A beer was placed on the table for Beauvoir and Gamache nursed his Scotch. They settled into their comfortable chairs and examined the dinner menu. The bistro was deserted. Peter, Clara, Myrna and Ruth had all gone and Olivier had retreated to his kitchen. Havoc, the last of the waiters, took their order then left them to talk.
Gamache broke up a small baguette and told his second in command about his conversation with Olivier.
“So, he still says the Hermit was Czech. Do you believe him?”
“I do,” said Gamache. “At least, I believe Olivier is convinced of it. Any luck with the Caesar’s Shift?”
“None.” They’d given up when they started putting their own names in. Both slightly relieved it didn’t work.
“What’s wrong?” Gamache asked. Beauvoir had leaned back in his seat and tossed his linen napkin onto the table.
“I’m just frustrated. It seems every time we make progress it gets all muddied. We still don’t even know who the dead man was.”
Gamache smiled. It was their regular predicament. The further into a case they went the more clues they gathered. There came a time when it seemed a howl, as though they had hold of something wild that screamed clues at them. It was, Gamache knew, the shriek of something cornered and frightened. They were entering the last stages of this investigation. Soon the clues, the pieces, would stop fighting, and start betraying the murderer. They were close.
“By the way, I’m going away tomorrow,” said the Chief Inspector after Havoc brought their appetizers and left.
“Back to Montreal?” Beauvoir took a forkful of chargrilled calamari while Gamache ate his pear and prosciutto.
“A little further than that. The Queen Charlotte Islands.”
“Are you kidding? In British Columbia? Up by Alaska? Because of a monkey named Woo?”
“Well, when you put it like that . . .”
Beauvoir speared a blackened piece of calamari and dipped it in garlic sauce. “Voyons, doesn’t it strike you as, well, extreme?”
“No, it doesn’t. The name Charlotte keeps repeating.” Gamache ticked the points off on his fingers. “The Charlotte Bront? first edition, Charlotte’s Web first edition, the Amber Room panel? Made for a princess named Charlotte. The note the Hermit kept about the violin was written by a Charlotte. I’ve been trying to figure out what they could all mean, this repetition of the name Charlotte, then this afternoon Superintendent Brunel gave me the answer. The Queen Charlotte Islands. Where Emily Carr painted. Where the wood for the carvings came from. It might be a dead end, but I’d be a fool not to follow this lead.”
“But who’s doing the leading? You or the murderer? I think they’re leading you away. I think the murderer is here, in Three Pines.”
“So do I, but I think the murder began on the Queen Charlotte Islands.”
Beauvoir huffed, exasperated. “You’re taking a bunch of clues and putting them together to suit your purpose.”
“What are you suggesting?”
Beauvoir needed to watch himself now. Chief Inspector Gamache was more than his superior. They had a relationship that went deeper than any other Beauvoir had. And he knew Gamache’s patience had its limits.
“I think you see what you want to see. You see things that aren’t really there.”
“You mean just aren’t visible.”
“No, I mean aren’t there. To leap to one conclusion isn’t the end of the world, but you’re leaping all over the place and where does it take you? The end of the fucking world. Sir.”
Beauvoir glanced out the window, trying to cool down. Havoc removed their plates and Beauvoir waited for him to leave before continuing. “I know you love history and literature and art and that the Hermit’s cabin must seem like a candy shop, but I think you’re seeing a whole lot more in this case than exists. I think you’re complicating it. You know I’d follow you anywhere, we all would. You just point, and I’m there. I trust you that much. But even you can make mistakes. You always say that murder is, at its core, very simple. It’s about an emotion. That emotion is here, and so’s the murderer. We have plenty of clues to follow without thinking about a monkey, a hunk of wood and some godforsaken island to hell and gone across the country.”
“Finished?” Gamache asked.
Beauvoir sat upright and took a deep breath. “There may be more.”
Gamache smiled. “I agree with you, Jean Guy, the murderer is here. Someone here knew the Hermit, and someone here killed him. You’re right. When you strip away all the shiny baubles it’s simple. A man ends up with antiquities worth a fortune. Perhaps he stole them. He wants to hide so he comes to this village no one knows about. But even that isn’t enough. He takes it a step further and builds a cabin deep in the woods. Is he hiding from the police? Maybe. From something or someone worse? I think so. But he can’t do it on his own. If nothing else he needs news. He needs eyes and ears on the outside. So he recruits Olivier.”
