A Trick of the Light cig-7

by Penny, Louise

  “But Annie hates children.”

  “Well, she’s not very good with them, but I don’t think she hates them. She adores Florence and Zora.”

  “She has to,” said Beauvoir. “They’re family. She’s probably depending on them, in her old age. She’ll be bitter Auntie Annie, with the stale chocolates and the doorknob collection. And they’ll have to look after her. So she can’t drop them on their heads now.”

  Gamache laughed while Beauvoir remembered Annie with the Chief’s first granddaughter, Florence. Three years ago. When Florence had been an infant. It might have been the first time his feelings for Annie had breached the surface. Shocking him with their size and ferocity. Crashing down. Swamping in. Capsizing him.

  But the moment itself had been so tiny, so delicate.

  There was Annie. Smiling, cradling her niece. Whispering to the tiny little girl.

  And Beauvoir had suddenly realized he wanted children. And he wanted them with Annie. No one else.

  Annie. Holding their own daughter or son.

  Annie. Holding him.

  He felt his heart tug, as tethers he never knew existed were released.

  “We suggested she try to work it out with David.”

  “What?” asked Beauvoir, shocked back to the present.

  “We just don’t want to see her make a mistake.”

  “But,” said Beauvoir, his mind racing. “Maybe she’s already made the mistake. Maybe David’s the mistake.”

  “Maybe. But she has to be sure.”

  “So what did you suggest?”

  “We told her we’d support whatever she decided, but we did gently suggest couple’s counseling,” said the Chief, putting his large, expressive hands on the wooden table and trying to hold Beauvoir’s eyes. But all he saw was his daughter, his little girl, in their living room Sunday night.

  She’d swung from sobbing to raging. From hating David, to hating herself, to hating her parents for suggesting counseling.

  “Is there something you’re not telling us?” Gamache had finally asked.

  “Like what?” Annie had demanded.

  Her father had been quiet for a moment. Reine-Marie sat beside him on the sofa, looking from him to their daughter.

  “Has he hurt you?” Gamache had asked. Clearly. His eyes firmly on his daughter. Searching for the truth.

  “Physically?” Annie asked. “Has he hit me, do you mean?”

  “I do.”

  “Never. David would never do that.”

  “Has he hurt you in other ways? Emotionally? Is he abusive?”

  Annie shook her head. Gamache held his daughter’s eyes. He’d peered into the faces of so many suspects trying to glean the truth. But never did anything feel so important.

  If David had abused his daughter—

  He could feel the rage roil up, just at the thought. What would he do if he found out the man had actually—

  Gamache had pulled himself back from that precipice and nodded. Accepting her answer. He’d sat beside her then, and folded her into his arms. Rocking her. Feeling her head in the hollow by his shoulder. Her tears through his shirt. Just as he’d done when she’d cried for Humpty Dumpty. But this time she was the one who’d had a great fall.

  Eventually Annie pulled away and Reine-Marie handed her some tissues.

  “Would you like me to shoot David?” Gamache had asked as she blew her nose with a mighty honk.

  Annie laughed, catching her breath in snags. “Maybe just knee cap him.”

  “I’ll move it to the very top of my to-do list,” said her father. Then he bent down so that they were eye to eye, his face serious now. “Whatever you decide to do, we’re behind you. Understand?”

  She nodded, and wiped her face. “I know.”

  Like Reine-Marie, he wasn’t necessarily shocked, but he was perplexed. There seemed something Annie wasn’t telling them. Something that didn’t quite add up. Every couple had difficult periods. He and Reine-Marie argued at times. Hurt each other’s feelings, at times. Never intentionally, but when people lived that close it was bound to happen.

  “Suppose you and Dad had been married to different people when you met,” Annie finally asked, looking them square in the face. “What would you have done?”

  They were silent, staring at their daughter. It had been, thought Gamache, exactly the same question Beauvoir had recently asked.

  “Are you saying you’ve met someone else?” Reine-Marie asked.

