The Brutal Telling (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #5)

“How long were you gone?”

“About half an hour. I didn’t dawdle.”

He saw again the tree limbs snapping back and felt them slapping him, smelled the pine needles, and heard the crashing through the woods, like an army, running. Racing. He’d thought it was just his own noise, magnified by fear and the night. But maybe not.

“You saw and heard nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“What time was that?” Gamache asked.

“About two I guess, maybe two thirty.”

Gamache laced his fingers together. “What did you do once you realized what had happened?”

The rest of the story came out quickly, in a rush. Once he’d realized the Hermit was dead, another idea had come to Olivier. A way the Hermit might help. He’d put the body in the wheelbarrow and taken him through the woods to the old Hadley house.

“It took a while, but I finally got him there. I’d planned to leave him on the porch, but when I tried the door it was unlocked, so I laid him in the front hall.”

He made it sound gentle, but he knew it wasn’t. It was a brutal, ugly, vindictive act. A violation of a body, a violation of a friendship, a violation of the Gilberts. And finally, it was a betrayal of Gabri and their lives in Three Pines.

It was so quiet in the room he could almost believe himself alone. He looked up and there was Gamache, watching him.

“I’m sorry,” said Olivier. He scolded himself, desperate not to be the gay guy who cried. But he knew his actions had taken him far beyond cliché, or caricature.

And then Armand Gamache did the most extraordinary thing. He leaned forward so that his large, certain hands were almost touching Olivier’s, as though it was all right to be that close to someone so vile, and he spoke in a calm, deep voice.

“If you didn’t kill the man, who else could have? I need your help.”

In that one sentence Gamache had placed himself next to Olivier. He might still be on the outer reaches of the world, but at least he wasn’t alone.

Gamache believed him.

Clara stood outside Peter’s closed studio door. She almost never knocked, almost never disturbed him. Unless it was an emergency. Those were hard to come by in Three Pines and were generally Ruth-shaped and difficult to avoid.

Clara had walked around the garden a few times, then come inside and walked around the living room, and then the kitchen in ever decreasing circles until finally she found herself here. She loved Myrna, she trusted Gamache, she adored Gabri and Olivier and many other friends. But it was Peter she needed.

She knocked. There was a pause, then the door opened.

“I need to talk.”

“What is it?” He came out immediately and closed the door behind him. “What’s wrong?”

“I met Fortin, as you know, and he said something.”

Peter’s heart missed a beat. And in that missed beat lived something petty. Something that hoped Fortin would change his mind. Would cancel Clara’s solo show. Would say they’d made a mistake and Peter was really the one they wanted.

His heart beat for Clara every hour of every day. But every now and then it stumbled.

He took her hands. “What’d he say?”

“He called Gabri a fucking queer.”

Peter waited for the rest. The part about Peter being the better artist. But Clara just stared at him.

“Tell me about it.” He led her to a chair and they sat.

“Everything was going so well. He loved my ideas for hanging the show, he said FitzPatrick would be there from MoMA, and so would Allyne from the Times. And he thinks even Vanessa Destin Browne, you know, from the Tate Modern. Can you believe it?”

Peter couldn’t. “Tell me more.”

It was like throwing himself over and over at a wall of spikes.

“And then he called Gabri a fucking queer, behind his back. And said it made him want to vomit.”

The spiked wall turned smooth, and soft.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

Peter dropped his eyes, then looked up. “I probably wouldn’t have either.”

“Really?” asked Clara, searching his face.

“Really.” He smiled and squeezed her hands. “You weren’t expecting it.”

“It was a shock,” said Clara, eager to explain. “What should I do?”

“What d’you mean?”

“Should I just forget about it, or say something to Fortin?”

And Peter saw the equation immediately. If she confronted the gallery owner she was running the risk of angering him. In fact, it almost certainly would. At the very least it would mar their relationship. He might even cancel her show.