Louise Penny - Brutal Telling

“Long way from home,” said Greeley.

“I am. But I’m being made to feel most welcome. What was so special about that time?”

“The late eighties and early nineties? Are you kidding? Ever heard of Lyall Island? The roadblocks, the protests? There’re thousands of acres of forest and the Haida suddenly get all upset about the logging. You didn’t hear about it?”

“I did, but I wasn’t here. Maybe you can tell me what happened.”

“It wasn’t the Haida’s fault. They were wound up by the shit-disturbers. Those über-environmentalists. Terrorists, nothing more. They recruited a bunch of thugs and kids who just wanted attention. It had nothing to do with the forests. Listen, it wasn’t like we were killing people, or even killing animals. We were taking down trees. Which grow back. And we were the biggest employer around. But the environmentalists got the Haida all worked up. Fed the kids a bunch of bullshit.”

Beside Gamache, Sergeant Minshall shifted his feet. But said nothing.

“And yet the average age of the arrested Haida was seventy-six,” said Gamache. “The elders placed themselves between the young protesters and you.”

“A stunt. Means nothing,” Greeley snapped. “I thought you said you didn’t know anything about it.”

“I said I wasn’t here. I’ve read the reports, but it’s not the same thing.”

“Fucking right. Media swallowed it whole. We looked like the bad guys and all we were trying to do was log a few hundred acres that we had a right to.”

Greeley’s voice was rising. The wound, the rage, wasn’t far beneath the surface.

“There was violence?” asked Gamache.

“Some. Bound to be. But we never started it. We just wanted to do our jobs.”

“A lot of people came and went at that time? Loggers and protesters, I suppose.”

“People crawling all over the place. And you want help finding one?” Greeley snorted. “What was his name?”

“I don’t know.” Gamache ignored the derisive laugh from Greeley and his people. Instead he showed the photo of the dead man. “He might have spoken with a Czech accent.” Greeley looked at it and handed it back.

“Please look more closely,” said the Chief Inspector.

The two men stared at each other for a moment.

“Perhaps if you stared at the picture instead of me, monsieur.” His voice, while reasonable, was also hard.

Greeley took it back and looked longer. “Don’t know him. He might’ve been here but who can tell? He’d have been a lot younger too, of course. Frankly he doesn’t look like a logger or any forester. Too small.”

It was the first helpful thing Greeley had said. Gamache glanced again at the dead recluse. Three sorts of visitors were on the Queen Charlottes in that time. Loggers, environmentalists, and artists. It seemed most likely this man was the latter. He thanked Greeley and left.

Once on the street he looked at his watch. If he could get Lavina to fly him to Prince Rupert he could still catch the red-eye to Montreal. But Gamache took a moment to make one more call.

“Monsieur Sommes?”

“Yes, Chief Inspector. Do you suspect your man might have been an eco-terrorist now?”

“ Voyons , how did you know?”

Will Sommes laughed. “How can I help you?”

“John the Watchman showed me his cabin in the woods. Have you seen it?”

“I have.”

“It’s exactly the same as our dead man’s home, across the country, in the woods of Quebec.”

There was a pause on the line. “Monsieur Sommes?” Gamache wasn’t sure if he’d lost the connection.

“I’m afraid that can’t mean much. My cabin is also the same. All of them are, with very few exceptions. Sorry to disappoint you.”

Gamache hung up, anything but disappointed. He knew one thing now without question. The Hermit had been on the Queen Charlotte Islands.

Chief Inspector Gamache only just managed to make the red-eye flight out of Vancouver. He squeezed into his middle seat and as soon as the plane took off the man in front put his seat all the way back until he was almost on Gamache’s lap. The two people on either side each claimed an arm rest, and that left the Chief Inspector seven hours to listen to the little boy across the aisle play GI Joe.

He put on his half-moon glasses and read more about Emily Carr, her art, her travels, her “brutal telling.” He stared at her paintings of the Queen Charlotte Islands, and appreciated even more the powerful, poetic images. He stared longest at her paintings of Ninstints. She’d captured it just before the fall, when the totems were tall and straight and the longhouses weren’t yet covered by moss.

Flying over Winnipeg he pulled out the photographs of the Hermit’s sculptures.

He looked at them, letting his mind drift. In the background the boy had developed an entire intricate story of war and attack and heroics. Gamache thought about Beauvoir back in Three Pines, hounded by an onslaught of facts, and Ruth Zardo’s words. He closed his eyes and rested his head, thinking of the couplets Ruth kept sending, as though poetry was a weapon, which of course, it was. For her.

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

and caress you into darkness and paradise.

How beautiful was that, thought Gamache, drifting off to an uneasy sleep as Air Canada flew him home. And just as he nodded off another couplet floated up.

that the deity who kills for pleasure

will also heal,

By the time they were flying over Toronto Gamache knew what the carvings meant, and what he had to do next.

THIRTY-FOUR

While Gamache had been in the mist of the Queen Charlotte Islands Clara had been in her own sort of fog. She’d spent the day circling the telephone, getting closer and closer then shooting away.

Peter watched all this from his studio. He no longer knew what he hoped would happen. That Clara would call Fortin, or not. He no longer knew what would be best. For her, for himself.

Peter stared at the picture on his easel. Picking up his brush, he dipped it in paint and approached. Determined to give it the detail people expected from his works. The complexity. The layers.

He added a single dot, then stepped back.

“Oh, God,” he sighed and stared at the fresh dot on the white canvas.

Clara was once again approaching the telephone, via the refrigerator. Chocolate milk in one hand and Oreo cookies in the other she stared at the phone.

Was she being willful? Obstinate? Or was she standing up for what she believed in? Was she a hero or a bitch? Strange how often it was hard to tell.

She went into the garden and weeded without enthusiasm for a few minutes, then showered, changed, kissed Peter good-bye, got in her car and drove to Montreal. To the Galerie Fortin, to pick up her portfolio.

On the way home she made a last-minute detour, to visit Miss Emily Carr. Clara stared at the sculpture of the frumpy, eccentric woman with the horse and the dog and the monkey. And conviction in the face of a brutal telling.

Inspector Beauvoir met Gamache at Trudeau Airport.

“Any word from Superintendent Brunel?” the Chief Inspector asked as Beauvoir tossed his case into the backseat.

“She found one more carving. Some guy in Moscow has it. Won’t let it out of his hands but he sent some pictures.” Beauvoir handed an envelope to the Chief Inspector. “You? What did you find out?”

“Did you realize the lines Ruth’s given you are all part of a single poem?”