The roofs of the homes surrounding the village were white and smoke curled from the chimneys. Snow was lying thick on the evergreens and on the three magnificent pines clustered together at the far end of the village green like guardians. The cars parked outside homes had become white lumps, like ancient burial mounds.
“I tell you, I’m going to do it,” Myrna was saying, sipping her hot chocolate.
“No you’re not,” laughed Clara. “Every winter you say you will and you never do. Besides, it’s too late now.”
“Have you seen the last-minute deals? Look.” Myrna handed her friend the Travel section from the weekend Montreal Gazette, pointing to a box.
Clara read, raising her brows. “Actually, it’s not bad. Cuba?”
Myrna nodded. “I could be there in time for dinner tonight. Four star resort. All inclusive.”
“Let me see that,” said Gabri, leaning toward Clara. Somehow Clara had managed to get a bit of jam on the newspaper, though there was no jam around. It was, they all knew, Clara’s particular miracle. She seemed to produce condiments and great works of art. Interestingly, they never found dabs of jam or croissant flakes on her portraits.
Gabri scanned the page then leaned back in his seat. “Nope, not interested. Condé Nast has better ads.”
“Condé Nast has near naked men smothered in olive oil lying on beaches,” said Myrna.
“Now that I would pay for,” said Gabri. “All inclusive.”
Every Saturday they had the same conversation. Comparing travel deals to beaches, choosing Caribbean cruises, debating the Bahamas versus Barbados, San Miguel de Allende versus Cabo San Lucas. Exotic locales far from the falling snow, the endless snow. Deep and crisp and even.
And yet, they never went, no matter how tempting the deals. And Gabri knew why. Myrna, Clara, Peter knew why. And it wasn’t Ruth’s theory.
“You’re all too fucking lazy to move.”
Well, not entirely.
Gabri sipped his café au lait and looked into the leaping flames, listening to the familiar babble of familiar voices. He looked across the bistro with its original beams, wide plank floor, mullioned windows, its mismatched, comfortable antique furniture. And the quiet, gentle village beyond.
No place could ever be warmer than Three Pines.
Out the window he saw a car descend rue du Moulin, past the new inn and spa on the hill, past St. Thomas’s Anglican Church, around the village green. Its progress was slow, and left tire marks in the fresh, fallen snow. As he watched it drew up beside Jane Neal’s old brick home. And stopped.
It was an unfamiliar vehicle. If Gabri had been a mutt he’d have barked. Not a warning, not out of fear, but excitement.
Wasn’t often Three Pines had visitors unless it was people stumbling across the tiny village in the valley by accident, having gone too far astray. Become confused. Lost.
That was how Gabri and his partner Olivier had found Three Pines. Not intending to. They had other, grander, plans for their lives but once they’d laid eyes on the village, with its fieldstone cottages, and clapboard homes, and United Empire Loyalist houses, its perennial beds of roses and delphiniums and sweet peas, its bakery, and general store, well, they’d never left. Instead of taking New York, or Boston or even Toronto by storm they’d settled into this backwater. And never wanted to leave.
Olivier had set up the bistro, furnishing it with finds from the neighborhood, all for sale. Then they’d bought the former stagecoach inn across the way and made it a bed and breakfast. That had been Gabri’s baby.
But now, with Olivier gone, Gabri also ran the bistro. Keeping it open for his friends. And for Olivier.
As Gabri watched a man got out of the car. He was too far away to recognize, and dressed against the snow with a heavy parka, tuque, scarves. Indeed, it could have been a woman, could have been anyone. But Gabri rose and his heart leapt ahead of him.
“What is it?” Peter asked. His long legs uncrossing and his tall, slim body leaning forward on the sofa. His handsome face was curious, happy for relief from the vacation conversation. Peter, while an artist himself, wasn’t great at the “what if” conversations. He took them too literally and found himself stressed when Clara pointed out that for only fifteen thousand dollars they could upgrade to a Princess Suite on the Queen Mary 2. It was his cardio exercise for the day. Having had it, he now focused on Gabri, who was focused on the stranger walking very slowly through the snow.
“Nothing,” said Gabri. He would never admit what he was now thinking, what he thought every time the phone rang, every time there was a knock on the door or an unfamiliar car arrived.
Gabri looked down at the coffee table, with their drinks and a plate of chocolate chip cookies and the thick Diane de Poitiers writing paper with its partly finished message. The same one he wrote every day and mailed, along with a licorice pipe.
Why would Olivier move the body? he’d written. Then added, Olivier didn’t do it. He would mail it that afternoon, and tomorrow he’d write another one to Chief Inspector Gamache.
But now a man was walking, almost creeping, toward the bistro out of the thickly falling snow. In just the twenty yards from his car snow had already gathered on his hat, his scarf, his slender shoulders. Olivier had slender shoulders.
The snowman arrived at the bistro and opened the door. The outside world blew in and people looked over, then went back to their meals, their conversations, their lives. Slowly the man unveiled himself. His scarf, his boots, then he shook his coat, the snow falling to the wooden floor and melting. He put on a pair of slippers, kept in a basket by the door for people to grab.
Gabri’s heart thudded. Behind him Myrna and Clara were continuing to discuss whether, for a few thousand more, it might be worth upgrading all the way, to the Queen Suites.
He knew it couldn’t be Olivier. Not really. But, well, maybe Gamache had been convinced by all the letters, maybe he’d let him out. Maybe it had been last-minute, like the travel deals, a last-minute escape that instead of taking him away had brought Olivier home.
Gabri stepped forward, unable to help himself now.
“Gabri?” Peter asked, standing up.
Gabri got halfway across the bistro.
The man had taken off his hat and turned into the room. Slowly, as recognition dawned, the conversation died out.
It wasn’t Olivier. It was one of the men who’d taken him away, arrested Olivier, put him in prison for murder.
Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir surveyed the room and smiled, uncertainly.
When the phone call had come that morning from the Chief Inspector, Beauvoir had been in his basement making a bookcase. He didn’t read but his wife Enid did, and so he was making it for her. She was upstairs, singing. Not loudly and not well. He could hear her cleaning up the breakfast dishes.
“You okay down there?” she’d called.
He wanted to tell her he wasn’t. He was bored stupid. He hated woodwork, hated the damned crossword puzzles she shoved on him. Hated the books she’d piled up next to the sofa, hated the pillows and blankets that followed him around, in her arms as though he was an invalid. Hated how much he owed her. Hated how much she loved him.
“I’m fine,” he called up.
“If you need anything, just call.”