“Kept offering me things. Some fantastic, some not so great but still better than I’m likely to find in most attics or barns. At first I sold them through that antiques shop but then realized I could get more on eBay. Then one day the Hermit arrived looking really bad. Skinny, and stressed. He said, ‘I’m not coming back, old son. I can’t.’ This was a disaster for me. I’d come to pretty much rely on his stuff. He said he didn’t want to be seen anymore, then he invited me to his cabin.”
“You went?”
Olivier nodded. “I had no idea he lived in the woods. He was way the hell and gone. Well, you know it.”
Beauvoir did. He’d spent the night there with the asshole saint.
“When we finally got there I couldn’t believe it.” For a moment Olivier was transported to that magical moment when he’d first stepped into the scruffy old man’s log cabin. And into a world where ancient glass was used for milk, a Queen’s china was used for peanut butter sandwiches and priceless silk tapestries hung on walls to keep the drafts out.
“I visited him every two weeks. By then I’d turned the antique shop into a bistro. Every second Saturday night after the bistro closed I’d sneak up to the cabin. We’d talk and he’d give me something for the groceries I’d bring.”
“What did Charlotte mean?” Beauvoir asked. It was Chief Inspector Gamache who’d noticed the strange repetition of “Charlotte.” There were references to the name all over the Hermit’s cabin, from the book Charlotte’s Web, to a first-edition Charlotte Bront?, to the rare violin. Everyone else had missed it, except the Chief.
Olivier was shaking his head. “Nothing, it meant nothing. Or, at least, not anything I know about. He never mentioned the name.”
Beauvoir stared at him. “Careful, Olivier. I need the truth.”
“I have no reason to lie anymore.”
For any rational person that would be true, but Olivier had behaved so irrationally Beauvoir wondered if he was capable of anything else.
“The Hermit had scratched the name Charlotte in code under one of those wooden sculptures he’d made,” Beauvoir pointed out. He could see the carvings, deeply disturbing works showing people fleeing some terror. And under three of his works the Hermit had carved words in code.
Charlotte. Emily. And under the last one? The one that showed Olivier in a chair, listening, he’d carved that one, short, damning word.
Woo.
“And ‘Woo’?” Beauvoir asked. “What did that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well it meant something,” snapped Beauvoir. “He put it under the carving of you.”
“That wasn’t me. It doesn’t look like me.”
“It’s a carving not a photograph. It’s you and you know it. Why did he write ‘Woo’ under it?”
But it wasn’t just under the carving. Woo had appeared in the web and in that piece of wood, covered in the Hermit’s blood, that had bounced under the bed. Into a dark corner. A piece of red cedar carved, according to the forensic experts, years before.
“I’m asking you again, Olivier, what did ‘Woo’ mean?”
“I don’t know.” Now Olivier was exasperated but he took a breath and regained himself. “Look, I told you. He said it a couple of times, but under his breath. At first I thought it was just a sigh. It sounded like a sigh. Then I realized he was saying ‘Woo.’ He only said it when he was afraid.”
Beauvoir stared at him. “I’m going to need more than that.”
Olivier shook his head. “There is no more than that. That’s all I know. I’d tell you more, if I could. Honestly. It meant something to him, but he never explained, and I never asked.”
“Why not?”
“It didn’t seem important.”
“It was clearly important to him.”
“Yes, but not to me. I’d have asked if it meant he’d give me more of his treasures, but that didn’t seem to be the case.”
And Beauvoir heard the truth in that, the humiliating, shameful truth. He shifted imperceptibly in his seat, and as he did his perception shifted just a little.
Maybe, maybe, this man really was telling the truth. Finally.
“You visited him for years, but near the end something changed. What happened?”
“That Marc Gilbert bought the old Hadley house and decided to turn it into an inn and spa. That would’ve been bad enough, but his wife Dominique decided they needed horses and asked Roar Parra to reopen the trails. One of the trails led right past the Hermit’s cabin. Eventually Parra would find the cabin and everyone would know about the Hermit and his treasure.”
“What did you do?”
“What could I do? I’d spent years trying to convince the Hermit to give me that thing he kept in the canvas sack. He promised it to me, kept teasing me with it. I wanted it. I’d earned it.”
A whiny tone had crept into Olivier’s voice and made itself at home. A tone not often let out in public, preferring privacy.
“Tell me again about the thing in the sack.”
“You know it, you’ve seen it,” said Olivier, then took a deep breath and regrouped. “The Hermit had everything on display, all his antiquities, all those beautiful things but one thing he kept hidden. In the sack.”
“And you wanted it.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
Beauvoir considered. It was true. It was human nature to want the one thing denied you.
The Hermit had teased Olivier with it but he hadn’t appreciated who he was dealing with. The depth of Olivier’s greed.
“So you killed him and stole it.”
That was the Crown’s case. Olivier had killed the demented old man for his treasure, the one he kept hidden, the one found in Olivier’s bistro along with the murder weapon.
“No.” Olivier leaned forward suddenly, as though charging Beauvoir. “I went back for it, I admit that, but he was already dead.”
“And what did you see?” Beauvoir asked the question quickly, hoping to trip him up in the rush.
“The cabin door was open and I saw him lying on the floor. There was blood. I thought he’d just hit his head, but when I got closer I could see he was dead. There was a piece of wood I’d never seen before by his hand. I picked it up.”