A Trick of the Light cig-7

by Penny, Louise

  “And you say everyone liked her?” Beauvoir pressed.

  “Yes,” said Thierry. “Why?”

  “Well,” said Gamache. “Your description doesn’t match what others are saying.”

  “Really? What’re they saying?”

  “That she was cruel, manipulative, abusive even.”

  Thierry didn’t say anything, instead he turned and began walking down a dark side street. The next block over they could see the familiar Tim Hortons sign.

  “There she is,” said Thierry as they entered the coffee shop. “Suzanne,” he called and waved.

  A woman with close-cropped black hair looked up. She was in her sixties, Gamache guessed. Wore lots of flashy jewelry, a tight shirt with a light shawl, a skirt about three inches too short on her barrel body. There were six other women, of varying ages, at the table.

  “Thierry.” Suzanne jumped up and threw her arms around Thierry, as though she hadn’t just seen him. Then she turned bright, inquisitive eyes on Gamache and Beauvoir. “New blood?”

  Beauvoir bristled. He didn’t like this bawdy, brassy woman. Loud. And now she seemed to think he was one of them.

  “I saw you at the meeting tonight. It’s OK, honey,” she laughed as she saw Beauvoir’s expression. “You don’t need to like us. You just need to get sober.”

  “I’m not an alcoholic.” Even to his ears it sounded like the word was a dead bug or a piece of dirt he couldn’t wait to get out of his mouth. But she didn’t take offense.

  Gamache, though, did. He gave Beauvoir a warning look and put out his hand to Suzanne.

  “My name is Armand Gamache.”

  “His father?” Suzanne gestured to Beauvoir.

  Gamache smiled. “Mercifully, no. We’re not here about AA.”

  His somber manner seemed to impress itself on her and Suzanne’s smile dimmed. Her eyes, however, remained alert.

  Watchful, Beauvoir realized. What he’d first taken to be the shine of an idiot was in fact something far different. This woman paid attention. Behind the laughter and bright shine, a brain was at work. Furiously.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I wonder if we could talk privately?”

  Thierry left them and joined Bob and Jim and four other men across the coffee shop.

  “Would you like a coffee?” Suzanne asked as they found a quiet table near the toilets.

  “Non, merci,” said Gamache. “Bob very kindly got me one, though it was only half full.”

  Suzanne laughed. She seemed, to Beauvoir, to laugh a lot. He wondered what that hid. No one, in his experience, was ever that amused.

  “The DTs?” she asked and when Gamache nodded she looked over at Bob with great affection. “He lives at the Salvation Army, you know. Goes to seven meetings a week. He assumes everyone he meets is an alcoholic.”

  “There’re worse assumptions,” said Gamache.

  “How can I help you?”

  “I’m with the Sûreté du Québec,” said Gamache. “Homicide.”

  “You’re Chief Inspector Gamache?” she asked.

  “I am.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  Beauvoir was happy to see she was a lot less buoyant and more guarded.

  “It’s about Lillian Dyson.”

  Suzanne’s eyes opened wide and she whispered, “Lillian?”

  Gamache nodded. “I’m afraid she was murdered last night.”

  “Oh, my God.” Suzanne brought a hand to her mouth. “Was it a robbery? Did someone break into her apartment?”

  “No. It didn’t seem to be random. It was at a party. She was found dead in the garden. Her neck was broken.”

  Suzanne exhaled deeply and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m just shocked. We spoke on the phone yesterday.”

  “What about?”

  “Oh, it was just a check in. She calls me every few days. Nothing important.”

  “Did she mention the party?”

  “No, she said nothing about it.”

  “You must know her well, though,” said Gamache.

  “I do.” Suzanne looked out the window, at the men and women walking by. Lost in their own thoughts, in their own world. But Suzanne’s world had just changed. It was a world where murder existed. And Lillian Dyson did not.

  “Have you ever had a mentor, Chief Inspector?”

  “I have. Still do.”

