Brutal Telling

She said it with a small self-deprecating laugh. “I was foolish enough to ask if I could do anything the other day and they gave me a hammer and told me to put up some drywall. I hit a water pipe and an electrical cord.”

Her laugh was so unguarded and infectious Gamache found himself laughing too.

“Now I make tea. They call me the tea lady. Tea?”

“Merci, madame, that would be very nice.”

“I’ll tell Marc and Dominique you’re here. It’s about that poor man in the bistro, I presume?”

“It is.”

She seemed sympathetic, but not concerned. As though it had nothing to do with her. And Gamache found himself hoping it didn’t.

As he waited he looked around the room and drifted toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, where sun streamed in. The room was comfortably furnished with sofas and chairs that looked inviting. They were upholstered in expensive fabrics giving them a modern feel. A couple of Eames chairs framed the fireplace. It was an easy marriage of contemporary and old world. Whoever had decorated this room had an eye for it.

The windows were flanked by tailored silk curtains that touched the hardwood floor. Gamache suspected the curtains were almost never closed. Why shut out that view?

It was spectacular. From its position on the hill the house looked over the valley. He could see the Rivière Bella Bella wind its way through the village and out around the next mountain toward the neighboring valley. The trees at the top of the mountain were changing color. It was autumn up there already. Soon the reds and auburns and pumpkin oranges would march down the slopes until the entire forest was ablaze. And what a vantage point to see it all. And more.

Standing at the window he could see Ruth and Rosa walking around the village green, the old poet tossing either stale buns or rocks at the other birds. He could see Myrna working in Clara’s vegetable garden and Agent Lacoste walking over the stone bridge toward their makeshift Incident Room in the old railway station. He watched as she stopped on the bridge and looked into the gently flowing water. He wondered what she was thinking. Then she moved on. Other villagers were out doing their morning errands, or working in their gardens, or sitting on their porches reading the paper and drinking coffee.

From there he could see everything. Including the bistro.

Agent Paul Morin had arrived before Lacoste and was standing outside the railway station, making notes.

“I was thinking about the case last night,” he said, watching her unlock the door then following her into the chilly, dark room. She flipped on the lights and walked over to her desk. “I think the murderer must’ve turned on the lights of the bistro, don’t you? I tried walking around my house at two o’clock this morning, and I couldn’t see anything. It was pitch-black. In the city you might get streetlights through the window, but not out here. How’d he know who he was killing?”

“I suppose if he’d invited the victim there, then it was pretty clear. He’d kill the only other person in the bistro.”

“I realize that,” said Morin, drawing his chair up to her desk. “But murder’s a serious business. You don’t want to get it wrong. It was a massive hit to the head, right?”

Lacoste typed her password into her computer. Her husband’s name. Morin was so busy consulting his notes and talking she was sure he hadn’t noticed.

“I don’t think that’s as easy as it looks,” he continued, earnestly. “I tried it last night too. Hit a cantaloupe with a hammer.”

Now he had her full attention. Not only because she wanted to know what had happened, but because anyone who’d get up at two in the morning to smack a melon in the dark deserved attention. Perhaps even medical attention.

“And?”

“The first time I just grazed it. Had to hit it a few times before I got it just right. Pretty messy.”

Morin wondered, briefly, what his girlfriend would think when she got up and noticed the fruit with holes smashed in it. He’d left a note, but wasn’t sure that helped.

I did this, he’d written. Experimenting.

He perhaps should have been more explicit.

But the significance wasn’t lost on Agent Lacoste. She leaned back in her chair and thought. Morin had the brains to be quiet.

“So what do you think?” she finally asked.

“I think he must have turned the lights on. But it’d be risky.” Morin seemed dissatisfied. “It doesn’t make sense to me. Why kill him in the bistro when you have thick forests just feet away? You could slaughter tons of people in there and no one would notice. Why do it where the body would be found and you could be seen?”

“You’re right,” said Lacoste. “It doesn’t make sense. The Chief thinks it might have something to do with Olivier. Maybe the murderer chose the bistro on purpose.”

“To implicate him?”

“Or to ruin his business.”

“Maybe it was Olivier himself,” said Morin. “Why not? He’d be just about the only one who could find his way around without lights. He had a key to the place—”