  “No,” Annie shook her head. “I’m saying the right person is out there for David and for me. And holding on to something wrong isn’t going to fix it. This will never be right.”

  Later, when he and Reine-Marie were alone, she’d asked him the same question.

  “Armand,” she’d asked, taking off her reading glasses as they lay in bed, each with their own books. “What would you have done if you’d been married when we met?”

  Gamache lowered his book and stared ahead. Trying to imagine it. His love for Reine-Marie had been so immediate and so complete it was difficult seeing himself with anyone else, never mind married.

  “God help me,” he finally said, turning to her. “I’d have left her. A terrible, selfish decision, but I’d have made a rotten husband after that. All your fault, you hussy.”

  Reine-Marie had nodded. “I’d have done the same thing. Brought little Julio Jr. and Francesca with me, of course.”

  “Julio and Francesca?”

  “My children by Julio Iglesias.”

  “Poor man, no wonder he sings so many sad songs. You broke his heart.”

  “He’s never recovered.” She smiled.

  “Perhaps we can introduce him to my ex,” said Gamache. “Isabella Rossellini.”

  Reine-Marie snorted and picked up her book, but lowered it again.

  “Not still thinking about Julio, I hope.”

  “No,” she’d said. “I was thinking about Annie and David.”

  “Do you think it’s over?” he’d asked.

  She’d nodded. “I think she’s found someone else but doesn’t want to tell us.”

  “Really?” She’d surprised him, but now he thought it might be true.

  Reine-Marie nodded. “I think he might be married. Maybe someone at her law firm. That might explain why she’s changing jobs.”

  “God, I hope not.”

  But he also knew there was nothing he could do either way. Except be there to help pick up the pieces. But that image reminded him of something.

  “Well, gotta get back to work,” said Beauvoir, rising. “The porn doesn’t look itself up.”

  “Wait,” said Gamache. And seeing his Chief’s face Beauvoir sank back into his chair.

  Gamache sat silently, his forehead furrowed. Thinking. Beauvoir had seen that look many times. He knew Chief Inspector Gamache was following a lead in his head. A thought, that led to another, that led to another. Into the darkness, not so much an alley as a shaft. Trying to find the thing most deeply hidden. The secret. The truth.

  “You said the raid on the factory was what finally made you decide to separate from Enid.”

  Beauvoir nodded. That much was the truth.

  “I wonder if it had the same effect on Annie.”

  “How so?”

  “It was a shattering experience, for everyone,” said the Chief. “Not just us. But our families too. Maybe, like you, it made Annie reexamine her life.”

  “Then why wouldn’t she tell you that?”

  “Maybe she didn’t want me to feel responsible. Maybe she doesn’t even realize it herself, not consciously.”

  Then Beauvoir remembered his conversation with Annie, before the vernissage. How she’d asked him about his separation. And made a vague allusion to the raid, and the fall-out.

  She’d been right of course. It was the final push he’d needed.

  He’d shut her down, refused to discuss it out of fear he’d say too much. But had she really been wanting to talk about her own turmoil?


  “How would you feel if that’s what happened?” Beauvoir asked his Chief.

  Chief Inspector Gamache sat back, his face slightly troubled.

  “It might be a good thing,” suggested Beauvoir, quietly. “It would be good, wouldn’t it, if something positive came out of what happened? Maybe Annie can find real love now.”

  Gamache looked at Jean Guy. Drawn, tired, too thin. He nodded.

  “Oui. It would be good if something positive came out of what happened. But I’m not sure the end of my daughter’s marriage could be considered a good thing.”

  But Jean Guy Beauvoir disagreed.

  “Would you like me to stay?” he asked.

  Gamache roused himself from his reverie. “I’d like you to actually do some work.”

  “Well, I do have to look up ‘schnaugendender.’”

  “Look up what?”

  “That word you used.”

  “‘Schadenfreude,’” smiled Gamache. “Don’t bother. It means being happy for the misfortunes of others.”

