“You?” Gabri whispered.
Olivier closed his eyes and the bistro faded. He heard the mumbling of the Hermit’s fire. Smelled the wood of the log cabin, the sweet maple wood from the smoke. He felt the warm tea mug in his hands, as he had hundreds of times. Saw the violin, gleaming in the firelight. Across from him sat the shabby man, in clean and mended old clothing surrounded by treasure. The Hermit was leaning forward, his eyes glowing and filled with fear. As he listened. And Olivier spoke.
Olivier opened his eyes and was back in the bistro. “The Hermit was afraid of something, I knew that the first time I met him in this very room. He became more and more reclusive as the years passed until he’d hardly leave his cabin to go into town. He’d ask me for news of the outside world. So I’d tell him about the politics and the wars, and some of the things happening locally. Once I told him about a concert at the church here. You were singing,” he looked at Gabri, “and he wanted to go.”
There he was, at the point of no return. Once spoken, these words could never be taken back.
“I couldn’t let that happen. I didn’t want anyone else to meet him, to maybe make friends with him. So I told the Hermit the concert had been canceled. He wanted to know why. I don’t know what came over me, but I started making up this story about the Mountain and the villagers and the boy stealing from it, and running away and hiding.”
Olivier stared down at the edge of the table, focusing on it. He could see the grain of the wood where it had been worn smooth. By hands touching it, rubbing it, resting on it, for generations. As his did now.
“The Hermit was scared of something, and the stories made him more afraid. He’d become unhinged, impressionable. I knew if I told him about terrible things happening outside the forest he’d believe me.”
Gabri leaned away, to get the full picture of his partner. “You did that on purpose? You made him so afraid of the outside world he wouldn’t leave? Olivier.”
The last word was exhaled, as though it stank.
“But there was more to it than that,” said Gamache, quietly. “Your stories not only kept the Hermit prisoner, and his treasure safe from anyone else, but they also inspired the carvings. I wonder what you thought when you saw the first.”
“I did almost throw it away, when he gave it to me. But then I convinced myself it was a good thing. The stories were inspiring him. Helping him create.”
“Carvings with walking mountains, and monsters and armies marching his way? You must have given the poor man nightmares,” said Gabri.
“What did Woo mean?” Gamache asked.
“I don’t know, not really. But sometimes when I told the story he’d whisper it. At first I thought it was just an exhale, but then I realized he was saying a word. Woo.”
Olivier imitated the Hermit saying the word, under his breath. Woo.
“So you made the spider’s web with the word in it, to mimic
“No. How could I do that? I wouldn’t even know how to start.”
“And yet Gabri told us you’d made your own clothes as a kid. If you wanted to, you could figure it out.”
“No,” Olivier insisted.
“And you admitted the Hermit taught you how to whittle, how to carve.”
“But I wasn’t any good at it,” said Olivier, pleading. He could see the disbelief in their faces.
“It wasn’t very well made. You carved Woo.” Gamache forged forward. “Years ago. You didn’t have to know what it meant, only that it meant something to the Hermit. Something horrible. And you kept that word, to be used one day. As countries warehouse the worst of weapons, against the day it might be needed. That word carved in wood was your final weapon. Your Nagasaki. The last bomb to drop on a weary and frightened and demented man.
“You played on his sense of guilt, magnified by isolation. You guessed he’d stolen those things so you made up the story of the boy and the Mountain. And it worked. It kept him there. But it also inspired him to produce those carvings, which ironically turned out to be his greatest treasure.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“You just kept him prisoner. How could you?” said Gabri.
“I didn’t say anything he wasn’t willing to believe.”
“You don’t really think that?” said Gabri.
Gamache glanced at the items on the table. The menorah, used to murder. And the small sack. The reason for murder. He couldn’t put it off any longer. It was time for his own brutal telling. He stood.
“Olivier Brule,” said Chief Inspector Gamache, his voice weary and his face grim, “I’m arresting you on a charge of murder.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
The frost was thick on the ground when Armand Gamache next appeared in Three Pines. He parked his car by the old Hadley house and took the path deeper and deeper into the woods. The leaves had fallen from the trees and lay crisp and crackling beneath his feet. Picking one up he marveled, not for the first time, at the perfection of nature where leaves were most beautiful at the very end of their lives.
He paused now and then, not to get his bearings because he knew where he was going and how to get there, but to appreciate his surroundings. The quiet. The soft light now allowed through the trees and hitting ground that rarely saw the sun. The woods smelled musky and rich and sweet. He walked slowly, in no rush, and after half an
