Brutal Telling

Hugging the wall and staying low Gamache edged along. There was a need for speed. The stranger had been here for at least five minutes, uninterrupted. He could be in the house by now. A lot can happen in a minute, never mind five.

He edged around a bush and got to the far end of the large old house. There he saw movement. A man. Large. In a hat and gloves and field coat. He was close to the house, close to the back door. If he got inside their job would be far more difficult. So many places to hide. So much closer to the women.

As the Chief Inspector watched the man looked around then made for the French doors into the kitchen.

Gamache stepped out from the wall.

“Hold it,” he commanded. “Sûreté du Québec.”

The man stopped. His back was to Gamache and he couldn’t see whether Gamache had a gun. But neither could Gamache see if he had one.

“I want to see your hands,” said Gamache.

There was no movement. That wasn’t good, Gamache knew. He prepared to dive sideways if the man swung around and shot. But both stood their ground. Then the man turned quickly.

Gamache, trained and experienced, felt time slow down and the world collapse, so that all that existed was the turning man in front of him. His body, his arms. His hands. And as the man’s body swung Gamache saw something gripped in his right hand.

Gamache ducked.

Then the man was on the ground, and Beauvoir was on top of him. Gamache raced forward, pinning the man’s hand to the ground.

“He had something in his hand, do you see it?” demanded Gamache.

“Got it,” said Beauvoir and Gamache hauled the man to his feet.

Both of them looked at him. The hat had fallen off and the iron-gray hair was disheveled. He was tall and lanky.

“What the hell are you doing?” the man demanded.

“You’re trespassing,” said Beauvoir, handing what the man had held to Gamache, who looked at it. It was a bag. Of granola. And on the front was a stamp.

Manoir Bellechasse.

Gamache looked more closely at the man. He looked familiar. The man glared back, angry, imperious.

“How dare you. Do you know who I am?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Gamache, “I do.”

After a call to Morin, Marc Gilbert was released and showed up at his home minutes later, out of breath from running. He’d been told his wife and mother were safe but was relieved to see it for himself. He kissed and hugged them both then turned to Gamache.

“Where is he? I want to see him.”

Clearly “see” was a euphemism.

“Inspector Beauvoir’s with him in the barn.”

“Good,” said Marc and headed toward the door.

“Marc, wait.” His mother ran after him. “Maybe we should just leave this to the police.” Carole Gilbert looked frightened still. And with good reason, thought Gamache as he thought of the man in the barn.

“Are you kidding? This man’s been spying on us, maybe more.”

“What do you mean, ‘maybe more’?”

Gilbert hesitated.

“What aren’t you telling us?” his wife asked.

He shot a look at Gamache. “I think he might have killed that man and left his body in our house. As a threat. Or maybe he meant to kill one of us. Thought the stranger was one of us. I don’t know. But first the body shows up, then this guy tries to break in. Someone’s trying to hurt us. And I want to find out why.”

“Wait. Wait a minute.” Dominique had her hands up to stop her husband. “What are you saying? That body really was here?” She looked toward the vestibule. “In our home?” She looked at Gamache. “It’s true?” She looked back at her husband. “Marc?”

He opened and shut his mouth. Then took a deep breath. “He was here. The police were right. I found him when I got up in the middle of the night. I got scared and did something stupid.”

“You took the body to the bistro?” Dominique looked as though she’d been slapped by someone she loved, so great was her shock. His mother was staring at him as though he’d peed in the Château Frontenac dining room. He knew that look from when he was a boy and peed in the Château Frontenac dining room.

Gilbert’s lightning mind zipped all over the place, searching dark corners for someone else to blame. Surely it wasn’t his fault. Surely there were factors his wife didn’t appreciate. Surely this couldn’t be the act of complete idiocy her face accused him of.

But he knew it was.

Dominique turned to Gamache. “You have my permission to shoot him.”

“Merci, madame, but I’d need more than that to shoot him. A gun for instance.”

“Pity,” she said, and looked at her husband. “What were you thinking?”

He told them, as he had the cops, the reasoning that had appeared so obvious, so dazzling, at three in the morning.

“You did it for the business?” said Dominique when he’d finished. “Something’s very wrong when dumping bodies is part of our business plan.”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly planned,” he tried to defend himself. “And yes, I made a terrible mistake, but isn’t there a bigger question?” He’d finally found something curled up in one of those dark corners. Something that would take the heat off him. “Yes, I moved the body. But who put it here in the first place?”