  Beauvoir paused at the table. “I think that describes the victim pretty well. But Lillian Dyson took it the next step. She actually created the misfortune. She must’ve been a very happy person.”

  But Gamache thought differently. Happy people didn’t drink themselves to sleep every night.

  Beauvoir left and the Chief Inspector sipped his coffee and read from the AA book, noting passages underlined and comments in the margins, losing himself in the archaic but beautiful language of this book that so gently described the descent into hell and the long climb back out. Eventually he closed the book over his finger and stared into space.

  “May I join you?”

  Gamache was startled. He got to his feet, bowing slightly, and pulled out a chair. “Please do.”

  Myrna Landers sat, putting her éclair and café au lait on the bistro table. “You looked lost in thought.”

  Gamache nodded. “I was thinking about Humpty Dumpty.”

  “So the case is almost solved.”

  The Chief smiled. “We’re getting closer.” He looked at her for a moment. “May I ask you a question?”

  “Always.”

  “Do you think people change?”

  Myrna, the éclair on its way to her mouth, paused. Lowering the pastry she looked at the Chief Inspector with clear, searching eyes.

  “Where did that come from?”

  “There’s some debate over whether the dead woman had changed, whether she was the same person everyone knew twenty years ago, or if she was different.”

  “What makes you think she’d changed?” Myrna asked, then took a bite.

  “That coin you found in the garden? You were right, it’s from AA and it belonged to the dead woman. She’d stopped drinking for eight months now,” said the Chief. “People who knew her in AA describe a completely different person than Clara does. Not just slightly different, but completely. One is kind and generous, the other is cruel and manipulative.”

  Myrna frowned and thought, taking a sip of her café au lait.

  “We all change. Only psychotics remain the same.”

  “But isn’t that more growth than change? Like harmonics, but the note remains the same.”

  “Just a variation on a theme?” asked Myrna, interested. “Not really change?” She considered. “I think that’s often the case. Most people grow but they don’t become totally different people.”

  “Most. But some do?”

  “Some, Chief Inspector.” She watched him closely. Saw the familiar face, clean-shaven. The graying hair curling slightly around his ears. And the deep scar by his temple. Below that scar his eyes were kindly. She’d been afraid they might have changed. That when she next looked into them they’d have hardened.

  They hadn’t. Nor had he.

  But she didn’t kid herself. He might not look it, but he’d changed. Anyone who came out of that factory alive came out different.

  “People change when they have no choice. It’s change or die. You mentioned AA. Alcoholics only stop drinking when they hit bottom.”

  “What happens then?”

  “What you’d expect after a great fall.” She looked at him now, understanding dawning. A great fall. “Like Humpty Dumpty.”

  He nodded his head slightly.

  “When people hit bottom,” she continued, “they can lie there and die, most do. Or they can try to pick themselves up.”

  “Put the pieces back together,” said Gamache. “Like our friend Mr. Dumpty.”

  “Well he had the help of all the King’s horses and all the King’s men,” said Myrna, with mock earnestness. “And even they couldn’t put Mr. Dumpty together again.”

  “I’ve read the reports,” agreed the Chief.

  “Besides, even if they succeeded, he’d just fall again.” Now she really did look serious. “The same person will just keep doing the same stupid thing, over and over. So if you put all the pieces back exactly as they were, why would you expect your life to be different?”

  “Is there another option?”

  Myrna smiled at him. “You know there is. But it’s the hardest. Not many have the stomach for it.”

  “Change,” said Gamache.

  Maybe, he thought, that was the point of Humpty Dumpty. He wasn’t meant to be put together again. He was meant to be different. After all, an egg on a wall would always be in peril.

  Maybe Humpty Dumpty had to fall. And maybe all the King’s men had to fail.

  Myrna drained her mug and rose. He rose too.

  “People do change, Chief Inspector. But you need to know something.” She lowered her voice. “It’s not always for the better.”

