Brutal Telling

Gamache leaned toward his Inspector and lowered his voice. “Without going into details, whatever happens never let Annie diaper me.”

“She asked the same thing of me,” Beauvoir said and saw Gamache smile. Then the smile dimmed.

“Shall we?” The Chief gestured to the door to the bistro.

The four men chose to sit away from the windows. In the cool and quiet interior. A small fire muttered in both open fireplaces, at either end of the room. Gamache remembered the first time he’d walked into the bistro years before and seen the mismatched furniture, the armchairs and wing chairs and Windsor chairs. The round and square and rectangular tables. The stone fireplaces and wooden beams. And the price tags hanging from everything.

Everything was for sale. And everyone? Gamache didn’t think so, but sometimes he wondered.

“Bon Dieu, are you saying you haven’t told your father about me?” Gabri asked.

“I did. I told him I was with a Gabriel.”

“Your father thinks it’s a Gabrielle you’re with,” said Beauvoir.

“Quoi?” said Gabri, glaring at Olivier. “He thinks I’m a woman? That means . . .” Gabri looked at his partner, incredulous. “He doesn’t know you’re gay?”

“I never told him.”

“Maybe not in so many words, but you sure told him,” said Gabri, then turned to Beauvoir. “Almost forty, not married, an antiques dealer. Good God, he told me when the other kids would dig for China he dug for Royal Doulton. How gay is that?” He turned back to Olivier. “You had an Easy Bake oven and you sewed your own Halloween costumes.”

“I haven’t told him and don’t plan to,” Olivier snapped. “It’s none of his business.”

“What a family,” sighed Gabri. “It’s actually a perfect fit. One doesn’t want to know and the other doesn’t want to tell.”

But Gamache knew it was more than simply not wanting to tell. It was about a little boy with secrets. Who became a big boy with secrets. Who became a man. He brought an envelope out of his satchel and placed seven photographs on the table in front of Olivier. Then he unwrapped the carvings and put them on the table too.

“What order do they go in?”

“I can’t remember which he gave me when,” said Olivier. Gamache stared at him then spoke softly.

“I didn’t ask you that. I asked what order they go in. You know, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Olivier looked confused.

Then Armand Gamache did something Beauvoir had rarely seen. He brought his large hand down so hard on the table the little wooden figures jumped. As did the men.

“Enough. I’ve had enough.”

And he looked it. His face was hard, carved and sharp and burnished by lies and secrets. “Do you have any idea what trouble you’re in?” His voice was low, strained, forced through a throat that threatened to close. “The lies must stop now. If you have any hope, any hope at all, you must tell us the truth. Now.”

Gamache moved his splayed hand over the photographs and shoved them toward Olivier, who stared as though petrified.

“I don’t know,” he stumbled.

“For God’s sake, Olivier, please,” Gabri begged.

Gamache radiated anger now. Anger, frustration and fear that the real murderer would slip away, hiding in another man’s lies. Olivier and the Chief Inspector stared at each other. One man who spent his life burying secrets and the other who spent his life unearthing them.

Their partners stared, aware of the battle but unable to help.

“The truth, Olivier,” Gamache rasped.

“How did you know?”

“The place of wonders. Ninstints on the Queen Charlotte Islands. The totem poles told me.”

“They told you?”

“In their way. Each image built on the last. Each told its own story and was a wonder unto itself. But when taken as a whole they told a larger story.”

Beauvoir, listening to this, thought about Ruth’s couplets. The Chief had told him they did the same thing. If put together, in the right order, they too would tell a story. His hand slipped into his pocket and touched the scrap of paper shoved under his door that morning.

“What story do these tell, Olivier?” Gamache repeated. It had actually come to him on the plane as he’d listened to the little boy and the intricate GI Joe world he created. He’d thought about the case, thought about the Haida, the Watchman. Who, driven by his conscience, had finally found peace. In the wilderness.

The Chief Inspector suspected the same thing had happened to the Hermit. He’d gone into the forest a greedy man, to hide. But he’d been found. Years ago. By himself. And so he used his money as insulation and toilet paper. He used his first editions for knowledge and companionship. He used his antiquities as everyday dishes.

And in that wilderness he found freedom and happiness. And peace.

But something still eluded him. Or, perhaps more to the point, something still clung to him. He’d unburdened himself of the “things” of his life, but one more burden remained. The truth.

And so he decided to tell it to someone. Olivier. But he couldn’t go quite that far. Instead, he hid the truth in a fable, an allegory.