Louise Penny - The Beautiful Mystery

Still, if he couldn’t be there, this was his second choice. He looked around, at the forests. At the rock cuts. At the empty lake.

There were worse offices than this.

He smiled a little at the stern boatman. This was his office too. And when he dropped them off would he find a quiet bay, pull out his rod, and cast?

Cast, and reel in.

It was, now that Beauvoir thought of it, not unlike what they were about to do. Cast for clues, for evidence, for witnesses. And reel them in.

And eventually, when there was enough bait, they’d catch a killer.

Though, unless things became terribly unpredictable, they probably wouldn’t eat him.

Just in front of the boatman sat Captain Charbonneau, who ran the Sûreté du Québec station in La Mauricie. He was in his mid-forties, slightly older than Beauvoir. He was athletic and energetic and had the intelligent look of someone who paid attention.

He was paying attention now.

Captain Charbonneau had met them at the plane and driven them the half kilometer to the dock and the waiting boatman.

“This is Etienne Legault.” He introduced the boatman, who nodded but didn’t seem inclined to a fuller greeting. Legault smelled of gasoline and smoked a cigarette and Beauvoir took a step back.

“It’s about a twenty-minute boat trip, I’m afraid,” Captain Charbonneau explained. “No other way to get there.”

“Have you ever been?” Beauvoir had asked.

The captain smiled. “Never. Not inside anyway. But I fish not far from there sometimes. Like everyone else, I’m curious. Besides, it’s great fishing. Huge bass and lake trout. I’ve seen them at a distance, also fishing. But I’ve left them on their own. I don’t think they want company.”

They’d all climbed into the open boat and now were halfway through the trip. Captain Charbonneau was looking ahead, or appeared to be. But Beauvoir realized the senior Sûreté officer wasn’t focused completely on the thick forests or into the coves and bays.

He was stealing glances at something he found much more riveting.

The man in front of him.

Beauvoir’s eyes shifted and came to rest on the fourth man in the boat.

The Chief Inspector. Beauvoir’s boss and Annie’s father.

Armand Gamache was a substantial man, though not heavy. Like the boatman, Chief Inspector Gamache squinted ahead, creating creases at his mouth and eyes. But unlike the boatman, his expression wasn’t glum. Instead his deep brown eyes were thoughtful, taking everything in. The glacier-stunted hills, the forest turning brilliant autumn colors. The rocky shoreline, unbroken by docks or homes or moorings of any kind.

This was the wilderness. Birds flew over them who might never have seen a human being.

If Beauvoir was a hunter, then Armand Gamache was an explorer. When others stopped, Gamache stepped ahead. Looking into cracks and crevices and caves. Where dark things lived.

The Chief was in his mid-fifties. The hair at his temples curled slightly above and behind his ears and was graying. A cap almost hid the scar at his left temple. He wore a khaki-colored waxed field coat. Beneath that was a shirt and jacket and gray-green silk tie. One large hand clasping the gunwale was wet with cold spray, as the boat chopped across the lake. The other rested absently on a bright orange life preserver, on the aluminum seat beside him. When they’d stood on the dock looking at the open boat with its fishing rod and net and tub of squiggling worms, and the outboard motor that looked like a toilet, the Chief had handed a life preserver, the newest, to Beauvoir. And when Jean-Guy had scoffed, he’d insisted. Not that Beauvoir had to wear it, but that he had to have it.

In case.

And so, Inspector Beauvoir’s life jacket sat on his lap. And with each bounce he was privately happy to have it there.

He’d picked up the Chief at his home before eleven. At the door, Gamache paused to hug and kiss Madame Gamache. They lingered a moment before breaking the embrace. Then the Chief had turned and walked down the steps, his satchel slung over his shoulder.

When he’d gotten into the car Jean-Guy had smelled his subtle cologne of sandalwood and rosewater and been overwhelmed at the thought that this man might soon be his father-in-law. That Beauvoir’s infant children might be held by this man, and smell that comforting scent.

Soon Jean-Guy would be more than an honorary member of this family.

But even as he thought that he heard a low whisper. Suppose they aren’t happy about that? What would happen then?

But that was inconceivable, and he shoved the unworthy thought away.

He also realized, for the first time in more than a decade together, why the Chief smelled of sandalwood and rosewater. The sandalwood was his own cologne. The rosewater came from Madame Gamache, as they’d pressed together. The Chief carried her scent, like an aura. Mixed with his own.

Beauvoir then took a long, slow, deep breath. And smiled. There was the slightest hint of citron. Annie. For a moment he was fearful her father would also smell it, but realized it was a private scent. He wondered if Annie now smelled a little of Old Spice.

They’d arrived at the airport before noon and had gone straight to the Sûreté du Québec hangar. There they’d found their pilot plotting the course. She was used to taking them into remote spots. Landing on dirt roads and ice roads and no roads.

“I see we actually have a landing strip today,” she said, climbing into the pilot’s seat.

“Sorry about that,” said Gamache. “Feel free to ditch in the lake if you’d prefer.”

The pilot laughed. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Gamache and Beauvoir had talked about the case, shouting at each other over the engines of the small Cessna. But eventually the Chief looked out the window and lapsed into silence. Though Beauvoir noticed that he’d put small earplugs in and was listening to music. And Beauvoir could guess which music. There was the trace of a smile on Chief Inspector Gamache’s face.

Beauvoir turned and looked out his own small window. It was a brilliantly clear day in mid-September and he could see the towns and villages below. Then the villages got smaller, and sparser. The Cessna banked to the left and Beauvoir could see that the pilot was following a winding river. North.

Further and further north they flew. Each man lost in his own thoughts. Looking at the earth below, as all sign of civilization disappeared and there was only forest. And water. In the bright sunshine the water wasn’t blue, but strips and patches of gold and dazzling white. They followed one of the golden ribbons, deeper into the forest. Deep into Québec. Toward a body.

As they flew, the dark forest began to change. At first it was just a tree here and there. Then more and more. Until finally the entire forest was shades of yellow and red and orange, and the dark, dark green of the evergreens.

Autumn came earlier here. The further north, the earlier the fall. The longer the fall, the greater the fall.

And then the plane started its descent. Down, down, down. It looked as though it would plunge into the water. But instead it leveled off and skimmed the surface, to land at a dirt airstrip.

And now Chief Inspector Gamache, Inspector Beauvoir, Captain Charbonneau, and the boatman were bouncing across that lake. The boat banked to the right slightly and Beauvoir saw the Chief’s face change. From thoughtful to wonderment.

Gamache leaned forward, his eyes shining.

Beauvoir shifted in his seat and looked.

They’d turned into a large bay. There, at the end, was their destination.

And even Beauvoir felt a frisson of excitement. Millions had searched for this place. Looking all over the world for the reclusive men who lived here. When they’d finally been found, in remotest Québec, thousands had traveled here, desperate to meet the men inside. This same boatman might have even been hired to take tourists down this same lake.