  “Then you know how intimate that relationship can be.” She looked at Beauvoir for a moment, her eyes softening, and she smiled a little.

  “I do,” said the Chief.

  “And I can see you’re married.” Suzanne indicated her own barren ring finger.

  “True,” said Gamache. He was watching her with thoughtful eyes.

  “Imagine now those relationships combined and deepened. There’s nothing on earth like what happens between a sponsor and sponsee.”

  Both men stared at her.

  “How so?” Gamache finally asked.

  “It’s intimate without being sexual, it’s trusting without being a friendship. I want nothing from my sponsees. Nothing. Except honesty. All I want for them is that they get sober. I’m not their husband or wife, not their best friend or boss. They don’t answer to me for anything. I just guide them, and listen.”

  “And what do you get out of it?” asked Beauvoir.

  “My own sobriety. One drunk helping another. We can bullshit a lot of people, Inspector, and often do. But not each other. We know each other. We’re quite insane, you know,” Suzanne said with a small laugh.

  This wasn’t news to Beauvoir.

  “Was Lillian insane when you first met her?” Gamache asked.

  “Oh, yes. But only in the sense that her perception of the world was all screwy. She’d made so many bad choices she no longer knew how to make good ones.”

  “I understand that as part of this relationship Lillian told you her secrets,” said the Chief.

  “She did.”

  “And what were Lillian Dyson’s secrets?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Gamache stared at this fireplug. “Don’t know, madame? Or won’t say?”

  FOURTEEN

  Peter lay in bed, clutching the edge of their double mattress. The bed was too small for them, really. But a double had been all they could afford when they were first married and Peter and Clara had grown used to having each other close.

  So close they touched. Even on the hottest, stickiest July nights. They’d lie naked in bed, the sheets kicked off, their bodies wet and slick from sweat. And still they’d touch. Not much. Just a hand to her back. A toe to his leg.

  Contact.

  But tonight he clung to his side of the bed, and she clung to hers, as though to dual cliff faces. Afraid to fall. But fearing they were about to.

  They’d gone to bed early so the silence might feel natural.

  It didn’t.

  “Clara?” he whispered.

  The silence stretched on. He knew the sound of Clara sleeping, and this wasn’t it. Clara asleep was almost as exuberant as Clara awake. She didn’t toss and turn, but she snorted and grunted. Sometimes she’d say something ridiculous. Once she mumbled, “But Kevin Spacey’s stuck on the moon.”

  She hadn’t believed it when he’d told her the next morning, but he’d heard it clearly.

  In fact, she didn’t believe it when he told her she snorted and hummed and made all manner of noises. Not loudly. But Peter was attuned to Clara. He heard her, even when she herself couldn’t.

  But tonight she was silent.

  “Clara?” he tried again. He knew she was there, and he knew she was awake. “We need to talk.”

  Then he heard her. A long, long inhale. And then a sigh.

  “What is it?”

  He sat up in bed but didn’t turn the light on. He’d rather not see her face.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t move. He could see her, a dark ridge in the bed, shoved up at the very edge of the world. She couldn’
t get further from him without falling out.

  “You’re always sorry.” Her voice was muffled. She was speaking into the bedding, not even raising her head.

  What could he say to that? She was right. As he looked back down their relationship it was a series of him doing and saying something stupid and her forgiving him. Until today.

  Something had changed. He’d thought the biggest threat to their marriage would be Clara’s show. Her success. And his sudden failure. Made all the more spectacular by her triumph.

  But he’d been wrong.

  “We have to sort this out,” said Peter. “We have to talk.”

  Clara sat up suddenly, fighting with the duvet, trying to get her arms clear. Finally she did, and turned to him.

  “Why? So that I can just forgive you again? Is that it? You don’t think I know what you’ve been doing? Hoping my show would fail? Hoping the critics would decide my art sucks and you’re the real artist? I know you, Peter. I could see your mind working. You’ve never understood my art, you’ve never cared about it. You think it’s childish and simplistic. Portraits? How embarrassing,” she lowered her voice to mimic his.

