The Brutal Telling (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #5)

Their pacing stopped. They stared at the forest, as he stared at them.

And a wave crashed over Olivier, knocking the breath he’d been holding for so long out of him. Knocking the fixed smile off his face.

It was almost a relief. Almost.

There it is,” said Morin.

He’d tied his belt around a branch. It had seemed a clever solution when he’d done it, but now searching for a thin brown belt on the edge of a forest didn’t seem such a brilliant idea.

But they found it.

Gamache looked at the path. Once you knew it was there it was obvious. It almost screamed. Like those optical illusions deliberately placed in paintings that once found you couldn’t stop seeing. The tiger in the crockery, the spaceship in the garden.

“I’ll join you at the cabin when I can,” said Gamache and watched with Lacoste as Beauvoir and Morin headed into the woods. Like nuns, he felt they were safe if not alone. It was, he supposed, a conceit. But it comforted him. He watched until he couldn’t see them anymore. But still he waited, until he could no longer hear them. And only then did he descend into Three Pines.

Peter and Clara Morrow were both in their studios when the doorbell rang. It was an odd, almost startling sound. No one they knew ever rang the bell, they just came in and made themselves at home. How often had Clara and Peter found Ruth in their living room? Feet up on the sofa reading a book and drinking a martini at ten in the morning, Rosa nestled on the worn carpet beside her. They thought they’d have to call a priest to get rid of them.

More than once they’d found Gabri in their bath.

“Anybody home?” sang a man’s deep voice.

“I’ll get it,” Clara called.

Peter didn’t bother to answer. He was wandering around his studio, circling the work on the easel, getting close, then heading away. His mind might be on his art, as it always was, but his heart was elsewhere. Since word of Marc Gilbert’s treachery had hit the village Peter had thought of little else.

He’d genuinely liked Marc. Was drawn to him in a way he felt drawn to cadmium yellow and marian blue, and Clara. He’d felt excited, almost giddy, at the thought of visiting Marc. Having a quiet drink together. Talking. Going for walks.

Marc Gilbert had ruined that as well. Trying to ruin Olivier was one thing, a terrible thing. But secretly Peter couldn’t help but feel this was just as bad. Like taking a rusty nail to something lovely. And rare. At least for Peter.

He hated Marc Gilbert now.

Outside his studio he heard Clara talking, and a familiar voice replying.

Armand Gamache.

Peter decided to join them.

“Coffee?” Clara offered the Chief Inspector, after he and Peter had greeted each other.

“Non, merci. I can’t stay long. I’ve come on business.”

Clara thought that was a funny way of putting it. Murder business.

“You had a busy day yesterday,” said Clara, as the three of them sat at the kitchen table. “It’s all Three Pines can talk about. It’s hard to know what’s the most shocking. That Marc Gilbert was the one who moved the body, that Vincent Gilbert’s here or that the dead man seemed to be living in the forest all along. Did he really live there?”

“We think so, but we’re just waiting for confirmation. We still don’t know who he was.”

Gamache watched them closely. They seemed as puzzled as he was.

“I can’t believe no one knew he was there,” said Clara.

“We think someone knew. Someone was taking him food. We found it on the counter.”

They looked at each other in amazement.

“One of us? Who?”

One of us, thought Gamache. Three short words, but potent. They more than anything had launched a thousand ships, a thousand attacks. One of us. A circle drawn. And closed. A boundary marked. Those inside and those not.

Families, clubs, gangs, cities, states, countries. A village.

What had Myrna called it? Beyond the pale.

But it went beyond simple belonging. The reason “belonging” was so potent, so attractive, so much a part of the human yearning, was that it also meant safety, and loyalty. If you were “one of us” you were protected.

Was that what he was up against, Gamache wondered. Not just the struggle to find the killer, but the efforts of those on the inside to protect him? Was the drawbridge up? The pale closed? Was Three Pines protecting a killer? One of them?

“Why would someone take him food then kill him?” asked Clara.

“Doesn’t make sense,” agreed Peter.

“Unless the murderer didn’t show up intending to kill,” said Gamache. “Maybe something happened to provoke him.”