The Brutal Telling (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #5)

By the time they were flying over Toronto Gamache knew what the carvings meant, and what he had to do next.

THIRTY-FOUR

While Gamache had been in the mist of the Queen Charlotte Islands Clara had been in her own sort of fog. She’d spent the day circling the telephone, getting closer and closer then shooting away.

Peter watched all this from his studio. He no longer knew what he hoped would happen. That Clara would call Fortin, or not. He no longer knew what would be best. For her, for himself.

Peter stared at the picture on his easel. Picking up his brush, he dipped it in paint and approached. Determined to give it the detail people expected from his works. The complexity. The layers.

He added a single dot, then stepped back.

“Oh, God,” he sighed and stared at the fresh dot on the white canvas.

Clara was once again approaching the telephone, via the refrigerator. Chocolate milk in one hand and Oreo cookies in the other she stared at the phone.

Was she being willful? Obstinate? Or was she standing up for what she believed in? Was she a hero or a bitch? Strange how often it was hard to tell.

She went into the garden and weeded without enthusiasm for a few minutes, then showered, changed, kissed Peter good-bye, got in her car and drove to Montreal. To the Galerie Fortin, to pick up her portfolio.

On the way home she made a last-minute detour, to visit Miss Emily Carr. Clara stared at the sculpture of the frumpy, eccentric woman with the horse and the dog and the monkey. And conviction in the face of a brutal telling.

Inspector Beauvoir met Gamache at Trudeau Airport.

“Any word from Superintendent Brunel?” the Chief Inspector asked as Beauvoir tossed his case into the backseat.

“She found one more carving. Some guy in Moscow has it. Won’t let it out of his hands but he sent some pictures.” Beauvoir handed an envelope to the Chief Inspector. “You? What did you find out?”

“Did you realize the lines Ruth’s given you are all part of a single poem?”

“You found that out on the Queen Charlotte Islands?”

“Indirectly. Have you kept them?”

“The scraps of paper? Of course not. Why? Are they important to the case?”

Gamache sighed. He was weary. He had a distance to go that day and he couldn’t afford a stumble. Not now.

“No. I suppose not. But it’s a shame to lose them.”

“Yeah, you say that. Just wait until she turns her pen on you.”

“. . . and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neck and caress you into darkness and paradise,” Gamache whispered.

“Where to?” Beauvoir asked as they bumped along the road toward Three Pines.

“The bistro. We need to speak to Olivier again. You looked into his finances?”

“He’s worth about four million. One and a half from the sales of the carvings, a little over a million from the antiques the Hermit gave him and his property’s worth about a million. We’re not much further along,” said Beauvoir, grimly.

But Gamache knew they were very close indeed. And he knew this was when the ground either became solid, or fell out from beneath them.

The car glided to a stop in front of the bistro. The Chief Inspector had been so quiet in the passenger seat Beauvoir thought maybe he was catching a nap. He looked tired, and who wouldn’t after the long flight on Air Canada? The carrier that charged for everything. Beauvoir was convinced there’d soon be a credit card slot next to the emergency oxygen.

The Inspector looked over and sure enough Gamache’s head was down and his eyes closed. Beauvoir hated to disturb him, he looked so peaceful. Then he noticed the Chief’s thumb softly rubbing the picture he held loosely in his hand. Beauvoir looked more closely. The Chief’s eyes weren’t closed, not altogether.

They were narrow and staring intently at the image in his hand.

On it was the carving of a mountain. Barren, desolate. As though it had been clear-cut. Just a few scraggly pines at its base. There was a sadness about it, Gamache felt, an emptiness. And yet there was something about this work that was very different from the others. There was also a kind of levity. He narrowed his eyes and peering closer he saw it. What he’d mistaken for another pine at the foot of the mountain wasn’t.

It was a young man. A boy, stepping hesitantly onto the base of the carving.

And where he stepped, some seedlings sprouted.

It reminded him of Clara’s painting of Ruth. Capturing that moment when despair turned to hope. This remarkable carving was forlorn, but also strangely hopeful. And without needing to look any closer Gamache knew this boy was the one in the other works. But the fear was gone. Or had it not yet arrived?