“Why?” The word was snapped out.
“Because I wanted to see.”
“See what?”
“What it was.”
“Why?”
“In case it was important.”
“Important. Explain.”
Now it was Beauvoir who was leaning forward, almost crawling across the metal table. Olivier didn’t lean back. The two men were in each other’s faces, almost shouting.
“In case it was valuable.”
“Explain.”
“In case it was another one of his carvings, okay?” Olivier almost screamed, then threw himself back into his chair. “Okay? There. I thought it might be one of his carvings and I could sell it.”
This hadn’t come out in court. Olivier had admitted he’d picked up the wood carving, but said he’d dropped it as soon as he’d seen blood on it.
“Why’d you drop it?”
“Because it was a worthless piece of junk. Something a kid would do. I only noticed the blood later.”
“Why did you move the body?”
It was the question that hounded Gamache. The question that had brought Beauvoir back to this case. Why, if he’d killed the man, would Olivier put him into a wheelbarrow and take him like so much compost through the woods? And dump him in the front hall of the new inn and spa.
“Because I wanted to screw Marc Gilbert. Not literally.”
“Seems pretty literal to me,” said Beauvoir.
“I wanted to ruin his fancy inn. Who’d pay a fortune to stay in a place where someone had just been murdered?”
Beauvoir leaned back, examining Olivier for a long moment.
“The Chief Inspector believes you.”
Olivier closed his eyes and exhaled.
Beauvoir held up his hand. “He thinks you did do it to ruin Gilbert. But in ruining Gilbert you’d also have stopped the horse trails and if you stopped Parra from opening the paths, no one would find the cabin.”
“All that’s true. But if I killed him, why would I let everyone know there’d been a murder?”
“Because the paths were close. The cabin, and the murder, would have been discovered within days anyway. Your only hope was to stop the trails. Stop the discovery of the cabin.”
“By putting the dead man on display? There was nothing left to hide then.”
“There was the treasure.”
They stared at each other.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir sat in his car mulling over the interview. Nothing really new had come out of it but Gamache had advised him to believe Olivier this time, take him at his word.
Beauvoir couldn’t bring himself to do it. He could pretend to, could go through the motions. He could even try to convince himself that Olivier was indeed telling the truth, but he’d be lying to himself.
He pulled the car out of the parking lot and headed toward rue Notre-Dame and the Temps Perdu. Lost time. Perfect. Because that’s what this is, he thought as he negotiated the light Sunday afternoon traffic in Montreal. A waste of time.
As he drove he went back over the case. Only Olivier’s fingerprints were found in the cabin. No one else even knew the Hermit existed.
The Hermit. It was what Olivier called him, always called him.
Beauvoir parked across the street from the antique shop. It was still there, cheek by jowl with other antique shops up and down rue Notre-Dame, some high end, some little more than junk shops.
Temps Perdu looked pretty high end.
Beauvoir reached for the car door handle, then paused, staring into space for a moment, whipping through the interview. Looking for a word, a single, short, word. Then he flipped through his notes.
Not there either. He closed his notebook and getting out of the car he crossed the street and entered the shop. There was only one window, at the front. As he made his way further back, past the pine and oak furniture, past the chipped and cracked paintings on the walls, past the ornaments, the blue and white plates, past the vases and umbrella stands, it got darker. Like going into a well-furnished cave.
“May I help you?”
An elderly man sat at the very back, at a desk. He wore glasses and peered at Beauvoir, assessing him. The Inspector knew the look, but he was normally the one giving it.
The two men assessed each other. Beauvoir saw a slim man, well but comfortably dressed. Like his merchandise, he seemed old and refined and he smelled a little of polish.
The antique dealer saw a man in his mid to late thirties. Pale, perhaps a little stressed. Not out for a lazy Sunday stroll through the antique district. Not a buyer.
A man, perhaps, in need of something. Probably a toilet.
“This shop,” Beauvoir began. He didn’t want to sound like an investigator, but suddenly realized he didn’t know how to sound like anything else. It was like a tattoo. Indelible. He smiled and softened his tone. “I have a friend who used to come here, but that was years ago. Ten years or more. It’s still called Temps Perdu, but has it changed hands?”
“No. Nothing’s changed.”
And Beauvoir could believe it.
“Were you here then?”
“I’m always here. It’s my shop.” The elderly man stood and put out his hand. “Fréderic Grenier.”
“Jean-Guy Beauvoir. You might remember my friend. He sold you a few things.”
“Is that right? What were they?”
The man, Beauvoir noticed, didn’t ask Olivier’s name, just what he sold. Is that how shopkeepers saw people? He’s the pine table? She’s the chandelier? Why not? That’s how he saw suspects. She’s the knifing. He’s the shotgun.
“I think he said he sold you a miniature painting.”