The Brutal Telling

Back inside Isabelle Lacoste was pouring herself another watered-down Scotch from the drinks tray on the piano. She looked around the room. A bookcase covered an entire wall, crammed with books, broken only by a window and the door to the veranda through which she could see the Chief and Clara.



Across the living room Myrna was chatting with Olivier and Gabri while Peter worked in the kitchen and Ruth drank in front of the fireplace. Lacoste had been in the Morrow home before, but only to conduct interviews. Never as a guest.



It was as comfortable as she’d imagined. She saw herself going back to her husband in Montreal and convincing him they could sell their home, take the kids out of school, chuck their jobs and move here. Find a cottage just off the village green and get jobs at the bistro or Myrna’s bookshop.



She subsided into an armchair and watched as Beauvoir came in from the kitchen, a pâté-smeared piece of bread in one hand and a beer in the other, and started toward the sofa. He halted suddenly, as though repelled, changed course, and went outside.



Ruth rose and limped to the drinks tray, a malevolent sneer on her face. Scotch replenished she returned to the sofa, like a sea monster slipping beneath the surface once again, still waiting for a victim.



“Any idea when we can reopen the bistro?” Gabri asked as he, Olivier and Myrna joined Agent Lacoste.



“Gabri,” said Olivier, annoyed.



“What? I’m just asking.”



“We’ve done what we need to,” she told Olivier. “You can open up whenever you’d like.”



“You can’t stay closed long, you know,” said Myrna. “We’d all starve to death.”



Peter put his head in and announced, “Dinner!”



“Though perhaps not immediately,” said Myrna, as they headed for the kitchen.



Ruth hauled herself out of the sofa and went to the veranda door.



“Are you deaf?” she shouted at Gamache, Beauvoir and Clara. “Dinner’s getting cold. Get inside.”



Beauvoir felt his rectum spasm as he hurried past her. Clara followed Beauvoir to the dinner table, but Gamache lingered.



It took him a moment to realize he wasn’t alone. Ruth was standing beside him, tall, rigid, leaning on her cane, her face all reflected light and deep crevices.



“A strange thing to give to Olivier, wouldn’t you say?”



The old voice, sharp and jagged, cut through the laughter from the village green.



“I beg your pardon?” Gamache turned to her.



“The dead man. Even you can’t be that dense. Someone did this to Olivier. The man’s greedy and shiftless and probably quite weak, but he didn’t kill anyone. So why would someone choose his bistro for murder?”



Gamache raised his eyebrows. “You think someone chose the bistro on purpose?”



“Well, it didn’t happen by accident. The murderer chose to kill at Olivier’s Bistro. He gave the body to Olivier.”



“To kill both a man and a business?” asked Gamache. “Like giving white bread to a goldfish?”



“Fuck you,” said Ruth.



“Nothing I ever gave was good for you,” quoted Gamache. “It was like white bread to a goldfish.”



Beside him Ruth Zardo stiffened, then in a low growl she finished her own poem.



“They cram and cram, and it kills them,



and they drift in the pool, belly up,



making stunned faces



and playing on our guilt



as if their own toxic gluttony



was not their fault.”



Gamache listened to the poem, one of his favorites. He looked across at the bistro, dark and empty on a night when it should have been alive with villagers.



Was Ruth right? Had someone chosen the bistro on purpose? But that meant Olivier was somehow implicated. Had he brought this on himself? Who in the village hated the tramp enough to kill him, and Olivier enough to do it there? Or was the tramp merely a convenient tool? A poor man in the wrong place? Used as a weapon against Olivier?



“Who do you think would want to do this to Olivier?” he asked Ruth.



She shrugged, then turned to leave. He watched her take her place among her friends, all of them moving in ways familiar to each other, and now to him.



And to the killer?



EIGHT



The meal was winding down. They’d dined on corn on the cob and sweet butter, fresh vegetables from Peter and Clara’s garden and a whole salmon barbecued over charcoal. The guests chatted amicably as warm bread was passed and salad served.



Myrna’s exuberant arrangement of hollyhock, sweet pea and phlox sat in the center, so that it felt as though they were eating in a garden. Gamache could hear Lacoste asking her dinner companions about the Parras, and then segueing into Old Mundin. The Chief Inspector wondered if they realized they were being interrogated.