Louise Penny: Brutal Telling

Gamache’s gaze wandered to the buildings that hugged the village green. There were weathered white clapboard cottages, with wide porches and wicker chairs. There were tiny fieldstone houses built centuries ago by the first settlers, who’d cleared the land and yanked the stones from the earth. But most of the homes around the village green were made of rose-hued brick, built by United Empire Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution. Three Pines sat just kilometers from the Vermont border and while relations now with the States were friendly and affectionate, they weren’t back then. The people who created the village had been desperate for sanctuary, hiding from a war they didn’t believe in.

The Chief Inspector’s eyes drifted up du Moulin, and there, on the side of the hill leading out of the village, was the small white chapel. St. Thomas’s Anglican.

Gamache brought his eyes back to the small crowd standing under umbrellas chatting, pointing, staring. Olivier’s bistro was smack-dab in the center of the semicircle of shops. Each shop ran into the next. Monsieur Béliveau’s general store, then Sarah’s Boulangerie, then Olivier’s Bistro and finally Myrna’s new and used bookstore.

“Let’s go,” Gamache nodded.

Beauvoir had been waiting for the word and now the car moved slowly forward. Toward the huddled suspects, toward the killer.

But one of the first lessons the Chief had taught Beauvoir when he’d joined the famed homicide department of the Sûreté du Québec was that to catch a killer they didn’t move forward. They moved back. Into the past. That was where the crime began, where the killer began. Some event, perhaps long forgotten by everyone else, had lodged inside the murderer. And he’d begun to fester.

What kills can’t be seen, the Chief had warned Beauvoir. That’s what makes it so dangerous. It’s not a gun or a knife or a fist. It’s not anything you can see coming. It’s an emotion. Rancid, spoiled. And waiting for a chance to strike.

The car slowly moved toward the bistro, toward the body.

“ Merci ,” said Gamache a minute later as a local Sûreté officer opened the bistro door for them. The young man was just about to challenge the stranger, but hesitated.

Beauvoir loved this. The reaction of local cops as it dawned on them that this large man in his early fifties wasn’t just a curious citizen. To the young cops Gamache looked like their fathers. There was an air of courtliness about him. He always wore a suit, or the jacket and tie and gray flannels he had on that day.

They’d notice the mustache, trimmed and graying. His dark hair was also graying around the ears, where it curled up slightly. On a rainy day like this the Chief wore a cap, which he took off indoors, and when he did the young officers saw the balding head. And if that wasn’t enough they’d notice this man’s eyes. Everyone did. They were deep brown, thoughtful, intelligent and something else. Something that distinguished the famous head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec from every other senior officer.

His eyes were kind.

It was both his strength, Beauvoir knew, and his weakness.

Gamache smiled at the astonished officer who found himself face to face with the most celebrated cop in Quebec. Gamache offered his hand and the young agent stared at it for a moment before putting out his own. “ Patron ,” he said.

“Oh, I was hoping it would be you.” Gabri hurried across the room, past the Sûreté officers bending over the victim. “We asked if the Sûreté could send you but apparently it’s not normal for suspects to order up a specific officer.” He hugged the Chief Inspector then turned to the roomful of agents. “See, I do know him.” Then he whispered to Gamache, “I think it would be best if we didn’t kiss.”

“Very wise.”

Gabri looked tired and stressed, but composed. He was disheveled, though that wasn’t unusual. Behind him, quieter, almost eclipsed, stood Olivier. He was also disheveled. That was very unusual. He also looked exhausted, with dark rings under his eyes.

“Coroner’s just arriving now, Chief.” Agent Isabelle Lacoste walked across the room to greet him. She wore a simple skirt and light sweater and managed to make both look stylish. Like most Québécoises, she was petite and confident. “It’s Dr. Harris, I see.”

They all looked out the window and the crowd parted to let a woman with a medical bag through. Unlike Agent Lacoste, Dr. Harris managed to make her simple skirt and sweater look slightly frumpy. But comfortable. And on a miserable day like this “comfortable” was very attractive.

“Good,” said the Chief, turning back to Agent Lacoste. “What do we know?”

Lacoste led Gamache and Inspector Beauvoir to the body. They knelt, an act and ritual they’d performed hundreds of times. It was surprisingly intimate. They didn’t touch him, but leaned very close, closer than they’d ever get to anyone in life, except a loved one.

“The victim was struck from behind by a blunt object. Something clean and hard, and narrow.”

“A fireplace poker?” Beauvoir asked, looking over at the fires Olivier had set. Gamache also looked. It was a damp morning, but not all that cool. A fire wasn’t necessary. Still, it was probably made to comfort more than to heat.

“If it was a poker it would be clean. The coroner will take a closer look, of course, but there’s no obvious sign of dirt, ash, wood, anything, in the wound.”

Gamache was staring at the gaping hole in the man’s head. Listening to his agent.

“No weapon, then?” asked Beauvoir.

“Not yet. We’re searching, of course.”

“Who was he?”

“We don’t know.”

Gamache took his eyes off the wound and looked at the woman, but said nothing.

“We have no ID,” Agent Lacoste continued. “We’ve been through his pockets and nothing. Not even a Kleenex. And no one seems to know him. He’s a white male, mid-seventies I’d say. Lean but not malnourished. Five seven, maybe five eight.”

Years ago, when she’d first joined homicide, it had seemed bizarre to Agent Lacoste to catalog these things the Chief could see perfectly well for himself. But he’d taught them all to do it, and so she did. It was only years later, when she was training someone else, that she recognized the value of the exercise.

It made sure they both saw the same things. Police were as fallible and subjective as anyone else. They missed things, and misinterpreted things. This catalog made it less likely. Either that or they’d reinforce the same mistakes.

“Nothing in his hands and it looks like nothing under his fingernails. No bruising. Doesn’t appear to have been a struggle.”

They stood up.

“The condition of the room verifies that.”

They looked around.

Nothing out of place. Nothing tipped over. Everything clean and orderly.

It was a restful room. The fires at either end of the beamed bistro took the gloom out of the day. Their light gleamed off the polished wood floors, darkened by years of smoke and farmers’ feet.

Sofas and large inviting armchairs sat in front of each fireplace, their fabric faded. Old chairs were grouped around dark wooden dining tables. In front of the mullioned bay windows three or four wing chairs waited for villagers nursing steaming café au lait and croissants, or Scotches, or burgundy wine. Gamache suspected the people milling outside in the rain could do with a good stiff drink. He thought Olivier and Gabri certainly could.

Chief Inspector Gamache and his team had been in the bistro many times, enjoying meals in front of the roaring fire in winter or a quiet cool drink on the terrasse in summer. Almost always discussing murder. But never with an actual body right there.