“Why him?”
“Ruth said it tonight.”
“More Scotch, asshole?”
“Well, that too. But she said Olivier was greedy. And he is. So was the Hermit. He probably recognized himself in Olivier. That greed. That need to own. And he knew he could have a hold over Olivier. Promising him more and better antiques. But over the years something happened.”
“He went nuts?”
“Maybe. But maybe just the opposite. Maybe he went sane. The place he built to hide became a home, a haven. You felt it. There was something peaceful, comforting even, about the Hermit’s life. It was simple. Who doesn’t long for that these days?”
Their dinners arrived and Beauvoir’s gloom lifted as the fragrant boeuf bourguignon landed in front of him. He looked across at the Chief Inspector smiling down at his lobster Thermidor.
“Yes, the simple life in the country.” Beauvoir lifted his red wine in a small toast.
Gamache tipped his glass of white toward his Inspector, then took a succulent forkful. As he ate he thought of those first few minutes in the Hermit’s cabin. And that moment when he realized what he was looking at. Treasures. And yet everything was put to purpose. There was a reason for everything in there, whether practical or pleasure, like the books and violin.
But there was one thing. One thing that didn’t seem to have a purpose.
Gamache slowly laid his fork down and stared beyond Beauvoir. After a moment the Inspector also put his fork down and looked behind him. There was nothing there. Just the empty room.
“What is it?”
Gamache put up a finger, a subtle and gentle request for quiet. Then he reached into his breast pocket and bringing out a pen and notebook he wrote something down, quickly, as though afraid it would get away. Beauvoir strained to read it. Then, with a thrill, saw what it was.
The alphabet.
Silently he watched his Chief write the line beneath. His face opened in wonder. Wonder that he could have been so stupid. Could have missed what now seemed obvious.
Beneath the alphabet, Chief Inspector Gamache had written: SIXTEEN.
“The number above the door,” whispered Beauvoir, as though he too was afraid he might scare this vital clue away.
“What were the code letters?” asked Gamache, in a hurry now. Anxious to get there.
Beauvoir scrambled in his pocket and brought out his notebook.
“MRKBVYDDO under the people on the shore. And OWSVI under the ship.”
He watched as Gamache worked to decode the Hermit’s messages.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
S I X T E E N A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S
Gamache read the letters out as he found them. “T, Y, R, I, something . . .”
“Tyri,” Beauvoir mumbled. “Tyri . . .”
“Something, K, K, V.” He looked up at Beauvoir.
“What does it mean? Is it a name? Maybe a Czech name?”
“Maybe it’s an anagram,” said Gamache. “We have to rearrange the letters.”
They tried that for a few minutes, taking bites of their dinner as they worked. Finally Gamache put his pen down and shook his head. “I thought I had it.”
“Maybe it’s right,” said Beauvoir, not ready to let go yet. He jotted more letters, tried the other code. Rearranged letters and finally staggered to the same conclusion.
The key wasn’t “seventeen.”
“Still,” said Beauvoir, dipping a crusty baguette into his gravy, “I wonder why that number’s up there.”
“Maybe some things don’t need a purpose,” said Gamache. “Maybe that’s their purpose.”
But that was too esoteric for Beauvoir. As was the Chief Inspector’s reasoning about the Queen Charlotte Islands. In fact, Beauvoir wouldn’t call it reasoning at all. At best it was intuition on the Chief’s part, at worst it was a wild guess, maybe even manipulated by the murderer.
The only image Beauvoir had of the moody archipelago at the very end of the country was of thick forests and mountains and endless gray water. But mostly it was mist.
And into that mist Armand Gamache was going, alone.
“I almost forgot, Ruth Zardo gave me this.” Gamache handed him the slip of paper. Beauvoir unfolded it and read out loud.
“and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neck
and caress you into darkness and paradise.”
There was, at least, a full stop after “paradise.” Was this, finally, the end?