Louise Penny - The Brutal Telling: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (Chief Inspector Gamache Novels)

THE BRUTAL TELLING

ALSO BY LOUISE PENNY

A Rule Against Murder

The Cruelest Month

A Fatal Grace

Still Life

L OUISE P ENNY

MINOTAUR BOOKS NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE BRUTAL TELLING . Copyright 2009 by Louise Penny. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Grateful acknowledgment is given for permission to reprint the following:

The Bells of Heaven by Ralph Hodgson is used by kind permission of Bryn Mawr College.

Excerpts from Cressida to Troilius: A Gift and Sekhmet, the Lion-Headed Goddess of War from Morning in the Burning House: New Poems by Margaret Atwood. Copyright 1995 by Margaret Atwood. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from Gravity Zero from Bones by Mike Freeman. Copyright 2007 by Mike Freeman. Reproduced with kind permission of the author.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Penny, Louise.

The brutal telling / Louise Penny.1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-312-37703-8

1. Gamache, Armand (Fictitious character)Fiction. 2. PoliceQubec (Province)Fiction. 3. VillagesQubec (Province)Fiction. 4. MurderInvestigationFiction. 5. Qubec (Province)Fiction. I. Title.

PR9199.4.P464B78 2009

813'.6dc22

2009028462

First published in Great Britain by Headline Publishing Group

First U.S. Edition: October 2009

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For the SPCA Monteregie, and all the people
who would ring the bells of Heaven.

And, for Maggie,
who finally gave all her heart away.

I want to thank, as always, the very best literary agent in the world, Teresa Chris. She sent me a silver heart when my last book made the New York Times bestseller list (I also thought Id just mention that!). Teresa is way more than an agent. Shes also a lovely, thoughtful person.

Id also like to thank my good friends Susan McKenzie and Lili de Grandpr, for their help and support.

And finally I want to say a word about the poetry I use in this book, and the others. As much as Id love not to say anything and hope you believe I wrote it, I actually need to thank the wonderful poets whove allowed me to use their works and words. I adore poetry, as you can tell. Indeed, it inspires mewith words and emotions. I tell aspiring writers to read poetry, which I think for them is often the literary equivalent of being told to eat Brussels sprouts. Theyre none too enthusiastic. But what a shame if a writer doesnt at least try to find poems that speak to him or her. Poets manage to get into a couplet what I struggle to achieve in an entire book.

I thought it was time I acknowledged that.

In this book I use, as always, works from Margaret Atwoods slim volume Morning in the Burned House. Not a very cheerful title, but brilliant poems. Ive also quoted from a lovely old work called The Bells of Heaven by Ralph Hodgson. And a wonderful poem called Gravity Zero from an emerging Canadian poet named Mike Freeman, from his book Bones.

I wanted you to know that. And I hope these poems speak to you, as they speak to me.

THE BRUTAL TELLING

Worse.

There was silence then. And in that hush lived all the things that could be worse than slaughter.

Are they close? His back tingled as he imagined something dreadful creeping through the woods. Toward them. He looked around, almost expecting to see red eyes staring through the dark windows. Or from the corners, or under the bed.

All around. Have you seen the light in the night sky?

I thought those were the Northern Lights. The pink and green and white shifting, flowing against the stars. Like something alive, glowing, and growing. And approaching.

Olivier Brul lowered his gaze, no longer able to look into the troubled, lunatic eyes across from him. Hed lived with this story for so long, and kept telling himself it wasnt real. It was a myth, a story told and repeated and embellished over and over and over. Around fires just like theirs.

It was a story, nothing more. No harm in it.

But in this simple log cabin, buried in the Quebec wilderness, it seemed like more than that. Even Olivier felt himself believing it. Perhaps because the Hermit so clearly did.

The old man sat in his easy chair on one side of the stone hearth with Olivier on the other. Olivier looked into a fire that had been alive for more than a decade. An old flame not allowed to die, it mumbled and popped in the grate, throwing soft light into the log cabin. He gave the embers a shove with the simple iron poker, sending sparks up the chimney. Candlelight twinkled off shiny objects like eyes in the darkness, found by the flame.

It wont be long now.

The Hermits eyes were gleaming like metal reaching its melting point. He was leaning forward as he often did when this tale was told.

Olivier scanned the single room. The dark was punctuated by flickering candles throwing fantastic, grotesque shadows. Night seemed to have seeped through the cracks in the logs and settled into the cabin, curled in corners and under the bed. Many native tribes believed evil lived in corners, which was why their traditional homes were rounded. Unlike the square homes the government had given them.

Olivier didnt believe evil lived in corners. Not really. Not in the daylight, anyway. But he did believe there were things waiting in the dark corners of this cabin that only the Hermit knew about. Things that set Oliviers heart pounding.

Go on, he said, trying to keep his voice steady.

It was late and Olivier still had the twenty-minute walk through the forest back to Three Pines. It was a trip he made every fortnight and he knew it well, even in the dark.