Brutal Telling

It was ridiculous.

What it needed, clearly, was more definition, more detail. More depth. The sorts of things his clients and supporters had come to expect. And buy.

He’d picked up and lowered his brush a dozen times that day. This had never happened to him before. He’d watched, mystified, as Clara had been racked by self-doubt, had struggled and had finally produced some marginal piece of work. Her March of the Happy Ears, her series inspired by dragonfly wings, and, of course, her masterpiece, the Warrior Uteruses.

That’s what came of inspiration.

No, Peter was much more clear. More disciplined. He planned each piece, drew and drafted each work, knew months in advance what he’d be working on. He didn’t rely on airy-fairy inspiration.

Until now. This time he’d come into the studio with a fireplace log, cut cleanly so that the rings of age were visible. He’d taken his magnifying glass and approached it, with a view to enlarging a tiny part of it beyond recognition. It was, he liked to tell art critics at his many sold-out vernissages, an allegory for life. How we blow things out of all proportion, until a simple truth was no longer recognizable.

They ate it up. But this time it hadn’t worked. He’d been unable to see the simple truth. Instead, he’d painted this.

When Clara left Peter plopped down in his chair and stared at the bewildering piece of work on his easel and repeated silently to himself, I’m brilliant, I’m brilliant. Then he whispered, so quietly he barely heard it himself, “I’m better than Clara.”

Olivier stood on the terrasse outside the bistro and looked into the dark forest on the hill. In fact, Three Pines was surrounded by forest, something he’d never noticed, until now.

The cabin had been found. He’d prayed this wouldn’t happen, but it had. And for the first time since he’d arrived in Three Pines he felt the dark forest closing in.

But if all these things,” Beauvoir nodded to the interior of the single room, “are priceless why didn’t the murderer take them?”

“I’ve been wondering that myself,” said Gamache from the comfort of the large wing chair by the empty fireplace. “What was the murder about, Jean Guy? Why kill this man who seems to have lived a quiet, secret life in the woods for years, maybe decades?”

“And then once he’s dead, why take the body but leave the valuables?” Beauvoir sat in the chair opposite the Chief.

“Unless the body was more valuable than the rest?”

“Then why leave it at the old Hadley house?”

“If the murderer had just left the body here we’d never have found it,” reasoned Gamache, perplexed. “Never known there’d been a murder.”

“Why kill the man, if not for his treasure?” asked Beauvoir.

“Treasure?”

“What else is it? Priceless stuff in the middle of nowhere? It’s buried treasure, only instead of being buried in the ground it’s buried in the forest.”

But the murderer had left it there. And instead, had taken the only thing he wanted from that cabin. He’d taken a life.

“Did you notice this?” Beauvoir got up and walked to the door. Opening it he pointed upward, with a look of amusement.

There on the lintel above the door was a number.

16

“Now, you can’t tell me he got mail,” said Beauvoir as Gamache stared, puzzled. The numbers were brass and tarnished green. Almost invisible against the dark wooden door frame. Gamache shook his head then looked at his watch. It was almost six.

After a bit of discussion it was decided Agent Morin would stay at the cabin overnight, to guard the possessions.

“Come with me,” Gamache said to Morin. “I’ll drive you in while the others finish the job. You can pack an overnight bag and arrange for a satellite phone.”

Morin got on the ATV behind the Chief Inspector and searched for something to grip, settling on the bottom of the seat. Gamache started up the machine. His investigations had taken him into tiny fishing out-ports and remote settlements. He’d driven snowmobiles, power boats, motorcycles and ATVs. While appreciating their convenience, and necessity, he disliked them all. They shattered the calm with their banshee screams, polluting the wilderness with noise and fumes.

If anything could wake the dead, these could.

As they bounced along Morin realized he was in trouble, and letting go of the seat he flung his small arms around the large man in front of him and held on tight, feeling the Chief’s wax coat against his cheek and the strong body underneath. And he smelled sandalwood and rosewater.

The young man sat up, one hand on the Mountain, the other to his face. He couldn’t quite believe what the Mountain had told him. Then he started to giggle.