“It was dark, of course, so I turned on a light and went closer. I thought it might be a drunk who’d staggered up the hill from the bistro, saw our place and just made himself comfortable.”
He was right, it did sound ridiculous. Still the Chief said nothing.
“I was going to call for help but I didn’t want to upset Dominique or my mother, so I crept closer to the guy. Then I saw his head.”
“And you knew he’d been murdered,” said Beauvoir, not believing a word of this.
“That’s it.” Marc turned grateful eyes to the Inspector, until he saw the sneer, then he turned back to Gamache. “I couldn’t believe it.”
“So a murdered man shows up in your house in the middle of the night. Didn’t you lock the door?” asked Beauvoir.
“We do, but we’re getting a lot of deliveries and since we never use that door ourselves I guess we forgot.”
“What did you do, Monsieur Gilbert?” Gamache asked, his voice soothing, reasonable.
Marc opened his mouth, shut it and looked down at his hands. He’d promised himself when it got to this part he wouldn’t look away, or down. Wouldn’t flinch. But now he did all three.
“I thought about it for a while, then I picked the guy up and carried him down into the village. To the bistro.”
There it was.
“Why?” Gamache asked.
“I was going to call the police, actually had the phone in my hand,” he held out his empty hand to them as though that was proof, “but then I got to thinking. About all the work we’d put into the place. And we’re so close, so close. We’re going to open in just over a month, you know. And I realized it would be all over the papers. Who’d want to relax in an inn and spa where someone had just been killed?”
Beauvoir hated to say it, but he had to agree. Especially at those prices.
“So you dumped him in the bistro?” he asked. “Why?”
Now Gilbert turned to him. “Because I didn’t want to put him into someone else’s home to be found. And I knew Olivier kept the key under a planter by the front door.” He could see their skepticism, but plowed ahead anyway. “I took the dead guy down, left him on the floor of the bistro and came home. I moved a rug up from the spa area to cover where the guy had been. I knew no one would miss it downstairs. Too much else going on.”