Now his attention turned to his dishwasher. “I’ve been looking all over for you.” His voice was appropriately solemn and courteous, though annoyance was poking through. “I need you in the kitchen. It’s a little busy.”
Olivier gave a strained smile and it was clear that, if not for the others present, he’d have said something else. In a whole other way.
“Sorry,” said Anton. He hurried over to the door, but paused to look at Jacqueline. “You okay?”
When she nodded, he turned to Lea and Matheo. “Désolé. It’s terrible.”
It was clear she’d been crying, her eyes were puffy and red.
Anton followed Olivier through the crowded bistro, filled with talk of murder, to the kitchens, filled with the scent of herbs and rich, comforting sauces, and the clatter of pots and pans and dishes.
To others it was a cacophony. To Anton it was a symphony. Operatic even. The clanging and banging of creation, of drama, of tension. Of rivalries. Of divas. Competing flavors and competing chefs. Heartbreak even. As soufflés fell. As casseroles burned.
But most of the time what rose from those noises, that grand tumult, was something wonderful. Beautiful. Exciting and comforting.
Anton had wept once, in Italy, when he’d tasted a perfect gelato. And once in Renty, France, when he’d taken a bite of baguette. A bread so sublime people traveled hours to buy one.
Yes. To others a kitchen was a convenience. Even a chore. To a precious few, it was their world. A messy, wonderful world. His world. His sanctuary. And he longed to get back into it. To hide. And hope the S?reté didn’t figure out who he was.
“Let’s go,” said Olivier, holding open the swinging door to the kitchen. “There’s lots to do. Not just here, but the S?reté agents are going to need sandwiches and drinks.”
“I’ll see to it,” said Anton.
Olivier relaxed just a little. “Merci.”
*
Once back at the church, Isabelle Lacoste sent an agent into Knowlton, to interview staff at the restaurant. See if they remembered the Evanses. Another agent was sent into the village with a list of the people to be interviewed.
She invited Chief Superintendent Gamache to sit in.
He declined. “Unless you need me, Isabelle.”
She thought for a moment. “Well, they’d be more likely to tell the truth, since you know them and know most of their movements in the last day or so. But,” she smiled and shrugged, “if they lie, they lie.”
It was not as cavalier as it sounded, Gamache knew.
“You’ll join us for dinner and stay over, I hope,” he said. “And perhaps we can compare notes.”
With him at the interviews, everyone would be on a short leash. Forced to tell the truth. Which, granted, was helpful in a murder investigation.
But not, perhaps, quite as helpful as a lie.
A lie didn’t necessarily make someone a killer. But it hurried the sorting process. The truthful from the untruthful. Those with nothing to hide. And those with a secret.
A lie was a light. One that grew into a floodlight, that eventually illuminated the person among them with the biggest secret. The most to hide.
*
Jean-Guy Beauvoir made himself comfortable in the study at the Gamache home and waited for the Internet to connect.
Few could find Three Pines, hidden in the valley, and that included the satellites that provided Internet coverage for most of the planet. The village was civilization adjacent. The information superhighway zoomed overhead. And Three Pines was a pothole.
But having witnessed untold brutality in cities and towns, Jean-Guy Beauvoir had come to believe that “civilization” might be overrated. Except for pizza delivery, of course.
But it was possible to get a book from Myrna’s shop, take it into Olivier’s bistro, and read it in peace, while drinking rich café au lait and eating a buttery croissant from Sarah’s Boulangerie.
Did that make up for no iPhone or pizza delivery?
“Non,” he muttered as he shifted impatiently in his chair and yearned for high-speed wireless and a large all-dressed.
The dial-up, primitive, maddening, noisy and unreliable, had reached the shrieking stage, as though it was afraid to connect to the outside world.
“It’s still better than what we’ve had in some places,” the chief always reminded Beauvoir when he grumbled about the wood-burning modem.
While Beauvoir waited, he looked out the window. He could see technicians taking equipment off vans and lugging it into St. Thomas’s. He marveled at Lacoste’s luck. To have such an Incident Room right next to the crime scene. Warm, dry, with running water, a fridge. A toilet.
“A coffeemaker, for chrissake,” he mumbled.
She didn’t even have to go outside, which, in Beauvoir’s opinion, was always an advantage.
It was a far cry from some of the places he and his father-in-law had been forced to use as they’d investigated murders across Québec.
The tents, the bobbing and corkscrewing fishing boats, the shacks, the caves.
He’d told Annie about the outhouse that’d once been their headquarters, but she’d refused to believe him.
“Ask your dad,” he’d said.
“I will not.” She laughed in her easy way. “You’re just trying to set me up. Entrapment, monsieur. I’ll have you up on charges.”
“You’d punish me?” he asked in a mock-hopeful voice. “I’m a bad, bad boy.”
“No, you’re a silly, silly boy. And, God help us, you’re a father now. There’re all sorts of new punishments I have lined up for you. I gave Honoré prunes for the first time. He liked them.”
But he’d been telling the truth. He and then–Chief Inspector Gamache had been investigating the murder of a survivalist in the Saguenay. The body had been found in a burned-out cabin, and the only structure left was the outhouse.
“A two-holer,” Gamache had pointed out, as though that was luxury.
“I’ll just sit out here,” Beauvoir had said, pulling a rock up to a stump and setting out his notebook.
At two in the morning, the rains came, and Beauvoir had knocked on the outhouse door.
“Who is it?” Gamache had asked, politely.
Jean-Guy had peered through the half moon cut into the rickety door. “Let me in.”
“It’s unlocked. But wipe your feet first.”
They’d spent a day and a half there, sifting through evidence in the charred rubble. And interviewing “neighbors” scattered through the forest. Most were trappers or fellow survivalists. The investigators were trying to find someone, anyone, who admitted to knowing the victim. But these people barely admitted to knowing themselves.
There’d been no Internet there at all. No laptops. No dial-up. No telephones. No nothing. Except, thankfully, toilet paper. And the sleeping bags, water, food packets and matches they’d marched in with.
They’d tacked up notepaper on the weathered walls of the outhouse and made flowcharts of suspects. It became almost cozy.
“Did you catch whoever did it?” Annie had asked. She’d been seduced by the story, and her lawyer mind had reluctantly told her that he was telling the truth.
She listened, rapt. As he listened, rapt, to her stories.
“We did. Through cunning, finely honed reasoning, animal—”