Brutal Telling

“Everyone had a key to the place. Seems there were sets floating all over the township, and Olivier kept one under the urn at the front door,” said Lacoste.

Morin nodded and didn’t seem surprised. It was still the country way, at least in the smaller villages.

“He’s certainly a main suspect,” said Lacoste. “But why would he kill someone in his own bistro?”

“Maybe he surprised the guy. Maybe the tramp broke in and Olivier found him and killed him in a fight,” said Morin.

Lacoste was silent, waiting to see if he’d work it all the way through. Morin steepled his hands and leaned his face into them, staring into space. “But it was the middle of the night. If he saw someone in the bistro wouldn’t he have called the cops, or at least woken his partner? Olivier Brulé doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d grab a baseball bat and rush off alone.”

Lacoste exhaled and looked at Agent Morin. If the light was just right, catching this slight young man’s face just so, he looked like an idiot. But he clearly wasn’t.

“I know Olivier,” said Lacoste, “and I’d swear he was stunned by what he’d found. He was in shock. Hard to fake and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t faking it. No. When Olivier Brulé woke up yesterday morning he didn’t expect to find a body in his bistro. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t involved somehow. Even unwittingly. The Chief wants us to find out more about Olivier. Where he was born, his background, his family, his schools, what he did before coming here. Anyone who might have a grudge against him. Someone he pissed off.”

“This is more than being pissed off.”

“How do you know?” asked Lacoste.

“Well, I get pissed off, and I don’t kill people.”

“No, you don’t. But I presume you’re fairly well balanced, except for that melon incident.” She smiled and he reddened. “Look, it’s a huge mistake to judge others by ourselves. One of the first things you learn with Chief Inspector Gamache is that other people’s reactions aren’t ours. And a murderer’s are even more foreign. This case didn’t begin with the blow to the head. It started years ago, with another sort of blow. Something happened to our murderer, something we might consider insignificant, trivial even, but was devastating to him. An event, a snub, an argument that most people would shrug off. Murderers don’t. They ruminate; they gather and guard resentments. And those resentments grow. Murders are about emotions. Emotions gone bad and gone wild. Remember that. And don’t ever think you know what someone else is thinking, never mind feeling.”

It was the first lesson she’d been taught by Chief Inspector Gamache, and the first one she’d now passed on to her own protégé. To find a murderer you followed clues, yes. But you also followed emotions. The ones that stank, the foul and putrid ones. You followed the slime. And there, cornered, you’d find your quarry.

There were other lessons, lots of others. And she’d teach him them as well.

That’s what she’d been thinking on the bridge. Thinking and worrying about. Hoping she’d be able to pass to this young man enough wisdom, enough of the tools necessary to catch a killer.

“Nathaniel,” said Morin, getting up and going over to his own computer. “Your husband’s name or your son’s?”

“Husband,” said Lacoste, a little nonplussed. He’d seen after all.

The phone rang. It was the coroner. She had to speak to Chief Inspector Gamache urgently.

TEN

At the Chief Inspector’s request Marc and Dominique Gilbert were giving him a tour of their home, and now they stood in front of a room Gamache knew well. It had been the master bedroom of the old Hadley house, Timmer Hadley’s room.

Two murders had happened there.

Now he looked at the closed door, with its fresh coat of gleaming white paint, and wondered what lay beyond. Dominique swung the door open and sunlight poured out. Gamache couldn’t hide his surprise.

“Quite a change,” said Marc Gilbert, clearly pleased with his reaction.

The room was, quite simply, stunning. They’d removed all the fretwork and googahs added over the generations. The ornate moldings, the dark mantel, the velvet drapes that kept the light at bay with their weight of dust and dread and Victorian reproach. All gone. The heavy, foreboding four-poster bed was gone.

They’d taken the room back to its basic structure, clean lines that showed off its gracious proportions. The curtains had wide stripes of of sage and gray and let the light stream through. Along the top of each of the large windows was a lintel of stained glass. Original. More than a century old. It spilled playful colors into the room. The floors, newly stained, glowed. The king-size bed had an upholstered headboard and simple, fresh, white bed linen. A fire was laid in the hearth, ready for the first guest.

“Let me show you the en suite,” said Dominique.