.

“And your mother used to read Charlotte’s Web to you and your sister, as children?” Beauvoir persisted. He didn’t move from his seat, but it felt as though with each question he was approaching Mundin, getting closer and closer.

And Mundin, baffled, seemed to sense that something was approaching. Something even worse than what had already happened.

The lights flickered as the blizzard threw itself against the village, against the bistro.

“Where did you get your name?” Beauvoir asked, staring at Old Mundin across the table.

“What name?”

“Old. Who gave you that name? Your real name is Patrick. So where did Old come from?”

“Where everything I am came from. My father. He’d call me old son. ‘Come along, old son,’ he’d say. ‘I’ll teach you about wood.’ And I’d go. After a while everyone just called me Old.”

Beauvoir nodded. “Old. Old son.”

Old Mundin stared at Beauvoir, his face blank then his eyes narrowed as something appeared on the horizon, very far off. A gathering. Terror, the Furies. Loneliness and Sorrow. And something else. Something worse. The worst thing imaginable.

“Old son,” Beauvoir whispered again. “The Hermit used that expression. Called Olivier that. ‘Chaos is coming, old son.’ Those were his words to Olivier. And now I say it to you.”

The building shuddered and cold drafts stole through the room.

“Chaos is coming, Old son,” Beauvoir said quietly. “The man you killed was your father.”

“He killed his own father?” Clara whispered. “Oh, dear God. Oh my God.”

It was over.

“Mundin’s father faked his death,” said Beauvoir. “Before that he’d built the cabin and moved the treasures. Then he returned to Quebec City and waited for spring, and a stormy day to cover his tracks. When the perfect conditions came he put his coat by the shore and disappeared, everyone assumed into the St. Lawrence River. But in fact, into the forest.”

There was silence then, and in that silence they imagined the rest. Imagined the worst.

“Conscience,” said Myrna, at last. “Imagine being pursued by your own conscience.”

And for a terrible moment they did. A mountain of a conscience. Throwing a lengthening shadow. Growing. Darkening.

“He had his treasure,” said Clara, “but finally all he wanted was his family.”

“And peace,” said Myrna. “A clear and quiet conscience.”

“He surrounded himself with things that reminded him of his wife and kids. Books, the violin. He even carved an image of what Old might look like as a young man, listening. It became his treasure, the one thing he could never part with. He carved it, and scratched ‘Woo’ under it. It kept him company and eased his conscience. A bit. When we first found it we thought the Hermit had made a carving of Olivier. But we were wrong. It was of his son.”

“How’s Old?” Clara asked.

“Not good.”

Beauvoir remembered the look of rage on the young man’s face when the Inspector had told him the Hermit was in fact his father. He’d murdered the very man he meant to avenge. The only man he wished was alive, he killed.

And after the rage, came disbelief. Then horror.

Conscience. Jean-Guy Beauvoir knew it would keep Old Mundin company in prison for decades to come.

Gabri held his head in his hands. Muffled sobs came from the man. Not great dramatic whoops of sorrow, but tired tears. Happy, confused, turbulent tears.

But mostly tears of relief.

Why had Olivier moved the body?

Why had Olivier moved the body?