  “I never said that.”

  “But you thought it.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Don’t fucking lie to me, Peter. Not now.”

  The warning in her voice was clear. And new. They’d had their fights before, but never like this.

  Peter knew then their marriage was either over or soon would be. Unless he could find the right thing to say. To do.

  If “I’m sorry” didn’t work, what would?

  “You must’ve been thrilled when you saw the Ottawa Star review. When it called my art an old and tired parrot mimicking actual artists. Did that give you pleasure, Peter?”

  “How can you think that?” Peter asked. But it had given him pleasure. And relief. It was the first really happy moment he’d had in a very long time. “It’s the New York Times review that matters, Clara. That’s the one I care about.”

  She stared at him. And he felt cold creeping down his fingers and toes and up his legs. As though his heart had weakened and couldn’t get the blood that far anymore.

  His heart was only now catching up with what the rest of him had known all his life. He was weak.

  “Then quote me from the New York Times review.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Go on. If it made that big an impression, if it was that important to you, surely you can remember a single line.”

  She waited.

  “A word?” she asked, her voice glacial.

  Peter scanned his memory, desperate for something, anything from the New York Times. Something to prove to himself, never mind Clara, that he’d cared in any way.

  But all he remembered, all he saw, was the glorious review in the Ottawa paper.

  Her art, while nice, was neither visionary nor bold.

  He’d thought it was bad when her paintings were simply embarrassing. But it was worse when they were brilliant. Instead of reflected glory, it just highlighted what a failure he was. His creations dimmed as hers brightened. And so he’d read and re-read the parrot line, applying it to his ego as though it was an antiseptic. And Clara’s art was the septic.

  But he knew now it wasn’t her art that had gone septic.

  “I thought not,” snapped Clara. “Not even a word. Well let me remind you. Clara Morrow’s paintings are not just brilliant, they are luminous. She has, in an audacious and generous stroke, redefined portraiture. I went back and memorized it. Not because I believe it’s true, but so that I have a choice of what to believe, and it doesn’t always have to be the worst.”

  Imagine, thought Peter, as the cold crept closer to his core, having a choice of things to believe.

  “And then the messages,” said Clara.

  Peter closed his eyes, slowly. A reptilian blink.

  The messages. From all of Clara’s supporters. From gallery owners and dealers and curators around the world. From family and friends.

  He’d spent most of the morning, after Gamache and Clara and the others had left, after Lillian’s body had left, answering the phone.

  Ringing, ringing. Tolling. And each ring diminished him. Stripped him, it felt, of his manhood, his dignity, his self-worth. He’d written out the good wishes, and said nice things to people who ran the art world. The titans. Who knew him only as Clara’s husband.

  The humiliation was complete.

  Eventually he’d let the answering machine take over and had hidden in his studio. Where he’d hidden all his life. From the monster.

  He could feel it in their bedroom now. He could feel its tail swishing by him. Feel its hot, fetid breath.

  All his life he knew if he was quiet enough, small enough, it wouldn’t see him. If he didn’t make a fuss, didn’t speak up, it wouldn’t hear him, wouldn’t hurt him. If he was beyond criticism and hid his cruelty with a smile and good deeds, it wouldn’t devour him.

  But now he realized there was no hiding. It would always be there, and always find him.

  He was the monster.

  “You wanted to see me fail.”

  “Never,” said Peter.

  “I actually thought deep down you were happy for me. You just needed time to adjust. But this is really who you are, isn’t it.”

  A denial was again on Peter’s lips, almost out his mouth. But it stopped. Something stopped it. Something stood between the words in his head and the words out his mouth.

  He stared at her, and finally, nails ripping and bloody from a lifetime clinging on, he lost his grip.

  “The portrait of the Three Graces,” the words tumbled from his mouth. “I saw it, you know, before it was finished. I snuck into your studio and took the sheet off your easel.” He paused to try to compose himself. But it was way too late for that. Peter was plummeting. “I saw—” He searched for the right word. But finally he realized he wasn’t searching for it. He was hiding from it. “Glory. I saw glory, Clara, and such love it broke my heart.”

