Brutal Telling

Morin took photographs, then, gloves on and tweezers ready, he took samples.

“I’ll get these to the lab in Sherbrooke right away.”

Morin left and Gamache and Beauvoir turned back to the Gilberts. Dominique had arrived home with groceries and had joined them.

“What is it?” she asked.

They were standing in the large hall now, away from the entrance, with its yellow police tape and rolled-up carpet.

Gamache was stern, all semblance of the affable man gone. “Who was the dead man?”

Three stunned people stared back.

“We’ve told you,” said Carole. “We don’t know.”

Gamache nodded slowly. “You did say that. And you also said you’d never seen anyone fitting his description, but you had. Or at least one of you had. And one of you knows exactly what that lab report will tell us.”

They stared at each other now.

“The dead man was here, lying in your entrance, on Varathane not quite hardened. He had it stuck to his sweater. And your floor has part of his sweater stuck to it.”

“But this is ridiculous,” said Carole, looking from Gamache to Beauvoir. She too could shape-shift, and now the gracious chatelaine became a formidable woman, her eyes angry and hard. “Leave our home immediately.”

Gamache bowed slightly and to Beauvoir’s amazement he turned to go, catching Beauvoir’s eye.

They walked down the dirt road into Three Pines.

“Well done, Jean Guy. Twice we searched that house and twice we missed it.”

“So why are we leaving? We should be up there, interviewing them.”

“Perhaps. But time is on our side. One of them knows we’ll have proof, probably before the day’s out. Let him stew. Believe me, it’s no favor I’ve done them.”

And Beauvoir, thinking about it, knew that to be true.

Just before lunch Marc Gilbert arrived at the Incident Room.

“May I speak to you?” he asked Gamache.

“You can speak to all of us. There’re no secrets anymore, are there, Monsieur Gilbert?”

Marc bristled but sat in the chair indicated. Beauvoir nodded to Morin to join them with his notebook.

“I’ve come voluntarily, you can see that,” said Marc.

“I can,” said Gamache.

Marc Gilbert had walked down to the old railway station, slowly. Going over and over what he’d tell them. It had sounded good when he’d talked to the trees and stones and the ducks flying south. Now he wasn’t so sure.

“Look, I know this sounds ridiculous.” He started with the one thing he’d promised himself not to say. He tried to concentrate on the Chief Inspector, not that ferret of an assistant, or the idiot boy taking notes. “But I found the body just lying there. I couldn’t sleep so I got up. I was heading to the kitchen to make myself a sandwich when I saw him. Lying there by the front door.”

He stared at Gamache who was watching him with calm, interested brown eyes. Not accusing, not even disbelieving. Just listening.

“It was dark, of course, so I turned on a light and went closer. I thought it might be a drunk who’d staggered up the hill from the bistro, saw our place and just made himself comfortable.”

He was right, it did sound ridiculous. Still the Chief said nothing.

“I was going to call for help but I didn’t want to upset Dominique or my mother, so I crept closer to the guy. Then I saw his head.”

“And you knew he’d been murdered,” said Beauvoir, not believing a word of this.

“That’s it.” Marc turned grateful eyes to the Inspector, until he saw the sneer, then he turned back to Gamache. “I couldn’t believe it.”

“So a murdered man shows up in your house in the middle of the night. Didn’t you lock the door?” asked Beauvoir.

“We do, but we’re getting a lot of deliveries and since we never use that door ourselves I guess we forgot.”

“What did you do, Monsieur Gilbert?” Gamache asked, his voice soothing, reasonable.

Marc opened his mouth, shut it and looked down at his hands. He’d promised himself when it got to this part he wouldn’t look away, or down. Wouldn’t flinch. But now he did all three.

“I thought about it for a while, then I picked the guy up and carried him down into the village. To the bistro.”

There it was.

“Why?” Gamache asked.

“I was going to call the police, actually had the phone in my hand,” he held out his empty hand to them as though that was proof, “but then I got to thinking. About all the work we’d put into the place. And we’re so close, so close. We’re going to open in just over a month, you know. And I realized it would be all over the papers. Who’d want to relax in an inn and spa where someone had just been killed?”

Beauvoir hated to say it, but he had to agree. Especially at those prices.

“So you dumped him in the bistro?” he asked. “Why?”

Now Gilbert turned to him. “Because I didn’t want to put him into someone else’s home to be found. And I knew Olivier kept the key under a planter by the front door.” He could see their skepticism, but plowed ahead anyway. “I took the dead guy down, left him on the floor of the bistro and came home. I moved a rug up from the spa area to cover where the guy had been. I knew no one would miss it downstairs. Too much else going on.”