“What is it?” Beauvoir repeated.
“Be very careful with that,” he said to Agent Morin, who was holding a glass from the kitchen.
“I will,” he said, wondering why the Chief would suddenly say that.
“May I have it, please?”
Morin gave it to Gamache who took it to an oil lamp. There, in the soft light, he saw what he expected to see, but never expected to hold in his own hands. Leaded glass, expertly cut. Hand cut. He couldn’t make out the mark on the bottom of the glass, and even if he could it would be meaningless to him. He was no expert. But he was knowledgeable enough to know what he held was priceless.
It was an extremely old, even ancient, piece of glass. Made in a method not seen in hundreds of years. Gamache gently put the glass down and looked into the kitchen. On the open rustic shelves there stood at least ten glasses, all different sizes. All equally ancient. As his team watched, Armand Gamache moved along the shelves, picking up plates and cups and cutlery, then over to the walls to examine the hangings. He looked at the rugs, picking up the corners, and finally, like a man almost afraid of what he’d find, he approached the bookcases.
“What is it, patron?” asked Beauvoir, joining him.
“This isn’t just any cabin, Jean Guy. This is a museum. Each piece is an antiquity, priceless.”
“You’re kidding,” said Morin, putting down the horse figurine jug.
Who was this man? Gamache wondered. Who chose to live this far from other people? Three for society.
This man wanted no part of society. What was he afraid of? Only fear could propel a man so far from company. Was he a survivalist, as they’d theorized? Gamache thought not. The contents of the cabin argued against that. No guns, no weapons at all. No how-to magazines, no publications warning of dire plots.
Instead, this man had brought delicate leaded crystal with him into the woods.
Gamache scanned the books, not daring to touch them. “Have these been dusted?”
“They have,” said Morin. “And I looked inside for a name, but they’re no help. Different names written in most of them. Obviously secondhand.”
“Obviously,” whispered Gamache to himself. He looked at the one still in his hand. Opening it to the bookmark he read, I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Gamache turned to the front page and inhaled softly.
It was a first edition.
NINETEEN
“Peter?” Clara knocked lightly on the door to his studio.
He opened it, trying not to look secretive but giving up. Clara knew him too well, and knew he was always secretive about his art.
“How’s it going?”
“Not bad,” he said, longing to close the door and get back to it. All day he’d been picking up his brush, approaching his painting then lowering the brush again. Surely the painting wasn’t finished? It was so embarrassing. What would Clara think? What would his gallery think? The critics? It was unlike anything else he’d ever done. Well, not ever. But certainly since childhood.
He could never let anyone see this.
It was ridiculous.
What it needed, clearly, was more definition, more detail. More depth. The sorts of things his clients and supporters had come to expect. And buy.
He’d picked up and lowered his brush a dozen times that day. This had never happened to him before. He’d watched, mystified, as Clara had been racked by self-doubt, had struggled and had finally produced some marginal piece of work. Her March of the Happy Ears, her series inspired by dragonfly wings, and, of course, her masterpiece, the Warrior Uteruses.
That’s what came of inspiration.
No, Peter was much more clear. More disciplined. He planned each piece, drew and drafted each work, knew months in advance what he’d be working on. He didn’t rely on airy-fairy inspiration.
Until now. This time he’d come into the studio with a fireplace log, cut cleanly so that the rings of age were visible. He’d taken his magnifying glass and approached it, with a view to enlarging a tiny part of it beyond recognition. It was, he liked to tell art critics at his many sold-out vernissages, an allegory for life. How we blow things out of all proportion, until a simple truth was no longer recognizable.
They ate it up. But this time it hadn’t worked. He’d been unable to see the simple truth. Instead, he’d painted this.
When Clara left Peter plopped down in his chair and stared at the bewildering piece of work on his easel and repeated silently to himself, I’m brilliant, I’m brilliant. Then he whispered, so quietly he barely heard it himself, “I’m better than Clara.”
Olivier stood on the terrasse outside the bistro and looked into the dark forest on the hill. In fact, Three Pines was surrounded by forest, something he’d never noticed, until now.
The cabin had been found. He’d prayed this wouldn’t happen, but it had. And for the first time since he’d arrived in Three Pines he felt the dark forest closing in.
“But if all these things,” Beauvoir nodded to the interior of the single room, “are priceless why didn’t the murderer take them?”
“I’ve been wondering that myself,” said Gamache from the comfort of the large wing chair by the empty fireplace. “What was the murder about, Jean Guy? Why kill this man who seems to have lived a quiet, secret life in the woods for years, maybe decades?”
“And then once he’s dead, why take the body but leave the valuables?” Beauvoir sat in the chair opposite the Chief.
“Unless the body was more valuable than the rest?”
“Then why leave it at the old Hadley house?”
“If the murderer had just left the body here we’d never have found it,” reasoned Gamache, perplexed. “Never known there’d been a murder.”
“Why kill the man, if not for his treasure?” asked Beauvoir.
“Treasure?”
“What else is it? Priceless stuff in the middle of nowhere? It’s buried treasure, only instead of being buried in the ground it’s buried in the forest.”
But the murderer had left it there. And instead, had taken the only thing he wanted from that cabin. He’d taken a life.
“Did you notice this?” Beauvoir got up and walked to the door. Opening it he pointed upward, with a look of amusement.
There on the lintel above the door was a number.
16
“Now, you can’t tell me he got mail,” said Beauvoir as Gamache stared, puzzled. The numbers were brass and tarnished green. Almost invisible against the dark wooden door frame. Gamache shook his head then looked at his watch. It was almost six.
After a bit of discussion it was decided Agent Morin would stay at the cabin overnight, to guard the possessions.
“Come with me,” Gamache said to Morin. “I’ll drive you in while the others finish the job. You can pack an overnight bag and arrange for a satellite phone.”
Morin got on the ATV behind the Chief Inspector and searched for something to grip, settling on the bottom of the seat. Gamache started up the machine. His investigations had taken him into tiny fishing out-ports and remote settlements. He’d driven snowmobiles, power boats, motorcycles and ATVs. While appreciating their convenience, and necessity, he disliked them all. They shattered the calm with their banshee screams, polluting the wilderness with noise and fumes.
If anything could wake the dead, these could.
As they bounced along Morin realized he was in trouble, and letting go of the seat he flung his small arms around the large man in front of him and held on tight, feeling the Chief’s wax coat against his cheek and the strong body underneath. And he smelled sandalwood and rosewater.