Clara and Denis Fortin lingered over their coffee. The back garden of the Santropole restaurant was almost empty. The rush of the lunch crowd, mostly bohemian young people from the Plateau Mont Royal quartier, had disappeared.
The bill had just arrived and Clara knew it was now or never.
“There is one other thing I wanted to talk to you about.”
“The carvings? Did you bring them?” Fortin leaned forward.
“No, the Chief Inspector still has them, but I told him about your offer. I think part of the problem is they’re evidence in the murder case.”
“Of course. There’s no rush, though I suspect this buyer might not be interested for long. It really is most extraordinary that anyone would want them.”
Clara nodded and thought maybe they could just leave. She could go back to Three Pines, make up a guest list for the vernissage and forget about it. Already Fortin’s comment about Gabri was fading. Surely it wasn’t that serious.
“So, what did you want to talk about? Whether you should buy a home in Provence or Tuscany? How about a yacht?”
Clara wasn’t sure if he was kidding, but she did know he wasn’t making this easy.
“It’s just a tiny thing, really. I must have heard wrong, but it seemed to me when you came down to Three Pines yesterday you said something about Gabri.”
Fortin looked interested, concerned, puzzled.
“He was our waiter,” Clara explained. “He brought us our drinks.”
Fortin was still staring. She could feel her brain evaporate. Suddenly, after practicing most of the morning what she’d say, she couldn’t even remember her own name. “Well, I just thought, you know . . .”
Her voice trailed off. She couldn’t do it. This must be a sign, she thought, a sign from God that she wasn’t supposed to say anything. That she was making something out of nothing.
“Doesn’t matter,” she smiled. “I just thought I’d tell you his name.”
Fortunately she figured Fortin was used to dealing with artists who were drunk, deranged, stoned. Clara appeared to be all three. She must, in his eyes, be a brilliant artist to be so unhinged.
Fortin signed for the bill and left, Clara noticed, a very large tip.
“I remember him.” Fortin led her back through the restaurant with its dark wood and scent of tisane. “He was the fag.”
VDTK?? MMF/X
They stared at the letters. The more they stared the less sense they made, which was saying something.
“Any other suggestions?” Jér?me looked up from his desk.
Gamache was flabbergasted. He was sure they had it, that “Charlotte” was the key to break the cipher. He thought for a moment, scanning the case.
“Woo,” he said. They tried that.
Nothing.
“Walden.” But he knew he was grasping. And sure enough, nothing.
Nothing, nothing, nothing. What had he missed?
“Well, I’ll keep trying,” said Jér?me. “It might not be a Caesar’s Shift. There’re plenty of other codes.”
He smiled reassuringly and the Chief Inspector had a sense of what Dr. Brunel’s patients must have felt. The news was bad, but they had a man who wouldn’t give up.
“What can you tell me about one of your colleagues, Vincent Gilbert?” Gamache asked.
“He was no colleague of mine,” said Jér?me, testily. “Not of anyone’s from what I remember. He didn’t suffer fools easily. Do you notice most people who feel like that consider everyone a fool?”
“That bad?”
“Jér?me’s only annoyed because Dr. Gilbert thought himself God,” said Thérèse, perching on the arm of her husband’s chair.
“Difficult to work with,” said Gamache, who’d worked with a few gods himself.
“Oh no, it wasn’t that,” smiled Thérèse. “It annoyed Jér?me because he knows he’s the one true God and Gilbert refused to worship.”
They laughed but Jér?me’s smile faded first. “Very dangerous man, Vincent Gilbert. I think he really does have a God complex. Megalomaniac. Very clever. That book he wrote . . .”
“Being,” said Gamache.
“Yes. It was designed, every word calculated for effect. And I’ve got to hand it to him, it worked. Most people who’ve read it agree with him. He is at the very least a great man, and perhaps even a saint.”
“You don’t believe it?”
Dr. Brunel snorted. “The only miracle he’s performed is convincing everyone of his saintliness. No mean feat, given what an asshole he is. Do I believe it? No.”
“Well, it’s time for my news.” Thérèse Brunel stood up. “Come with me.”
Gamache followed her, leaving Jér?me to fiddle with the cipher. The study was filled with more papers and magazines. Thérèse sat at her computer and after a few quick taps a photograph appeared. It showed a carving of a shipwreck.
Gamache pulled up a chair and stared. “Is it . . .”
“Another carving? Oui.” She smiled, like a magician who’d produced a particularly spectacular rabbit.
“The Hermit made this?” Gamache twisted in his chair and looked at her. She nodded. He looked back at the screen. The carving was complex. On one side was the shipwreck, then some forest, and on the other side a tiny village being built. “Even in a photograph it seems alive. I can see the little people. Are they the same ones from the other carvings?”
“I think so. But I can’t find the frightened boy.”
Gamache searched the village, the ship on the shore, the forest. Nothing. What happened to him? “We need to have the carving,” he said.
“This’s in a private collection in Zurich. I’ve contacted a gallery owner I know there. Very influential man. He said he’d help.”
Gamache knew enough not to press Superintendent Brunel about her connections.
“It’s not just the boy,” he said. “We need to know what’s written underneath it.”
Like the others this one was, on the surface, pastoral, peaceful. But something lurked on the fringes. A disquiet.
And yet, once again, the tiny wooden people seemed happy.
“There’s another one. In a collection in Cape Town.” The screen flickered and another carving appeared. A boy was lying, either asleep or dead, on the side of a mountain. Gamache put on his glasses and leaned closer, squinting.
“Hard to tell, but I think it’s the same young man.”
“So do I,” said the Superintendent.
“Is he dead?”
“I wondered that myself, but I don’t think so. Do you notice something about this carving, Armand?”
Gamache leaned back and took a deep breath, releasing some of the tension he felt. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. But this time not to look at the image on the screen. This time he wanted to sense it.
After a moment he knew Thérèse Brunel was right. This carving was different. It was clearly the same artist, there was no mistaking that, but one significant element had changed.
“There’s no fear.”
Thérèse nodded. “Only peace. Contentment.”
“Even love,” said the Chief Inspector. He longed to hold this carving, to own it even, though he knew he never would. And he felt, not for the first time, that soft tug of desire. Of greed. He knew he’d never act on it. But he knew others might. This was a carving worth owning. All of them were, he suspected.
“What do you know about them?” he asked.
“They were sold through a company in Geneva. I know it well. Very discreet, very high end.”
“What did he get for them?”
“They sold seven of them. The first was six years ago. It went for fifteen thousand. The prices went up until they reached three hundred thousand for the last one. It sold this past winter. He says he figures he could get at least half a million for the next one.”
Gamache exhaled in astonishment. “Whoever sold them must have made hundreds of thousands.”
“The auction house in Geneva takes a hefty commission, but I did a quick calculation. The seller would have made about one point five million.”
Gamache’s mind was racing. And then it ran into a fact. Or rather into a statement.
I threw the carvings away, into the woods, when I walked home.
Olivier had said it. And once again, Olivier had lied.
Foolish, foolish man, thought Gamache. Then he looked back at the computer screen and the boy lying supine on the mountain, almost caressing it. Was it possible, he asked himself.
Could Olivier have actually done it? Killed the Hermit?
A million dollars was a powerful motive. But why kill the man who supplied the art?
No, there was more Olivier wasn’t telling, and if Gamache had any hope of finding the real killer it was time for the truth.