Deeper along the narrow path he went, into the woods. Without leaves the forest looked cold and bare. The shadows were sharp and long as was the pain now, in his stomach, in his side, shooting down into his groin.
Beauvoir breathed deeply but the pain grew worse.
Finally he had to stop.
Clutching his middle he slowly fell forward, his arm folding over the handles of the idling Ski-Doo. His head dropped and rested on his arm. He tried to concentrate on the vibration, on the calming, deep, predictable, civilized sound. But his world had collapsed to a single sensation.
Pain.
An agonizing, familiar pain. One he’d thought was gone forever, but it had found him again in the darkening woods in winter.
Closing his eyes he concentrated on his breath, hearing it, feeling it. Long, relaxed breath in. Long, relaxed breath out.
How big a mistake was this? An hour, perhaps slightly more, until the woods were in darkness. Would anyone sound an alarm? Would he be missed? Would Roar Parra simply go home? Would Carole Gilbert lock the door and toss another log on the fire?
Then he felt a hand on his face and jerked his head up. But the hand restrained him. Not violently, but certainly. Beauvoir’s eyes flew open and he looked into very blue ones.
“Don’t move, just lie still.”
The man was old. His face worn, but his eyes sharp. His bare hand, which had started on Beauvoir’s face now slipped quickly beneath the scarf and collar and turtleneck to Beauvoir’s pulse.
“Shh,” the man said. And Beauvoir shushed.
He knew who this man was. Vincent Gilbert. Dr. Gilbert.
The asshole.
But Gamache, and Myrna, Old Mundin and others claimed he was also a saint.
Beauvoir hadn’t seen it. The man had seemed all asshole to him when they’d investigated the murder of the Hermit.
“Come with me.” Gilbert reached across Beauvoir and turned the Ski-Doo off, then he put his long arms around Beauvoir and gradually helped him up. The two men walked, slowly, along the path, Beauvoir pausing for breath now and then. He threw up once. Gilbert took his own scarf and cleaned Beauvoir’s face and waited. And waited. In the snow and cold, until Beauvoir could go on. Then carefully, wordlessly, they limped deeper into the woods, Beauvoir leaning heavily on the tall, elderly asshole.
His eyes closed, Beauvoir concentrated on putting one plodding foot in front of the other. He felt the pain radiating from his side but he also felt the kiss of the snowflakes on his face and tried to concentrate on that. Then the sensations changed. The snow stopped touching his face, and he heard his footsteps echo on wood.
They were at the log cabin. He almost wept, with exhaustion and relief.
Opening his eyes as they entered he saw, a million miles across the single room, a large bed. It was covered with a warm duvet and soft pillows.
And all Beauvoir wanted to do was make it across the room, so much larger than he remembered, to the bed at the very far end.
“Almost there,” whispered Dr. Gilbert.
Beauvoir stared at the bed, willing it to come to him, as he and Gilbert inched their way across the wooden floorboards. Until, finally, finally. There.
Dr. Gilbert sat him on the side and while Beauvoir sagged, his head lolling for the pillow, the doctor held him upright and undressed him.
Only then did he let Beauvoir slowly subside, until his weary head hit the pillow and the soft flannel sheets were pulled snug around him and finally, finally, the duvet.
And Beauvoir drifted off to sleep, smelling sweet maple smoke from the hearth, and homemade soup and feeling the warmth close in around him as out the window he saw the snow piling up and the darkness arriving.
Beauvoir awoke a few hours later, coming back to consciousness slowly. His side ached, as though he’d been kicked hard, but the nausea had passed. A hot water bottle had been placed in the bed and he found himself hugging it, curled around it.
Sleepily, lazily, he lay in the bed and slowly the room came into focus.
Vincent Gilbert was sitting in a large easy chair by the fireplace. He was reading a book, a glass of red wine on the table beside him, his slippered feet resting on a hassock.
The cabin seemed at once familiar but different.
The walls were still log, the windows and hearth unchanged. Rugs were scattered around the floorboards, but no longer the fine, hand-stitched Oriental rugs the Hermit had. These were rag rugs, also homemade, but much closer to home.
A few paintings hung on the walls, but not the masterpieces the Hermit had collected, and hidden here. Now they were modest examples of Québécois artists. Fine but not, perhaps, spectacular.
The glass Dr. Gilbert used looked like any other glass, not the cut leaded crystal they’d found here after the murder.