The Brutal Telling (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #5)

Gamache nodded. “It had blood on it. The victim’s blood, according to the lab. But when they removed it they discovered something else. The block of wood wasn’t carved to say Woe. The smear of blood made a mess of the lettering. When the blood was lifted it said—”

“Woo,” said Beauvoir. “So you thought if one said it maybe the other did too.”

“Worth a try.”

“I think I prefer Woe.” Beauvoir looked at the web again. “At least it’s a word. What does Woo mean?”

They thought. Had someone been wandering by the cabin and chanced to look in they would have seen a group of adults standing quite still, staring into space and muttering “Woo” every now and then.

“Woo,” Brunel said. “Don’t people pitch woo?”

“Woohoo? No, that’s boo,” said Beauvoir. “Boohoo, not woo.”

“Isn’t it what they call kangaroos?” asked Morin.

“Kangawoos? That’s roo,” snapped Beauvoir.

“Chalice,” swore Brunel.

“Woo, woo,” said Morin under his breath, begging himself to come up with something that didn’t sound like a choo-choo train. But the more he said it the more it sounded like nonsense. “Woo,” he whispered.

Only Gamache said nothing. He listened to them but his mind kept going to the other piece of news. His face grew stern as he thought about what else had been revealed when the bloody fingerprints were lifted from the carving.

He can’t stay here.”

Marc swished his arms under the tap at the kitchen sink.

“I don’t want him here either, but at least here we can watch him,” his mother said.

All three looked out the kitchen window to the old man sitting cross-legged on the grass, meditating.

“What do you mean, ‘watch him’?” asked Dominique. She was fascinated by her father-in-law. He had a sort of broken-down magnetism about him. She could see he once had had a powerful personality, and a powerful hold over people. And he behaved as though that was still true. There was a shabby dignity about him, but also a cunning.

Marc grabbed the bar of soap and rubbed it over his forearms, looking like a surgeon scrubbing up. In fact, he was scrubbing away dust and plaster after dry-walling.

It was hard work, and work he was almost certainly doing for someone else. The next owner of the inn and spa. Which was just as well, since he was doing it very badly.

“I mean that things happen around Vincent,” said Carole. “Always have. He’s sailed through life, this glorious ship of state. Oblivious of the wreckage in his wake.”

It might not have sounded like it, but she was being charitable. For the sake of Marc. The truth was, she wasn’t at all convinced Vincent had been oblivious of the damage he caused. She’d come to believe he actually deliberately sailed right over people. Destroyed them. Gone out of his way to do it.

She’d been his nurse, his assistant, his dogsbody. His witness and, finally, his conscience. Which was probably why he’d grown to hate her. And her him.

Once again they looked at the cross-legged man, sitting calmly in their garden.

“I can’t cope with him right now,” said Marc, drying his hands.

“We have to let him stay,” said Dominique. “He’s your father.”

Marc looked at her with a mixture of amusement and sadness. “He’s done it to you, now, hasn’t he? Charmed you.”

“I’m not some naïve schoolgirl, you know.”

And this brought Marc up short. He realized she’d faced down some of the wealthiest, most manipulative bullies in Canadian finance. But Dr. Vincent Gilbert was different. There was something bewitching about him. “I’m sorry. So much is happening.”

He’d thought moving to the country would be a breeze compared to the greed and fear and manipulation of the financial district. But so far here he’d found a dead body, moved it, ruined their reputation in the village, and been accused of murder; now he was about to kick a saint out of their home, and had almost certainly messed up the dry-walling.

And the leaves hadn’t even changed yet.

But by then they’d be gone. To find another home somewhere else and hope they did better. He longed for the relative ease of the business world, where cut-throats lurked in every cubicle. Here everything looked so pleasant and peaceful, but wasn’t.

He looked out the window again. In the foreground was his father, sitting cross-legged in the garden, and behind him in the field two broken-down old horses, what might or might not be a moose, and in the distance a muck-encrusted horse that by all rights should have been dog food by now. This wasn’t what he had in mind when he’d moved to the country.