“Nice neighborhood. Quite a Merchants’ Association.”
Gamache nodded. “It took a while but we eventually found the cabin and the contents and the evidence the Hermit had been killed there. All the forensics confirmed only two people had spent time in the cabin. The Hermit, and Olivier. And then we found items from the cabin hidden in Olivier’s bistro, including the murder weapon. Olivier admitted to stealing them—”
“Foolish man.”
“Greedy man.”
“You arrested him?”
Gamache nodded, remembering that terrible day when he knew the truth and had to act on it. Seeing Olivier’s face, but worse, seeing Gabri’s.
And then the trial, the evidence, the testimony.
The conviction.
Gamache looked down at the pile of letters on the sofa. One every day since Olivier had been sentenced. All cordial, all with the same question.
Why would Olivier move the body?
“You keep calling this man ‘the Hermit.’ Who was he?”
“A Czech immigrant named Jakob, but that’s all we know.”
Émile stared at him, then nodded. It was unusual not to identify a murder victim but not unheard of, particularly one who so clearly didn’t want to be identified.
The two men moved into the dining room with its wall of exposed stone, open plan kitchen and aroma of roasting lamb and vegetables. After dinner they bundled up, put Henri on a leash and headed into the bitterly cold night. Their feet crunching on the hard snow, they joined the crowds heading out the great stone archway through the wall, to Place d’Youville and the ceremony opening the Carnaval de Québec.
In the midst of the festivities, as fiddlers sawed away and kids skated and the fireworks lit the sky over the old city Émile turned to Gamache.
“Why did Olivier move the body, Armand?”
Gamache steeled himself against the thrashing explosions, the bursts of light, the people crowding all around, shoving and shrieking.
Across the abandoned factory he saw Jean-Guy Beauvoir fall, hit. He saw the gunmen above them, shooting, in a place that was supposed to be almost undefended.
He’d made a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake.
THREE
The next morning, Saturday, Gamache took Henri and walked through gently falling snow up rue Ste-Ursule for breakfast at Le Petit Coin Latin. Waiting for his omelette, a bowl of café au lait in front of him, he read the weekend papers and watched the revelers head to the creperies along rue St-Jean. It was fun to be both a part of it and apart from it, warm and toasty in the bistro just off the beaten track with Henri at his side.
After reading Le Soleil and Le Devoir he folded the newspapers and once again took out his correspondence from Three Pines. Gamache could just imagine Gabri, large, voluble, quite magnificent sitting in the bistro he now ran, leaning on the long, polished wooden counter, writing. The fieldstone fireplaces at either end of the beamed room would be lit, roaring, filling the place with light and warmth and welcome.
And even in Gabri’s private censure of the Chief Inspector there was always kindness, concern.
Gamache stroked the envelopes with one finger and almost felt the gentleness. But he felt something else, he felt the man’s conviction.
Olivier didn’t do it. Gabri repeated it over and over in each letter, as though with repetition it would be true.
Why would he move the body?
Gamache’s finger stopped caressing the paper, and he stared out the window, then he picked up his cell phone and made a call.
After breakfast he climbed the steep, slippery street. Turning left, Gamache made his way to the Literary and Historical Society. Every now and then he stepped into a snow bank to let families glide by. Kids were wrapped and bound, mummified, preserved against a bitterly cold Québec winter and heading for Bonhomme’s Ice Palace, or the ice slide, or the cabane à sucre with its warm maple syrup hardening to taffy on snow. The evenings of Carnaval were for university students, drunk and partying but the bright days were for children.
Once again Gamache marveled at the beauty of this old city with its narrow winding streets, the stone buildings, the metal roofs piled with snow and ice. It was like falling into an ancient European town. But Quebec City was more than an attractive anachronism, a pretty theme park. It was a living, vibrant haven, a gracious city that had changed hands many times, but kept its heart. The flurries were falling more heavily now, but without much wind. The city, always lovely, looked even more magical in the winter, with the snow, and the lights, the horse-drawn calèches, the people wrapped brightly against the cold.