Jean-Guy Beauvoir waited.
He wasn’t very good at it. First he looked as though he didn’t care, then he looked as though he had all the time in the world. That lasted about twenty seconds. Then he looked annoyed. That was more successful and lasted until Olivier Brulé arrived a quarter hour later.
It had been a few months since he’d last seen Olivier. Prison changed some men. Well, it changed all men. But externally some showed it more than others. Some actually seemed to flourish. They lifted weights, bulked up, exercised for the first time in years, ate three square meals. They even thrived, though few would admit it, on the regimen, the structure. Many had never had that in their lives, and so they’d wandered off course.
Here their course was clearer.
Though most, Beauvoir knew, withered in confinement.
Olivier walked through the doors, wearing his prison blues. He was in his late thirties and of medium build. His hair was cut far shorter than Beauvoir had ever seen, but it disguised the fact he was balding. He looked pale but healthy. Beauvoir felt a revulsion, as he did in the presence of all murderers. For that’s what he knew in his heart Olivier was.
No, he sharply reminded himself. I need to think of this man as innocent. Or at least, as not guilty.
But try as he might he saw a convict.
“Inspector,” said Olivier, standing at the far end of the visitors’ room, unsure what to do.
“Olivier,” said Beauvoir and smiled, though judging by the look on Olivier’s face it was probably more of a sneer. “Please. Call me Jean-Guy. I’m here privately.”
“Just a social call?” Olivier sat at a table across from Beauvoir. “How’s the Chief Inspector?”
“He’s in Quebec City for Carnaval. I’m expecting to have to bail him out any minute.”
Olivier laughed. “There’s more than one fellow in here who arrived via Carnaval. Apparently the ‘I was drunk on Caribou’ defense isn’t all that effective.”
“I’ll alert the Chief.”
They both laughed, a little longer than necessary, then fell into an uneasy silence. Now that he was there Beauvoir wasn’t sure what to say.
Olivier stared at him, waiting.
“I wasn’t totally honest with you just now,” Beauvoir began. He’d never done anything like this before and felt as though he’d wandered into a wilderness and hated Olivier all the more for making him do that. “I’m on leave as you know, so this really isn’t an official call but . . .”
Olivier waited, better at it than Beauvoir. Finally he raised his brows in a silent, “go on.”
“The Chief asked me to look into a few aspects of your case. I don’t want you to get your hopes up—” But he could see it was already too late for that. Olivier was smiling. Life seemed to have returned to him. “Really, Olivier, you can’t expect anything to come from this.”
“Why not?”
“Because I still think you did it.”
That shut him up, Beauvoir was happy to see. Still, there swirled around Olivier a residue of hope. Was this just cruel? Beauvoir hoped so. The Inspector leaned on the metal table. “Listen, there’re just a few questions. The Chief asked me to be absolutely certain, that’s all.”
“You might think I did it, but he doesn’t, does he?” said Olivier, triumphant.
“He isn’t so sure, and he wants to be sure. Wants to make certain he—we—didn’t make a mistake. Look, if you tell anyone about this, anyone at all, it’s off. You understand?” Beauvoir’s eyes were hard.
“I understand.”
“I mean it, Olivier. Especially Gabri. You can’t tell him anything.”
Olivier hesitated.
“If you tell him he’ll tell others. He couldn’t help but. Or at the very least his mood will change and people’ll notice. If I’m going to ask questions, dig some more, it has to be subtle. If someone else killed the Hermit I don’t want them on their guard.”
This made sense to Olivier, who nodded. “I promise.”
“Bon. You need to tell me again what happened that night. And I need the truth.”
The air crackled between the two men.
“I told you the truth.”
“When?” Beauvoir demanded. “Was it the second or third version of the story? If you’re in here you did it to yourself. You lied at every turn.”
It was true, Olivier knew. He’d lied all his life about everything, until the habit became who he was. It didn’t even occur to him to tell the truth. So when all this happened of course he’d lie.
Too late he’d realized what that did. It made the truth unrecognizable. And while he was very good, very glib, at lying, all his truths sounded like falsehoods. He blushed, stumbled for words, got confused when telling the truth.
“All right,” he said to Beauvoir. “I’ll tell you what happened.”
“The truth.”
Olivier gave a single, curt, nod.
“I met the Hermit ten years ago, when Gabri and I first arrived in Three Pines and were living above the shop. He wasn’t a hermit yet. He’d still leave his cabin and get his own supplies, but he looked pretty ragged. We were renovating the shop. I hadn’t turned it into a bistro, it was just an antique store back then. One day he showed up and said he wanted to sell something. I wasn’t very happy. It seemed he wanted a favor from me. Looking at the guy I figured it was some piece of junk he found on the side of the road but when he showed it to me I knew it was special.”
“What was it?”
“A miniature, a tiny portrait, in profile. Some Polish aristocrat, I think. Must have been painted with a single hair. It was beautiful. Even the frame it was in was beautiful. I agreed to buy it from him in exchange for a bag of groceries.”
He’d told the story so often Olivier was almost immune to the disgust in people’s faces. Almost.
“Go on,” said Beauvoir. “What did you do with the portrait?”
“Took it to Montreal and sold it on rue Notre-Dame, the antique district.”
“Can you remember which shop?” Beauvoir pulled out his notebook and a pen.
“Not sure if it’s still there. They change a lot. It was called Temps Perdu.”
Beauvoir made a note. “How much did you get for it?”
“Fifteen hundred dollars.”
“And the Hermit kept coming back?”