He stared at Gamache who was watching him with calm, interested brown eyes. Not accusing, not even disbelieving. Just listening.
“It was dark, of course, so I turned on a light and went closer. I thought it might be a drunk who’d staggered up the hill from the bistro, saw our place and just made himself comfortable.”
He was right, it did sound ridiculous. Still the Chief said nothing.
“I was going to call for help but I didn’t want to upset Dominique or my mother, so I crept closer to the guy. Then I saw his head.”
“And you knew he’d been murdered,” said Beauvoir, not believing a word of this.
“That’s it.” Marc turned grateful eyes to the Inspector, until he saw the sneer, then he turned back to Gamache. “I couldn’t believe it.”
“So a murdered man shows up in your house in the middle of the night. Didn’t you lock the door?” asked Beauvoir.
“We do, but we’re getting a lot of deliveries and since we never use that door ourselves I guess we forgot.”
“What did you do, Monsieur Gilbert?” Gamache asked, his voice soothing, reasonable.
Marc opened his mouth, shut it and looked down at his hands. He’d promised himself when it got to this part he wouldn’t look away, or down. Wouldn’t flinch. But now he did all three.
“I thought about it for a while, then I picked the guy up and carried him down into the village. To the bistro.”
There it was.
“Why?” Gamache asked.
“I was going to call the police, actually had the phone in my hand,” he held out his empty hand to them as though that was proof, “but then I got to thinking. About all the work we’d put into the place. And we’re so close, so close. We’re going to open in just over a month, you know. And I realized it would be all over the papers. Who’d want to relax in an inn and spa where someone had just been killed?”
Beauvoir hated to say it, but he had to agree. Especially at those prices.
“So you dumped him in the bistro?” he asked. “Why?”
Now Gilbert turned to him. “Because I didn’t want to put him into someone else’s home to be found. And I knew Olivier kept the key under a planter by the front door.” He could see their skepticism, but plowed ahead anyway. “I took the dead guy down, left him on the floor of the bistro and came home. I moved a rug up from the spa area to cover where the guy had been. I knew no one would miss it downstairs. Too much else going on.”
“This is a dangerous time,” said Gamache, staring at Marc. “We could charge you with obstruction, with indignities to a body, with hampering the investigation.”
“With murder,” said Beauvoir.
“We need the full truth. Why did you take the body to the bistro? You could have left him in the woods.”
Marc sighed. He didn’t think they’d press this point. “I thought about it, but there were lots of kids in Three Pines for the long weekend and I didn’t want any of them finding him.”
“Noble,” said Gamache, with equilibrium. “But that wasn’t likely to happen, was it? How often do kids play in the woods around your place?”
“It happens. Would you run that risk?”
“I would call the police.”
The Chief let that sentence do its job. It stripped Marc Gilbert of any pretension to higher ground. And left him exposed before them. For a man who, at best, did something unconscionable. At worst he murdered a man.
“The truth,” said Gamache, almost in a whisper.
“I took the body to the bistro so that people would think he’d been killed there. Olivier’s treated us like shit since we arrived.”
“So you paid him back by putting a body there?” asked Beauvoir. He could think of a few people he’d like to dump bodies on. But never would. This man did. That spoke of his hatred of Olivier. A rare, and surprising, degree of hatred. And his resolve.
Marc Gilbert looked at his hands, looked out the window, moved his gaze around the walls of the old railway station. And finally he rested on the large man across from him.
“That’s what I did. I shouldn’t have done it, I know.” He shook his head in wonderment at his own stupidity. Then he looked up suddenly as the silence grew. His eyes were sharp and bright. “Wait a minute. You don’t think I killed the man, do you?”
They said nothing.
Gilbert looked from one to the other. He even looked at the idiot agent with the poised pen.
“Why would I do that? I don’t even know who he is.”
Still they said nothing.
“Really. I’d never seen him before.”
Finally Beauvoir broke the silence. “And yet there he was in your house. Dead. Why would a strange body be in your house?”
“You see?” Gilbert thrust his hand toward Beauvoir. “You see? That’s why I didn’t call the cops. Because I knew that’s what you’d think.” He put his head into his hands as though trying to contain his scrambling thoughts. “Dominique’s going to kill me. Oh, Jesus. Oh, God.” His shoulders sagged and his head hung, heavy from the weight of what he’d done and what was still to come.
Just then the phone rang. Agent Morin reached for it. “Sûreté du Québec.”
The voice on the other end spoke hurriedly and was muffled.
“Désolé,” said Morin, feeling bad because he knew he was interrupting the interrogation. “I don’t understand.” Everyone was looking at him. He colored and tried to listen closely, but he still couldn’t make out what was being said. Then he heard and the color in his face changed. “Un instant.”
He covered the mouthpiece. “It’s Madame Gilbert. There’s a man on their land. She saw him in the woods at the back.” Morin listened again at the phone. “She says he’s approaching the house. What should she do?”
All three men stood up.
“Oh my God, he must have seen me leave and knows they’re alone,” said Marc.
Gamache took the phone. “Madame Gilbert, is the back door locked? Can you get to it now?” He waited. “Good. Where is he now?” He listened, then began striding to the door, Inspector Beauvoir and Marc Gilbert running beside him. “We’ll be there in two minutes. Take your mother-in-law and lock yourselves in an upstairs bathroom. That one you took me to. Yes, with the balcony. Lock the doors, close the curtains. Stay there until we come to get you.”
Beauvoir had started the car and Gamache slammed the door and handed the phone back to Morin. “Stay here. You too.”
“I’m coming,” said Gilbert, reaching for the passenger door.
“You’ll stay here and talk to your wife. Keep her calm. You’re delaying us, monsieur.”
Gamache’s voice was intense, angry.
Gilbert grabbed the phone from Morin as Beauvoir gunned the car and they took off over the stone bridge, around the common and up du Moulin, to stop short of the old Hadley house. They were there in less than a minute. They got quickly and quietly out of the car.
“Do you have a gun?” Beauvoir whispered as they ran, crouched, to the corner of the house. Gamache shook his head. Really, thought Beauvoir. There were times he just felt like shooting the Chief himself.
“They’re dangerous,” said Gamache.
“Which is why he,” Beauvoir jerked his head toward the back of the property, “probably has one.”
Gamache brought his hand up and Beauvoir was silent. The Chief motioned in one direction, then disappeared around the side of the house. Beauvoir ran past the front door and around the far side. Both making for the back, where Dominique had seen the man.
Hugging the wall and staying low Gamache edged along. There was a need for speed. The stranger had been here for at least five minutes, uninterrupted. He could be in the house by now. A lot can happen in a minute, never mind five.