But while facts might be enough for a prosecutor, a judge, a jury, they weren’t enough for Gamache. He needed more. He needed motive. That thing that could never be proved because it can’t be seen.
What drove a man to slaughter?
And that’s what had sealed it for Gamache. As he’d been walking back to Three Pines, having ordered the Parra place searched yet again, he’d thought about the case. The evidence. But also the malevolent spirit behind it.
He realized that all the things that pointed to the Parras’ possibly doing it also applied to Olivier. Fear and greed. But what tipped it toward Olivier was that while the Parras had shown little inclination toward greed, Olivier had wallowed in it.
Olivier was afraid of two things, Gamache knew. Being exposed, and being without.
Both were approaching, both threatening.
Gamache sipped his coffee and thought again about those totem poles in Ninstints, rotting, falling, fallen. But they still had a story to tell.
It was there the idea had been planted. That this murder was about tales told. And the Hermit’s carvings were the key. They weren’t random, individual carvings. They were a community of carvings. Each could stand on its own, but taken together they told an even bigger story. Like the totem poles.
Olivier had told tales to control and imprison the Hermit. The Hermit had used them to create his remarkable carvings. And Olivier had used those carvings to get wealthier even than he had dreamed.
But what Olivier hadn’t appreciated was that his stories were actually true. An allegory, yes. But no less real for that. A mountain of misery was approaching. And growing with each new lie, each new tale.
A Hungry Ghost.
The wealthier Olivier grew the more he wanted. And what he wanted more than anything was the one thing denied him. The contents of the little canvas sack.
Jakob had come to Three Pines with his treasures, almost certainly stolen from friends and neighbors in Czechoslovakia. People who had trusted him. Once the Iron Curtain had collapsed and those people could leave, they started asking for their money. Demanding it. Threatening to show up. Perhaps even showing up.
So he’d taken his treasure, their treasures, and hidden it and himself in the woods. Waiting for it to blow over, for the people to give up. To go home. To leave him in peace.
Then he could sell it all. Buy private jets and luxury yachts. A townhouse in Chelsea, a vineyard in Burgundy.
Would he have been happy then? Would it have finally been enough?
Find out what he loved, and maybe then you’ll find his murderer, Gamache had been told by Esther, the Haida elder. Had the Hermit loved money?