Louise Penny - Brutal Telling

“Why him?”

“Ruth said it tonight.”

“More Scotch, asshole?”

“Well, that too. But she said Olivier was greedy. And he is. So was the Hermit. He probably recognized himself in Olivier. That greed. That need to own. And he knew he could have a hold over Olivier. Promising him more and better antiques. But over the years something happened.”

“He went nuts?”

“Maybe. But maybe just the opposite. Maybe he went sane. The place he built to hide became a home, a haven. You felt it. There was something peaceful, comforting even, about the Hermit’s life. It was simple. Who doesn’t long for that these days?”

Their dinners arrived and Beauvoir’s gloom lifted as the fragrant boeuf bourguignon landed in front of him. He looked across at the Chief Inspector smiling down at his lobster Thermidor.

“Yes, the simple life in the country.” Beauvoir lifted his red wine in a small toast.

Gamache tipped his glass of white toward his Inspector, then took a succulent forkful. As he ate he thought of those first few minutes in the Hermit’s cabin. And that moment when he realized what he was looking at. Treasures. And yet everything was put to purpose. There was a reason for everything in there, whether practical or pleasure, like the books and violin.

But there was one thing. One thing that didn’t seem to have a purpose.

Gamache slowly laid his fork down and stared beyond Beauvoir. After a moment the Inspector also put his fork down and looked behind him. There was nothing there. Just the empty room.

“What is it?”

Gamache put up a finger, a subtle and gentle request for quiet. Then he reached into his breast pocket and bringing out a pen and notebook he wrote something down, quickly, as though afraid it would get away. Beauvoir strained to read it. Then, with a thrill, saw what it was.

The alphabet.

Silently he watched his Chief write the line beneath. His face opened in wonder. Wonder that he could have been so stupid. Could have missed what now seemed obvious.

Beneath the alphabet, Chief Inspector Gamache had written: SIXTEEN.

“The number above the door,” whispered Beauvoir, as though he too was afraid he might scare this vital clue away.

“What were the code letters?” asked Gamache, in a hurry now. Anxious to get there.

Beauvoir scrambled in his pocket and brought out his notebook.

“MRKBVYDDO under the people on the shore. And OWSVI under the ship.”

He watched as Gamache worked to decode the Hermit’s messages.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

S I X T E E N A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S

Gamache read the letters out as he found them. “T, Y, R, I, something . . .”

“Tyri,” Beauvoir mumbled. “Tyri . . .”

“Something, K, K, V.” He looked up at Beauvoir.

“What does it mean? Is it a name? Maybe a Czech name?”

“Maybe it’s an anagram,” said Gamache. “We have to rearrange the letters.”

They tried that for a few minutes, taking bites of their dinner as they worked. Finally Gamache put his pen down and shook his head. “I thought I had it.”

“Maybe it’s right,” said Beauvoir, not ready to let go yet. He jotted more letters, tried the other code. Rearranged letters and finally staggered to the same conclusion.

The key wasn’t “seventeen.”

“Still,” said Beauvoir, dipping a crusty baguette into his gravy, “I wonder why that number’s up there.”

“Maybe some things don’t need a purpose,” said Gamache. “Maybe that’s their purpose.”

But that was too esoteric for Beauvoir. As was the Chief Inspector’s reasoning about the Queen Charlotte Islands. In fact, Beauvoir wouldn’t call it reasoning at all. At best it was intuition on the Chief’s part, at worst it was a wild guess, maybe even manipulated by the murderer.

The only image Beauvoir had of the moody archipelago at the very end of the country was of thick forests and mountains and endless gray water. But mostly it was mist.

And into that mist Armand Gamache was going, alone.

“I almost forgot, Ruth Zardo gave me this.” Gamache handed him the slip of paper. Beauvoir unfolded it and read out loud.

“and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neck

and caress you into darkness and paradise.”

There was, at least, a full stop after “paradise.” Was this, finally, the end?

THIRTY-TWO

Armand Gamache arrived in the late afternoon on the brooding islands after taking increasingly smaller planes until it seemed the last was nothing more than fuselage wrapped round his body and thrust off the end of the Prince Rupert runway.

As the tiny float plane flew over the archipelago off the coast of northern British Columbia Gamache looked down on a landscape of mountains and thick ancient forests. It had been hidden for millennia behind mists almost as impenetrable as the trees. It had remained isolated. But not alone. It was a cauldron of life that had produced both the largest black bears in the world and the smallest owls. It was teeming with life. Indeed, the first men were discovered in a giant clam shell by a raven off the tip of one of the islands. That, according to their creation stories, was how the Haida came to live there. More recently loggers had also been found on the islands. That wasn’t part of creation. They’d looked beyond the thick mists and seen money. They’d arrived on the Charlottes a century ago, blind to the crucible they’d stumbled upon and seeing only treasure. The ancient forests of red cedar. Trees prized for their durability, having been tall and straight long before Queen Charlotte was born and married her mad monarch. But now they fell to the saw, to be made into shingles and decks and siding. And ten small carvings.

After landing smoothly on the water the young bush pilot helped extricate the large man from her small plane.

“Welcome to Haida Gwaii,” she said.

When Gamache had woken early that morning in Three Pines and found a groggy Gabri in the kitchen making a small picnic for the drive to the Montreal airport, he knew nothing about these islands half a world away. But on the long flights from Montreal to Vancouver, to Prince Rupert and into the village of Queen Charlotte, he’d read about the islands and he knew that phrase.

“Thank you for bringing me to your homeland.”

The pilot’s deep brown eyes were suspicious, as well they would be, thought Gamache. The arrival of yet another middle-aged white man in a suit was never a good sign. You didn’t have to be Haida to know that.

“You must be Chief Inspector Gamache.”

A burly man with black hair and skin the color of cedar was walking across the dock, his hand out. They shook.

“I’m Sergeant Minshall, of the RCMP. We’ve been corresponding.”

His voice was deep and had a slight sing-song quality. He was Haida.

“ Ah, oui, merci . Thank you for meeting the plane.”

The Mountie took the overnight bag from the pilot and slung it over his shoulder. Thanking the pilot, who ignored them, the two men walked to the end of the dock, up a ramp and along the road. There was a bite to the air and Gamache had to remember they were closer to Alaska than Vancouver.

“I see you’re not staying long.”

Gamache looked out into the ocean and knew the mainland had disappeared. No, it was not that it had vanished, but that it didn’t exist at all here. This was the mainland.

“I wish I could stay longer, it’s beautiful. But I have to get back.”