Brutal Telling

THE BRUTAL TELLING

ALSO BY LOUISE PENNY

A Rule Against Murder

The Cruelest Month

A Fatal Grace

Still Life

LOUISE PENNY

THE

BRUTAL

TELLING

MINOTAUR BOOKS      NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE BRUTAL TELLING. Copyright © 2009 by Louise Penny. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Grateful acknowledgment is given for permission to reprint the following:

“The Bells of Heaven” by Ralph Hodgson is used by kind permission of Bryn Mawr College.

Excerpts from “Cressida to Troilius: A Gift” and “Sekhmet, the Lion-Headed Goddess of War” from Morning in the Burning House: New Poems by Margaret Atwood. Copyright © 1995 by Margaret Atwood. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from “Gravity Zero” from Bones by Mike Freeman. Copyright © 2007 by Mike Freeman. Reproduced with kind permission of the author.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Penny, Louise.

The brutal telling / Louise Penny.—1st ed.

       p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-312-37703-8

   1. Gamache, Armand (Fictitious character)—Fiction.  2. Police—Québec (Province)—Fiction.  3. Villages—Québec (Province)—Fiction.  4. Murder—Investigation—Fiction.  5. Québec (Province)—Fiction.  I. Title.

PR9199.4.P464B78    2009

813'.6—dc22

2009028462

First published in Great Britain by Headline Publishing Group

First U.S. Edition: October 2009

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

For the SPCA Monteregie, and all the people

who would “ring the bells of Heaven.”

And, for Maggie,

who finally gave all her heart away.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Once again, this book is the result of a whole lot of help from a whole lot of people. I want and need to thank Michael, my husband, for reading and rereading the manuscript, and always telling me it was brilliant. Thank you to Lise Page, my assistant, for her tireless and cheery work and great ideas. To Sherise Hobbs and Hope Dellon for their patience and editorial notes.

I want to thank, as always, the very best literary agent in the world, Teresa Chris. She sent me a silver heart when my last book made the New York Times bestseller list (I also thought I’d just mention that!). Teresa is way more than an agent. She’s also a lovely, thoughtful person.

I’d also like to thank my good friends Susan McKenzie and Lili de Grandpré, for their help and support.

And finally I want to say a word about the poetry I use in this book, and the others. As much as I’d love not to say anything and hope you believe I wrote it, I actually need to thank the wonderful poets who’ve allowed me to use their works and words. I adore poetry, as you can tell. Indeed, it inspires me—with words and emotions. I tell aspiring writers to read poetry, which I think for them is often the literary equivalent of being told to eat Brussels sprouts. They’re none too enthusiastic. But what a shame if a writer doesn’t at least try to find poems that speak to him or her. Poets manage to get into a couplet what I struggle to achieve in an entire book.

I thought it was time I acknowledged that.

In this book I use, as always, works from Margaret Atwood’s slim volume Morning in the Burned House. Not a very cheerful title, but brilliant poems. I’ve also quoted from a lovely old work called The Bells of Heaven by Ralph Hodgson. And a wonderful poem called “Gravity Zero” from an emerging Canadian poet named Mike Freeman, from his book Bones.

I wanted you to know that. And I hope these poems speak to you, as they speak to me.

THE BRUTAL TELLING

ONE

“All of them? Even the children?” The fireplace sputtered and crackled and swallowed his gasp. “Slaughtered?”

“Worse.”

There was silence then. And in that hush lived all the things that could be worse than slaughter.

“Are they close?” His back tingled as he imagined something dreadful creeping through the woods. Toward them. He looked around, almost expecting to see red eyes staring through the dark windows. Or from the corners, or under the bed.

“All around. Have you seen the light in the night sky?”

“I thought those were the Northern Lights.” The pink and green and white shifting, flowing against the stars. Like something alive, glowing, and growing. And approaching.

Olivier Brulé lowered his gaze, no longer able to look into the troubled, lunatic eyes across from him. He’d lived with this story for so long, and kept telling himself it wasn’t real. It was a myth, a story told and repeated and embellished over and over and over. Around fires just like theirs.