TWENTY-SIX
Finally Myrna spoke. She leaned forward and took Clara’s hand.
“What you did was natural.”
“Really? Because it feels like shit.”
“Well, most of your life is shit,” said Myrna, nodding her head sagely. “So it would feel natural.”
“Har, har.”
“Listen, Fortin is offering you everything you ever dreamed of, everything you ever wanted.”
“And he seemed so nice.”
“He probably is. Are you sure he wasn’t kidding?”
Clara shook her head.
“Maybe he’s gay himself,” suggested Myrna.
Clara shook her head again. “I thought of that, but he has a wife and a couple of kids and he just doesn’t seem gay.”
Both Clara and Myrna had a finely honed gay-dar. It was, they both knew, imperfect, but it probably would have picked up the Fortin blip. But nothing. Only the immense, unmistakable object that was Gabri, sailing away.
“What should I do?” Clara asked.
Myrna remained silent.
“I need to speak to Gabri, don’t I?”
“It might help.”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
As she left she thought about what Myrna had said. Fortin was offering her everything she’d ever wanted, the only dream she’d had since childhood. Success, recognition as an artist. All the sweeter after years in the wilderness. Mocked and marginalized.
And all she had to do was say nothing.
She could do that.
No, I didn’t kill him.”
But even as Olivier said it he realized the disaster of what he’d done. In lying at every turn he’d made the truth unrecognizable.
“He was already dead when I arrived.”
God, even to his own ears it sounded like a lie. I didn’t take the last cookie, I didn’t break the fine bone china cup, I didn’t steal the money from your purse. I’m not gay.
All lies. All his life. All the time. Until he’d come to Three Pines. For an instant, for a glorious few days he’d lived a genuine life. With Gabri. In their little rented wreck of an apartment above the shop.
But then the Hermit had arrived. And with him a trail of lies.
“Listen, it’s the truth. It was Saturday night and the place was hopping. The Labor Day long weekend’s always a madhouse. But by midnight or so there were only a few stragglers. Then Old Mundin arrived with the chairs and a table. By the time he left the place was empty and Havoc was doing the final cleanup. So I decided to visit the Hermit.”
“After midnight?” Gamache asked.
“That’s normally when I went. So no one could see.”
Across from Olivier the Chief Inspector slowly leaned back, distancing himself. The gesture was eloquent. It whispered that Gamache didn’t believe him. Olivier stared at this man he’d considered a friend and he felt a tightening, a constriction.
“Weren’t you afraid of the dark?”
Gamache asked it so simply, and in that instant Olivier knew the genius of the man. He was able to crawl into other people’s skins, and burrow beyond the flesh and blood and bone. And ask questions of deceptive simplicity.
“It’s not the dark I’m afraid of,” said Olivier. And he remembered the freedom that came only after the sun set. In city parks, in darkened theaters, in bedrooms. The bliss that came with being able to shed the outer shell and be himself. Protected by the night.
It wasn’t the dark that scared him, but what might come to light.
“I knew the way and it only took about twenty minutes to walk it.”
“What did you see when you arrived?”
“Everything looked normal. There was a light in the window and the lantern on the porch was lit.”
“He was expecting company.”
“He was expecting me. He always lit the lantern for me. I didn’t realize there was anything wrong until I was in the door and saw him there. I knew he was dead, but I thought he’d just fallen, maybe had a stroke or a heart attack and hit his head.”
