The Brutal Telling (3 page)

“You’re the one screwing me up.”

“You wish. Now get the phone.”

Olivier reached across the mountain that was his partner and took the call.

“
Oui, allô
?”

Gabri snuggled back into the warm bed, then registered the time on the glowing clock. Six forty-three. On Sunday morning. Of the Labor Day long weekend.

Who in the world would be calling at this hour?

He sat up and looked at his partner’s face, studying it as a passenger might study the face of a flight attendant during takeoff. Were they worried? Frightened?

He saw Olivier’s expression change from mildly concerned to puzzled, and then, in an instant, Olivier’s blond brows dropped and the blood rushed from his face.

Dear God, thought Gabri. We’re going down.

“What is it?” he mouthed.

Olivier was silent, listening. But his handsome face was eloquent. Something was terribly wrong.

“What’s happened?” Gabri hissed.

T
hey rushed across the village green, their raincoats flapping in the wind. Myrna Landers, fighting with her huge umbrella, came across to meet them and together they hurried to the bistro. It was dawn and the world was gray and wet. In the few paces it took to get to the bistro their hair was plastered to their heads and their clothes were sodden. But for once neither Olivier nor Gabri cared. They skidded to a stop beside Myrna outside the brick building.

“I called the police. They should be here soon,” she said.

“Are you sure about this?” Olivier stared at his friend and neighbor. She was big and round and wet and wearing bright yellow rubber boots under a lime green raincoat and gripping her red umbrella. She looked as though a beachball had exploded. But she also had never looked more serious. Of course she was sure.

“I went inside and checked,” she said.

“Oh, God,” whispered Gabri. “Who is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?” Olivier asked. Then he looked through the mullioned glass of his bistro window, bringing his slim hands up beside his face to block out the weak morning light. Myrna held her brilliant red umbrella over him.

Olivier’s breath fogged the window but not before he’d seen what Myrna had also seen. There was someone inside the bistro. Lying on the old pine floor. Face up.

“What is it?” asked Gabri, straining and craning to see around his partner.

But Olivier’s face told him all he needed to know. Gabri focused on the large black woman next to him.

“Is he dead?”

“Worse.”

What could be worse than death? he wondered.

Myrna was as close as their village came to a doctor. She’d been a psychologist in Montreal before too many sad stories and too much good sense got the better of her, and she’d quit. She’d loaded up her car intending to take a few months to drive around before settling down, somewhere. Any place that took her fancy.

She got an hour outside Montreal, stumbled on Three Pines, stopped for
café au lait
and a croissant at Olivier’s Bistro, and never left. She unpacked her car, rented the shop next door and the apartment above and opened a used bookstore.

People wandered in for books and conversation. They brought their stories to her, some bound, and some known by heart. She recognized some of the stories as real, and some as fiction. But she honored them all, though she didn’t buy every one.

“We should go in,” said Olivier. “To make sure no one disturbs the body. Are you all right?”

Gabri had closed his eyes, but now he opened them again and seemed more composed. “I’m fine. Just a shock. He didn’t look familiar.”

And Myrna saw on his face the same relief she’d felt when she’d first rushed in. The sad fact was, a dead stranger was way better than a dead friend.

They filed into the bistro, sticking close as though the dead man might reach out and take one of them with him. Inching toward him
they stared down, rain dripping off their heads and noses onto his worn clothes and puddling on the wide-plank floor. Then Myrna gently pulled them back from the edge.

And that’s how both men felt. They’d woken on this holiday weekend in their comfortable bed, in their comfortable home, in their comfortable life, to find themselves suddenly dangled over a cliff.

All three turned away, speechless. Staring wide-eyed at each other.

There was a dead man in the bistro.

And not just dead, but worse.

As they waited for the police Gabri made a pot of coffee, and Myrna took off her raincoat and sat by the window, looking into the misty September day. Olivier laid and lit fires in the two stone hearths at either end of the beamed room. He poked one fire vigorously and felt its warmth against his damp clothing. He felt numb, and not just from the creeping cold.

When they’d stood over the dead man Gabri had murmured, “Poor one.”

Myrna and Olivier had nodded. What they saw was an elderly man in shabby clothing, staring up at them. His face was white, his eyes surprised, his mouth slightly open.

Myrna had pointed to the back of his head. The puddled water was turning pink. Gabri leaned tentatively closer, but Olivier didn’t move. What held him spellbound and stunned wasn’t the shattered back of the dead man’s head, but the front. His face.

“
Mon Dieu
, Olivier, the man’s been murdered. Oh, my God.”

Olivier continued to stare, into the eyes.

“But who is he?” Gabri whispered.

It was the Hermit. Dead. Murdered. In the bistro.

“I don’t know,” said Olivier.

C
hief Inspector Armand Gamache got the call just as he and Reine-Marie finished clearing up after Sunday brunch. In the dining room of their apartment in Montreal’s Outremont
quartier
he could hear his second in command, Jean Guy Beauvoir, and his daughter Annie. They weren’t talking. They never talked. They argued. Especially when Jean Guy’s wife, Enid, wasn’t there as a buffer. But Enid had to plan school
courses and had begged off brunch. Jean Guy, on the other hand, never turned down an invitation for a free meal. Even if it came at a price. And the price was always Annie.

It had started over the fresh-squeezed orange juice, coursed through the scrambled eggs and Brie, and progressed across the fresh fruit, croissants and
confitures
.

“But how can you defend the use of stun guns?” came Annie’s voice from the dining room.

