Brutal Telling

“Still,” said Beauvoir, dipping a crusty baguette into his gravy, “I wonder why that number’s up there.”

“Maybe some things don’t need a purpose,” said Gamache. “Maybe that’s their purpose.”

But that was too esoteric for Beauvoir. As was the Chief Inspector’s reasoning about the Queen Charlotte Islands. In fact, Beauvoir wouldn’t call it reasoning at all. At best it was intuition on the Chief’s part, at worst it was a wild guess, maybe even manipulated by the murderer.

The only image Beauvoir had of the moody archipelago at the very end of the country was of thick forests and mountains and endless gray water. But mostly it was mist.

And into that mist Armand Gamache was going, alone.

“I almost forgot, Ruth Zardo gave me this.” Gamache handed him the slip of paper. Beauvoir unfolded it and read out loud.

“and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neck

and caress you into darkness and paradise.”

There was, at least, a full stop after “paradise.” Was this, finally, the end?

THIRTY-TWO

Armand Gamache arrived in the late afternoon on the brooding islands after taking increasingly smaller planes until it seemed the last was nothing more than fuselage wrapped round his body and thrust off the end of the Prince Rupert runway.

As the tiny float plane flew over the archipelago off the coast of northern British Columbia Gamache looked down on a landscape of mountains and thick ancient forests. It had been hidden for millennia behind mists almost as impenetrable as the trees. It had remained isolated. But not alone. It was a cauldron of life that had produced both the largest black bears in the world and the smallest owls. It was teeming with life. Indeed, the first men were discovered in a giant clam shell by a raven off the tip of one of the islands. That, according to their creation stories, was how the Haida came to live there. More recently loggers had also been found on the islands. That wasn’t part of creation. They’d looked beyond the thick mists and seen money. They’d arrived on the Charlottes a century ago, blind to the crucible they’d stumbled upon and seeing only treasure. The ancient forests of red cedar. Trees prized for their durability, having been tall and straight long before Queen Charlotte was born and married her mad monarch. But now they fell to the saw, to be made into shingles and decks and siding. And ten small carvings.

After landing smoothly on the water the young bush pilot helped extricate the large man from her small plane.

“Welcome to Haida Gwaii,” she said.

When Gamache had woken early that morning in Three Pines and found a groggy Gabri in the kitchen making a small picnic for the drive to the Montreal airport, he knew nothing about these islands half a world away. But on the long flights from Montreal to Vancouver, to Prince Rupert and into the village of Queen Charlotte, he’d read about the islands and he knew that phrase.

“Thank you for bringing me to your homeland.”

The pilot’s deep brown eyes were suspicious, as well they would be, thought Gamache. The arrival of yet another middle-aged white man in a suit was never a good sign. You didn’t have to be Haida to know that.

“You must be Chief Inspector Gamache.”

A burly man with black hair and skin the color of cedar was walking across the dock, his hand out. They shook.

“I’m Sergeant Minshall, of the RCMP. We’ve been corresponding.”

His voice was deep and had a slight sing-song quality. He was Haida.

“Ah, oui, merci. Thank you for meeting the plane.”

The Mountie took the overnight bag from the pilot and slung it over his shoulder. Thanking the pilot, who ignored them, the two men walked to the end of the dock, up a ramp and along the road. There was a bite to the air and Gamache had to remember they were closer to Alaska than Vancouver.

“I see you’re not staying long.”

Gamache looked out into the ocean and knew the mainland had disappeared. No, it was not that it had vanished, but that it didn’t exist at all here. This was the mainland.

“I wish I could stay longer, it’s beautiful. But I have to get back.”

“Right. I’ve arranged a room for you at the lodge. I think you’ll enjoy it. There aren’t many people on the Queen Charlottes, as you probably know. Maybe five thousand, with half being Haida and half,” he hesitated slightly, “not. We get quite a few tourists, but the season’s ending.”

The two men had slowed and now they stopped. They’d walked by a hardware store, a coffee shop, a little building with a mermaid out front. But it was the harbor that drew Gamache’s attention. He’d never seen such scenery in all his life, and he’d seen some spectacularly beautiful places in Quebec. But none, he had to admit, came close to this.