  He stared at the bed sheets, twisted in his hands. And sighed.

  “I knew then that you were a far better artist than I could ever be. Because you don’t paint things. You don’t even paint people.”

  He saw again Clara’s portrait of the three elderly friends. The Three Graces. Émilie and Beatrice and Kaye. Their neighbors in Three Pines. How they laughed, and held each other. Old, frail, near death.

  With every reason to be afraid.

  And yet everyone who looked at Clara’s painting felt what those women felt.

  Joy.

  Looking at the Graces Peter had known at that moment that he was screwed.

  And he knew something else. Something people looking at Clara’s extraordinary creations might not consciously realize, but feel. In their bones, in their marrow.

  Without a single crucifix, or host, or bible. Without benefit of clergy, or church. Clara’s paintings radiated a subtle, private faith. In a single bright dot in an eye. In old hands holding old hands. For dear life.

  Clara painted dear life.

  While the rest of the cynical art world was painting the worst, Clara painted the best.

  She’d been marginalized, mocked, ostracized for it for years. By the artistic establishment and, privately, by Peter.

  Peter painted things. Very well. He even claimed to paint God, and some dealers believed it. Made a good story. But he’d never met God so how could he paint Him?

  Clara not only met Him, she knew Him. And she painted what she knew.

  “You’re right. I’ve always envied you,” he said, looking at her directly. There was no fear now. He was beyond that. “From the first moment I saw you I envied you. And it’s never left. I tried, but it’s always there. It’s even grown with time. Oh, Clara. I love you and I hate myself for doing all this to you.”

  She was silent. Not helping. But not hurting either. He was on his own.

  “But it’s not your art I’ve envied.
I thought it was, and that’s why I ignored it. Pretended to not understand. But I understood perfectly well what you were doing in your studio. What you were struggling to capture. And I could see you getting closer and closer over the years. And it killed me. Oh, God, Clara. Why couldn’t I just be happy for you?”

  She was silent.

  “And then, when I saw The Three Graces I knew you were there. And then that portrait. Ruth. Oh, God.” His shoulders slumped. “Who else but you would paint Ruth as the Virgin Mary? So full of scorn and bitterness and disappointment.”

  He opened his arms, then dropped them and exhaled.

  “And then that dot. The tiny bit of white in her eyes. Eyes filled with hatred. Except for that dot. Seeing something coming.”

  Peter looked at Clara, so far away across the bed.

  “It’s not your art I envy. It never was.”

  “You’re lying, Peter,” whispered Clara.

  “No, no, I’m not,” said Peter, his voice rising in desperation.

  “You criticized The Three Graces. You mocked the one of Ruth,” yelled Clara. “You wanted me to screw them up, to destroy them.”

  “Yes, but it wasn’t the paintings,” Peter shouted back.

  “Bullshit.”

  “It wasn’t. It was—”

  “Well?” yelled Clara. “Well? What was it? Let me guess. It was your mother’s fault? Your father’s? Was it that you had too much money or not enough? That your teachers hurt you, and your grandfather drank? What excuse are you dreaming up now?”

  “No, you don’t understand.”

  “Of course I do, Peter. I understand you too well. As long as I was schlepping along in your shadow we were fine.”

  “No.” Peter was out of bed now, backing up until he was against the wall. “You have to believe me.”

  “Not anymore I don’t. You don’t love me. Love doesn’t do this.”

  “Clara, no.”

  And then the dizzying, disorienting, terrible plummet finally ended. And Peter hit the ground.

  “It was your faith,” he shouted, and slumped to the floor. “It was your beliefs. Your hope,” he choked out, his voice a croak amid gasps. “It was far worse than your art. I wanted to be able to paint like you, but only because it would mean I’d see the world as you do. Oh, God, Clara. All I’ve ever envied you was your faith.”