“Charlotte,” said Beauvoir. “Queen Charlotte.”
“Yes. Like my mother. My father said they were special because they would always remind him of my mother. Charlotte.”
“That’s why you named your son Charles,” said Beauvoir. “We thought it was after your father, but it was your mother’s name. Charlotte.”
Mundin nodded but didn’t look at his son. Couldn’t look at his son, or his wife now.
“What did you do then?” Beauvoir asked. He knew enough now to keep his voice soft, almost hypnotic.
To not break the spel . Let Old Mundin tel the story.
“I knew then I was looking at the man who’d kil ed my father fifteen years ago. I never believed it was an accident. I’m not a fool. I know most people think it was suicide, that he kil ed himself by walking onto the river. But I knew him. He would never have done that. I knew if he was dead he’d been kil ed. But it was only much later I realized his most precious things had been taken. I talked to my mother about it but I don’t think she believed me. He’d never shown her the things. Only me.
“My father had been murdered and his priceless antiques stolen. And now, final y, I’d found the man who’d done it.”
“What did you do, Patrick?” Michel e asked. It was the first time any of them had heard his real name.
The name she reserved for their most intimate moments. When they were not Old and The Wife. But Patrick and Michel e. A young man and woman, in love.
“I wanted to torment the man. I wanted him to know someone had found him. One of our favorite books was Charlotte’s Web, so I made a web from fishing line and snuck into the cabin when he was working on his vegetable garden. I put it in the rafters. So that he’d find it there.”
“And you put the word ‘Woo’ into it,” said Beauvoir.
“Why?”
“It was what my father cal ed me. Our secret name.
He taught me al about wood and when I was smal I tried to say the words but al I could say was ‘woo.’ So he started cal ing me that. Not often. Just sometimes when I was in his arms. He’d hug me tight and whisper, ‘Woo.’ ”
No one could look at the beautiful young man now.
They dropped their eyes from the scalding sight.
From the eclipse. As al that love turned into hate.
“I watched from the woods, but the Hermit didn’t seem to find the web. So I took the most precious
thing I own. I kept it in a sack in my workshop. Hadn’t seen it in years. But I took it out that night and took it with me to the cabin.”
There was silence then. In their minds they could see the dark figure walking through the dark woods.
Toward the thing he had searched for and final y found.
“I watched Olivier leave and waited a few minutes.
Then I left the thing outside his door and knocked. I hid in the shadows and watched. The old man opened the door and looked out, expecting to see Olivier. He looked amused at first, then puzzled. Then a little frightened.”
The fire crackled and cackled in the grate. It spit out a few embers that slowly died. And Old described what happened next.
The Hermit scanned the woods and was about to close the door when he saw something sitting on the porch. A tiny visitor. He stooped and picked it up. It was a wooden word. Woo.
And then Old had seen it. The look he’d dreamed of, fantasized about. Mortgaged his life to see. Terror on the face of the man who’d kil ed his father. The same terror his father must have felt as the ice broke underneath him.
The end. In that instant the Hermit knew the monster he’d been hiding from had final y found him.
And it had.
Old separated himself from the dark forest and approached the cabin, approached the elderly man.
The Hermit backed into the cabin and said only one thing.
“Woo,” he whispered. “Woo.”
Old picked up the silver menorah and struck. Once.
And into that blow he put his childhood, his grief, his loss. He put his mother’s sorrow and his sister’s longing. The menorah, weighed down with that, crushed the Hermit’s skul . And he fel , Woo clutched in his hand.
Old didn’t care. No one would find the body except Olivier and he suspected Olivier would say nothing.
He liked the man very much, but knew him for what he was.
Greedy.
Olivier would take the treasure and leave the body and everyone would be happy. A man already lost to the world would be slowly swal owed by the forest.
Olivier would have his treasure, and Old would have his life back.
His obligation to his father discharged.
“It was the first thing I ever made,” said Old. “I whittled Woo and gave it to my father. After he died I couldn’t bear to look at it anymore so I put it in the sack. But I brought it out that night. One last time.”
Old Mundin turned to his family. Al his energy spent, his bril iance fading. He placed his hand on his sleeping son’s back and spoke.
“I’m so sorry. My father taught me everything, gave me everything. This man kil ed him, shoved him onto the river in spring.”
Clara grimaced, imagining a death like that, imagining the horror as the ice began to crack. As it did now beneath The Wife.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir went to the bistro door and opened it. Along with a swirl of snow two large Sûreté officers entered.
“Can you leave us, please?” Beauvoir asked of the vil agers, and slowly, stunned, they put their winter coats on and left. Clara and Peter took The Wife and Charles back to their home, while Inspector Beauvoir finished the interview with Old Mundin.
An hour later the police cars drew away, taking Old.
Michel e accompanied him, but not before stopping at the inn and spa to hand Charles over to the only other person he loved.
The asshole saint. Dr. Gilbert. Who tenderly took the boy in his arms and held him for a few hours, safe against the bitter cold world pounding at the door.
“Hot toddy?”
Peter handed one to Beauvoir, who sat in a deep, comfortable chair in their living room. Gabri sat on the sofa in a daze. Clara and Myrna were also there, drinks in their hands, in front of the fireplace.
“What I don’t get,” said Peter, perching on an arm of the sofa, “is where al those amazing antiques came from in the first place. The Hermit stole them and took them into the woods, but where did Old’s father get them to begin with?”
Beauvoir sighed. He was exhausted. Always happier with physical activity, it constantly amazed him how grueling intel ectual activity could also be.
“For al that Old Mundin loved his father, he didn’t know him wel ,” said Beauvoir. “What kid does? I think we’l find that Mundin made some trips to the Eastern Bloc, as communism was fal ing. He convinced a lot of people to trust him with their family treasures. But instead of keeping them safe, or sending people the
money, he just disappeared with their treasures.”
“Stole them himself?” Clara asked.
Beauvoir nodded.
“The Hermit’s murder was never about the treasure,” said Beauvoir. “Old Mundin could care less about it. In fact, he came to hate it. That’s why it was left in the cabin. He didn’t want the treasure. The only thing he took was the Hermit’s life.”
Beauvoir looked into the fire and remembered his interrogation of Old, in the deserted bistro, where it had al begun months ago. He heard about the death of Mundin’s father. How Old’s heart had broken that day. But into that crack young Old had shoved his rage, his pain, his loss but that wasn’t enough. But once he placed his intention there his heart beat again. With a purpose.