Free The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny Page B

Lacoste he’d seen someone lurking in the woods this summer. Does that sound familiar?” He watched her closely.
    “Lurking? Isn’t that a bit melodramatic? No, I haven’t seen anyone and neither has Peter. He’d have told me. And we spend a lot of time outside in the garden. If there was someone there we’d have seen him.”
    She waved toward their backyard, in darkness now, but Gamache knew it was large and sloped gently toward the Rivière Bella Bella.
    “Mr. Parra didn’t see him there,” said Gamache. “He saw him there.”
    He pointed to the old Hadley house, on the hill above them. The two of them took their drinks and walked out the door to the front veranda. Gamache was wearing his gray flannels, shirt, tie and jacket. Clara had a sweater, and needed it. In early September the nights grew longer and cooler. All around the village lights shone in homes, and even in the house on the hill.
    The two looked at the house in silence for a few moments.
    “I hear it’s sold,” said Gamache, finally.
    Clara nodded. They could hear the murmur of conversation from the living room, and light spilled out so that Gamache could see Clara’s face in profile.
    “Few months ago,” she said. “What are we now? Labor Day? I’d say they bought it back in July and have been doing renovations ever since. Young couple. Or at least, my age, which seems young to me.”
    Clara laughed.
    It was hard for Gamache to see the old Hadley house as just another place in Three Pines. For one thing, it never seemed to belong to the village. It seemed the accusation, the voyeur on the hill, that looked down on them. Judged them. Preyed on them. And sometimes took one of the villagers, and killed them.
    Horrible things had happened in that place.
    Earlier in the year he and his wife Reine-Marie had come down and helped the villagers repaint and repair the place. In the belief that everything deserved a second chance. Even houses. And the hopes someone would buy it.
    And now someone had.
    “I know they hired Roar to work on the grounds,” said Clara. “Clean up the gardens. He’s even built a barn and started reopening the trails. There must have been fifty kilometers of bridle paths in those woods in Timmer Hadley’s time. Grown over, of course. Lots of work for Roar to do.”
    “He said he saw the stranger in the woods while he worked. Said he’d felt himself being watched for a while but only caught sight of someone once. He’d tried to run after him but the guy disappeared.”
    Gamache’s gaze shifted from the old Hadley house down to Three Pines. Kids were playing touch football on the village green, eking out every last moment of their summer vacation. Snippets of voices drifted to them from villagers sitting on other porches, enjoying the early evening. The main topic of conversation, though, wouldn’t be the ripening tomatoes, the cooler nights, or getting in the winter wood.
    Into the gentle village something rotten had crawled. Words like “murder,” “blood,” “body,” floated in the night air, as did something else. The soft scent of rosewater and sandalwood from the large, quiet man beside Clara.
    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