THIRTY-SIX
The search parties had already been over the structure a couple of times, but they looked again. Even more closely this time. Beneath floorboards, beneath eaves, behind paintings. They looked and they looked and they looked.
And finally, they found.
It was behind the bricks in the huge stone fireplace. Behind what seemed a perpetual fire. The fire had had to be extinguished and the smoldering logs removed. But there the S?reté team found first one, then two, then four loose bricks. Removed, they revealed a small compartment.
Inspector Beauvoir reached a gloved hand in carefully, but not before smearing soot on his arm and shoulder.
“I have something,” he said. All eyes were on him. Everyone stared as his arm slowly came out of the cavity. On the table in front of the Chief Inspector he placed a silver candelabra. A menorah. Even Beauvoir, who knew nothing about silver, recognized it as something remarkable. It was simple and refined and old.
This menorah had survived sieges, pogroms, slaughters, the holocaust. People had cherished it, hidden it, guarded it, prayed before it. Until one night in a forest in Quebec, someone had ruined it.
The menorah had killed a man.
“Paraffin?” Inspector Beauvoir pointed to bits of translucent material stuck to it. Mixed with dried blood. “He made his own candles. That’s what the paraffin in the cabin was for, not just preserves but candles.” The Chief nodded.
Beauvoir returned to the hearth and put his arm back down the black hole. They watched his face and finally saw that slight change, the surprise. As his hand hit something else.
He placed a small burlap bag beside the menorah. No one spoke, until finally Chief Inspector Gamache asked a question of the man sitting opposite him.
“Have you looked inside?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
There was another long pause, but Gamache didn’t hurry him. There was no rush now.
“I didn’t have time. I just grabbed it out of the Hermit’s cabin and hid it along with the candlestick, thinking I could take a closer look in the morning. But then the body was discovered and there was too much attention.”
“Is that why you lit the fires, Olivier? Before the police arrived?”
Olivier hung his head. It was over. Finally.
“How’d you know where to look?” he asked.
“I didn’t, at first. But sitting here watching the search I remembered you’d said the bistro used to be a hardware store. And that the fireplaces had to be rebuilt. They were the only new thing in the room, though they looked old. And I remembered the fires, lit on a damp but not cold morning. The first thing you did when the body was discovered. Why?” He nodded toward the things on the table. “To make sure we wouldn’t find those.”
Armand Gamache leaned forward, toward Olivier on the other side of the menorah and the burlap bag. Beyond the pale. “Tell us what happened. The truth this time.”
Gabri sat beside Olivier, still in shock. He’d been amused at first when the S?reté search party had shown up, moved from the Parra place back to the bistro. He had made a few feeble jokes. But as the search became more and more invasive Gabri’s amusement had faded, replaced by annoyance, then anger. And now shock.
But he’d never left Olivier’s side, and he didn’t now.
“He was dead when I found him. I admit, I took those.” Olivier gestured to the items on the table. “But I didn’t kill him.”
“Be careful, Olivier. I’m begging you to be careful.” Gamache’s voice held an edge that chilled even the S?reté officers.
“It’s the truth.” Olivier shut his eyes, almost believing if he couldn’t see them they weren’t there. The silver menorah and squalid little sack wouldn’t be sitting on a table in his bistro. The police wouldn’t be there. Just he and Gabri. Left in peace.
Finally he opened his eyes, to see the Chief Inspector looking directly at him.
“I didn’t do it, I swear to God, I didn’t do it.”
He turned to Gabri who stared back, then took his hand and turned to the Chief Inspector. “Look, you know Olivier. I know Olivier. He didn’t do this.”
Olivier’s eyes darted from one to the other. Surely there was a way out? Some crack, even the tiniest one, he could squeeze through.
“Tell me what happened,” Gamache repeated.
“I already did.”
“Again,” said Gamache.
Olivier took a deep breath. “I left Havoc to close up and went to the cabin. I stayed for about forty-five minutes, had a cup of tea, and when I left he wanted to give me a little creamer. But I forgot it. When I got back to the village I realized what I’d done and was angry. Pissed off that he kept promising me that,” he jabbed his finger at the sack, “but never gave it to me. Only small stuff.”
“That creamer was valued at fifty thousand dollars. It belonged to Catherine the Great.”
“But it wasn’t that.” Again Olivier shot a look at the bag. “When I returned the Hermit was dead.”
“You told us the sack was gone.”
“I lied. It was there.”
“Had you seen the menorah before?”
Olivier nodded. “He used it all the time.”
“For worship?”
“For light.”
“It’s also almost certainly priceless. You knew that, I suppose.”
“You mean that’s why I took it? No, I took it because it had my fingerprints all over it. I’d touched it hundreds of times, lighting candles, putting new ones in.”
“Walk us through it,” said Gamache, his voice calm and reasonable.
And as Olivier spoke the scene unfolded before them. Of Olivier arriving back at the cabin. Seeing the door partly open, the sliver of light spilling onto the porch. Olivier pushing the door open and seeing the Hermit there. And blood. Olivier’d approached, stunned, and picked up the object by the Hermit’s hand. And seeing the blood, too late, he’d dropped it. It had bounced under the bed to be found by Agent Lacoste. Woo.
Olivier had also seen the menorah, toppled over on the floor. Coated with blood.
He’d backed out of the room, onto the porch, preparing to run. Then he stopped. In front of him was the horrible scene. A man he knew and had come to care about, violently dead. And behind him the dark forest, and the trail running through it.
And caught between the two?
Olivier.