Brutal Telling

Gamache was flabbergasted. He was sure they had it, that “Charlotte” was the key to break the cipher. He thought for a moment, scanning the case.

“Woo,” he said. They tried that.

Nothing.

“Walden.” But he knew he was grasping. And sure enough, nothing.

Nothing, nothing, nothing. What had he missed?

“Well, I’ll keep trying,” said Jérôme. “It might not be a Caesar’s Shift. There’re plenty of other codes.”

He smiled reassuringly and the Chief Inspector had a sense of what Dr. Brunel’s patients must have felt. The news was bad, but they had a man who wouldn’t give up.

“What can you tell me about one of your colleagues, Vincent Gilbert?” Gamache asked.

“He was no colleague of mine,” said Jérôme, testily. “Not of anyone’s from what I remember. He didn’t suffer fools easily. Do you notice most people who feel like that consider everyone a fool?”

“That bad?”

“Jérôme’s only annoyed because Dr. Gilbert thought himself God,” said Thérèse, perching on the arm of her husband’s chair.

“Difficult to work with,” said Gamache, who’d worked with a few gods himself.

“Oh no, it wasn’t that,” smiled Thérèse. “It annoyed Jérôme because he knows he’s the one true God and Gilbert refused to worship.”

They laughed but Jérôme’s smile faded first. “Very dangerous man, Vincent Gilbert. I think he really does have a God complex. Megalomaniac. Very clever. That book he wrote . . .”

“Being,” said Gamache.

“Yes. It was designed, every word calculated for effect. And I’ve got to hand it to him, it worked. Most people who’ve read it agree with him. He is at the very least a great man, and perhaps even a saint.”

“You don’t believe it?”

Dr. Brunel snorted. “The only miracle he’s performed is convincing everyone of his saintliness. No mean feat, given what an asshole he is. Do I believe it? No.”

“Well, it’s time for my news.” Thérèse Brunel stood up. “Come with me.”

Gamache followed her, leaving Jérôme to fiddle with the cipher. The study was filled with more papers and magazines. Thérèse sat at her computer and after a few quick taps a photograph appeared. It showed a carving of a shipwreck.

Gamache pulled up a chair and stared. “Is it . . .”

“Another carving? Oui.” She smiled, like a magician who’d produced a particularly spectacular rabbit.

“The Hermit made this?” Gamache twisted in his chair and looked at her. She nodded. He looked back at the screen. The carving was complex. On one side was the shipwreck, then some forest, and on the other side a tiny village being built. “Even in a photograph it seems alive. I can see the little people. Are they the same ones from the other carvings?”

“I think so. But I can’t find the frightened boy.”

Gamache searched the village, the ship on the shore, the forest. Nothing. What happened to him? “We need to have the carving,” he said.

“This’s in a private collection in Zurich. I’ve contacted a gallery owner I know there. Very influential man. He said he’d help.”

Gamache knew enough not to press Superintendent Brunel about her connections.

“It’s not just the boy,” he said. “We need to know what’s written underneath it.”

Like the others this one was, on the surface, pastoral, peaceful. But something lurked on the fringes. A disquiet.

And yet, once again, the tiny wooden people seemed happy.

“There’s another one. In a collection in Cape Town.” The screen flickered and another carving appeared. A boy was lying, either asleep or dead, on the side of a mountain. Gamache put on his glasses and leaned closer, squinting.

“Hard to tell, but I think it’s the same young man.”

“So do I,” said the Superintendent.

“Is he dead?”

“I wondered that myself, but I don’t think so. Do you notice something about this carving, Armand?”

Gamache leaned back and took a deep breath, releasing some of the tension he felt. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. But this time not to look at the image on the screen. This time he wanted to sense it.

After a moment he knew Thérèse Brunel was right. This carving was different. It was clearly the same artist, there was no mistaking that, but one significant element had changed.

“There’s no fear.”

Thérèse nodded. “Only peace. Contentment.”

“Even love,” said the Chief Inspector. He longed to hold this carving, to own it even, though he knew he never would. And he felt, not for the first time, that soft tug of desire. Of greed. He knew he’d never act on it. But he knew others might. This was a carving worth owning. All of them were, he suspected.

“What do you know about them?” he asked.

“They were sold through a company in Geneva. I know it well. Very discreet, very high end.”

“What did he get for them?”

“They sold seven of them. The first was six years ago. It went for fifteen thousand. The prices went up until they reached three hundred thousand for the last one. It sold this past winter. He says he figures he could get at least half a million for the next one.”

Gamache exhaled in astonishment. “Whoever sold them must have made hundreds of thousands.”