“Another great brunch,
merci
, Reine-Marie,” said David, placing dishes from the dining room in front of the sink and kissing his mother-in-law on the cheek. He was of medium build with short, thinning dark hair. At thirty he was a few years older than his wife, Annie, though he often appeared younger. His main feature, Gamache often felt, was his animation. Not hyper, but full of life. The Chief Inspector had liked him from the moment, five years earlier, his daughter had introduced them. Unlike other young men Annie had brought home, mostly lawyers like herself, this one hadn’t tried to out-macho the Chief. That wasn’t a game that interested Gamache. Nor did it impress him. What did impress him was David’s reaction when he’d met Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache. He’d smiled broadly, a smile that seemed to fill the room, and simply said, “
Bonjour.
”

He was unlike any other man Annie had ever been interested in. David wasn’t a scholar, wasn’t an athlete, wasn’t staggeringly handsome. Wasn’t destined to become the next Premier of Quebec, or even the boss of his legal firm.

No, David was simply open and kind.

She’d married him, and Armand Gamache had been delighted to walk with her down the aisle, with Reine-Marie on the other side of their only daughter. And to see this nice man wed his daughter.

For Armand Gamache knew what not-nice was. He knew what cruelty, despair, horror were. And he knew what a forgotten, and precious, quality “nice” was.

“Would you rather we just shoot suspects?” In the dining room Beauvoir’s voice had risen in volume and tone.

“Thank you, David,” said Reine-Marie, taking the dishes. Gamache handed his son-in-law a fresh dish towel and they dried as Reine-Marie washed up.

“So,” David turned to the Chief Inspector, “do you think the Habs have a chance at the cup this year?”

“No,” yelled Annie. “I expect you to learn how to apprehend someone without having to maim or kill them. I expect you to genuinely see suspects as just that. Suspects. Not sub-human criminals you can beat up, electrocute or shoot.”

“I think they do,” said Gamache, handing David a plate to dry and taking one himself. “I like their new goalie and I think their forward line has matured. This is definitely their year.”

“But their weakness is still defense, don’t you think?” Reine-Marie asked. “The Canadiens always concentrate too much on offense.”

“You try arresting an armed murderer. I’d love to see you try. You, you . . .” Beauvoir was sputtering. The conversation in the kitchen stopped as they listened to what he might say next. This was an argument played out every brunch, every Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthday. The words changed slightly. If not tasers they were arguing about daycare or education or the environment. If Annie said blue, Beauvoir said orange. It had been this way since Inspector Beauvoir had joined the Sûreté du Québec’s homicide division, under Gamache, a dozen years earlier. He’d become a member of the team, and of the family.

“You what?” demanded Annie.

“You pathetic piece of legal crap.”

Reine-Marie gestured toward the back door of the kitchen that gave onto a small metal balcony and fire escape. “Shall we?”

“Escape?” Gamache whispered, hoping she was serious, but suspecting she wasn’t.

“Maybe you could just try shooting them, Armand?” David asked.

“I’m afraid Jean Guy is a faster draw,” said the Chief Inspector. “He’d get me first.”

“Still,” said his wife, “it’s worth a try.”

“Legal crap?” said Annie, her voice dripping disdain. “Brilliant. Fascist moron.”

“I suppose I could use a taser,” said Gamache.

“Fascist? Fascist?” Jean Guy Beauvoir almost squealed. In the kitchen Gamache’s German shepherd, Henri, sat up in his bed and cocked his head. He had huge oversized ears which made Gamache think he wasn’t purebred but a cross between a shepherd and a satellite dish.

“Uh-oh,” said David. Henri curled into a ball in his bed and it was clear David would join him if he could.

All three looked wistfully out the door at the rainy, cool early September day. Labor Day weekend in Montreal. Annie said something unintelligible. But Beauvoir’s response was perfectly clear.

“Screw you.”

“Well, I think this debate’s just about over,” said Reine-Marie. “More coffee?” She pointed to their espresso maker.

“
Non, pas pour moi, merci
,” said David, with a smile. “And please, no more for Annie.”

“Stupid woman,” muttered Jean Guy as he entered the kitchen. He grabbed a dish towel from the rack and began furiously drying a plate. Gamache figured that was the last they’d see of the India Tree design. “Tell me she’s adopted.”

“No, homemade.” Reine-Marie handed the next plate to her husband.

“Screw you.” Annie’s dark head shot into the kitchen then disappeared.

“Bless her heart,” said Reine-Marie.

Of their two children, Daniel was the more like his father. Large, thoughtful, academic. He was kind and gentle and strong. When Annie had been born Reine-Marie thought, perhaps naturally, this would be the child most like her. Warm, intelligent, bright. With a love of books so strong Reine-Marie Gamache had become a librarian, finally taking over a department at the
Bibliothèque nationale
in Montreal.

But Annie had surprised them both. She was smart, competitive, funny. She was fierce, in everything she did and felt.

They should have had an inkling about this. As a newborn Armand would take her for endless rides in the car, trying to soothe her as she howled. He’d sing, in his deep baritone, Beatles songs, and Jacques Brel songs. “
La Complainte du phoque en Alaska”
by Beau Dommage. That was Daniel’s favorite. It was a soulful lament. But it did nothing for Annie.

One day, as he’d strapped the shrieking child into the car seat and turned on the ignition, an old Weavers tape had been in.

As they sang, in falsetto, she’d settled.

At first it had seemed a miracle. But after the hundredth trip around the block listening to the laughing child and the Weavers singing “
Wimoweh, a-wimoweh
,” Gamache yearned for the old days and felt like shrieking himself. But as they sang the little lion slept.

Annie Gamache became their cub. And grew into a lioness. But sometimes, on quiet walks together, she’d tell her father about her fears and her disappointments and the everyday sorrows of her young life. And Chief Inspector Gamache would be seized with a desire to hold her to him, so that she needn’t pretend to be so brave all the time.

She was fierce because she was afraid. Of everything.