“Armand?”
“Sorry,” Gamache came back to the stone home in Quebec City. “I was just remembering something.”
His mentor examined him. “Al right?”
Gamache gave a nod and smiled. “A tune.”
“You found out who kil ed this recluse though?”
“We did. The evidence was overwhelming. We found the murder weapon and other things from the cabin in the bistro.”
“Olivier was the murderer?” Émile lifted the letters and Gamache nodded.
“It was hard for everyone to believe, hard for me to believe, but it was the truth.”
Émile watched his companion. He knew Armand wel . “You liked him, this Olivier?”
“He was a friend. Is a friend.”
Gamache remembered again sitting in the cheery bistro, holding the evidence that damned his friend.
The terrible realization that Olivier was indeed the murderer. He’d taken the man’s treasure from his cabin. But more than that. He’d taken the man’s life.
“You said the body was found in the bistro, but he was murdered in his own cabin? Is that what Gabri means? Why would Olivier move the body from the cabin to the bistro?”
Gamache didn’t say anything for a long time, and Émile gave him that time, sipping his wine, thinking his own thoughts, staring into the soft flames and waiting.
Final y Gamache looked at Émile. “Gabri asks a good question.”
“Are they partners?”
Gamache nodded.
“Wel , he just doesn’t want to believe Olivier did it.
That’s al .”
“That’s true, he doesn’t. But the question is stil good. If Olivier murdered the Hermit in a remote cabin, why move the body to a place it would be found?”
“And his own place at that.”
“Wel , no, that’s where it gets complicated. He actual y moved it to a nearby inn and spa. He admits to moving the body, to try to ruin the spa. He saw it as a threat.”
“So you have your answer.”
“But that’s just it,” said Gamache, turning so that his whole body faced Émile. “Olivier says he found the Hermit already dead and decided to use the body as a kind of weapon, to hurt the competition. But he says if he’d actual y murdered the man he’d never have moved the body. He’d have left it there, or taken it into the woods to be eaten by coyotes. Why would a murderer kil someone then make sure the body was found?”
“But wait a second,” said Émile, trying to piece it together. “You said the body was found in Olivier’s own bistro. How did that happen?”
“A bit awkward for Olivier that,” said Gamache.
“The owner of the inn and spa had the same idea.
When he found the body, he moved it to the bistro, to try to ruin Olivier.”
“Nice
neighborhood.
Quite
a
Merchants’
Association.”
Gamache nodded. “It took a while but we eventual y found the cabin and the contents and the evidence the Hermit had been kil ed there. Al the forensics confirmed only two people had spent time in the cabin. The Hermit, and Olivier. And then we found items from the cabin hidden in Olivier’s bistro, including the murder weapon. Olivier admitted to stealing them—”
“Foolish man.”
“Greedy man.”
“You arrested him?”
Gamache nodded, remembering that terrible day when he knew the truth and had to act on it. Seeing Olivier’s face, but worse, seeing Gabri’s.
And then the trial, the evidence, the testimony.
The conviction.
Gamache looked down at the pile of letters on the sofa. One every day since Olivier had been sentenced. Al cordial, al with the same question.
Why would Olivier move the body?
“You keep cal ing this man ‘the Hermit.’ Who was
he?”
“A Czech immigrant named Jakob, but that’s al we know.”
Émile stared at him, then nodded. It was unusual not to identify a murder victim but not unheard of, particularly one who so clearly didn’t want to be identified.
The two men moved into the dining room with its wal of exposed stone, open plan kitchen and aroma of roasting lamb and vegetables. After dinner they bundled up, put Henri on a leash and headed into the bitterly cold night. Their feet crunching on the hard snow, they joined the crowds heading out the great stone archway through the wal , to Place d’Youvil e and the ceremony opening the Carnaval de Québec.
In the midst of the festivities, as fiddlers sawed away and kids skated and the fireworks lit the sky over the old city Émile turned to Gamache.
“Why did Olivier move the body, Armand?”
Gamache steeled himself against the thrashing explosions, the bursts of light, the people crowding al around, shoving and shrieking.
Across the abandoned factory he saw Jean-Guy Beauvoir fal , hit. He saw the gunmen above them, shooting, in a place that was supposed to be almost undefended.
He’d made a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake.
THREE
The next morning, Saturday, Gamache took Henri and walked through gently fal ing snow up rue Ste-Ursule for breakfast at Le Petit Coin Latin. Waiting for his omelette, a bowl of café au lait in front of him, he read the weekend papers and watched the revelers head to the creperies along rue St-Jean. It was fun to be both a part of it and apart from it, warm and toasty in the bistro just off the beaten track with Henri at his side.
After reading Le Soleil and Le Devoir he folded the newspapers and once again took out his correspondence from Three Pines. Gamache could just imagine Gabri, large, voluble, quite magnificent sitting in the bistro he now ran, leaning on the long, polished wooden counter, writing. The fieldstone fireplaces at either end of the beamed room would be lit, roaring, fil ing the place with light and warmth and welcome.
And even in Gabri’s private censure of the Chief Inspector there was always kindness, concern.
Gamache stroked the envelopes with one finger and almost felt the gentleness. But he felt something else, he felt the man’s conviction.
Olivier didn’t do it. Gabri repeated it over and over in each letter, as though with repetition it would be true.
Why would he move the body?
Gamache’s finger stopped caressing the paper, and he stared out the window, then he picked up his cel phone and made a cal .
After breakfast he climbed the steep, slippery street. Turning left, Gamache made his way to the Literary and Historical Society. Every now and then he stepped into a snow bank to let families glide by. Kids were wrapped and bound, mummified, preserved against a bitterly cold Québec winter and heading for Bonhomme’s Ice Palace, or the ice slide, or the cabane à sucre with its warm maple syrup hardening to taffy on snow. The evenings of Carnaval were for university students, drunk and partying but the bright days were for children.
Once again Gamache marveled at the beauty of this old city with its narrow winding streets, the stone buildings, the metal roofs piled with snow and ice. It
was like fal ing into an ancient European town. But Quebec City was more than an attractive anachronism, a pretty theme park. It was a living, vibrant haven, a gracious city that had changed hands many times, but kept its heart. The flurries were fal ing more heavily now, but without much wind. The city, always lovely, looked even more magical in the winter, with the snow, and the lights, the horse-drawn calèches, the people wrapped brightly against the cold.