  * * *

  “Why don’t you go and say something to him?” Gabri asked, as he put the tray of empty glasses on the counter.

  “I’m busy,” said Olivier.

  “You’re cleaning glasses, one of the waiters can do that. Speak to him.”

  Both men looked out the leaded glass window, at the large man sitting alone at the table. A coffee and a book in front of him.

  “I will,” said Olivier. “Just don’t push me.”

  Gabri took the dishtowel and started drying the glasses as his partner washed the suds off. “He made a mistake,” said Gabri. “He apologized.”

  Olivier looked at his partner, with his cheery white and red heart-shaped apron. The one he’d begged Gabri not to buy for Valentine’s Day two years ago. Had begged him not to wear. Had been ashamed of, and prayed no one they knew from Montréal visited and saw Gabri in such a ridiculous outfit.

  But now Olivier loved it. Didn’t want him to change it.

  Didn’t want him to change anything.

  As he washed the glasses he saw Armand Gamache take a sip of his coffee and get to his feet.

  * * *

  Beauvoir walked over to the sheets of paper tacked to the walls of the old railway station. Uncapping the Magic Marker he waved it under his nose as he read what was written. It was all in neat, black columns.

  Very soothing. Legible, orderly.

  He read and reread their lists of evidence, of clues, of questions. Adding some gathered by their investigations so far that day.

  They’d interviewed most of the guests at the party. Not surprisingly, none had admitted to wringing Lillian Dyson’s neck.

  But now, staring at the sheets, something occurred to him.

  All other thoughts left his mind.

  Was it possible?

  There were others at the party. Villagers, members of the art community, friends and family.

  But someone else was there. Someone mentioned a number of times but never remarked upon. And never interviewed, at least not in depth.

  Inspector Beauvoir picked up the phone and dialed a Montréal number.

  TWENTY

  Clara closed the door and leaned against it. Listening for Peter. Hoping, hoping. Hoping she’d hear nothing. Hoping she was alone.

  And she was.

  Oh, n
o no no, she thought. Still the dead one lay moaning.

  Lillian wasn’t dead. She was alive in Mr. Dyson’s face.

  Clara had raced home, barely able to keep her car on the road, her view obscured by that face. Those faces.

  Mr. and Mrs. Dyson. Lillian’s mom and dad. Old, infirm. Almost unrecognizable as the robust, cheery people she’d known.

  But their voices had been strong. Their language stronger.

  There was no doubt. Clara had made a terrible mistake. And instead of making things better, she’d made them worse.

  How could she have been so wrong?

  * * *

  “Fucking little asshole.” André Castonguay shoved the table away and got up, unsteadily. “I have a thing or two to say to him.”

  François Marois also got up. “Not now, my friend.”

  They both watched as Denis Fortin walked back down the hill and into the village. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t look in their direction. Didn’t deviate from a course he’d clearly chosen.

  Denis Fortin was making for the Morrow house. That much was clear to Castonguay, to Marois, and to Chief Inspector Gamache, who was also watching.

  “But we can’t let him speak to them,” said Castonguay, trying to pull himself away from Marois.

  “He won’t be successful, André. You know that. Let him have his try. Besides, I saw Peter Morrow leave a few minutes ago. He’s not even there.”

  Castonguay turned unsteadily toward Marois. “Vraiment?” There was a slightly stupid smile on his face.

  “Vraiment,” Marois confirmed. “Really. Why don’t you go back to the inn and relax.”

  “Good idea.”

  André Castonguay walked slowly, deliberately across the village green.

  Gamache had watched all this, and now his gaze shifted to François Marois. There was a look of weary sophistication on the art dealer’s face. He seemed almost bemused.

  The Chief Inspector stepped off the terrasse and joined Marois, whose eyes hadn’t left the Morrow cottage, as though he expected it to do something worth witnessing. Then his look shifted to Castonguay, trudging up the dirt road.

  “Poor André,” said Marois to Gamache. “That really wasn’t very nice of Fortin.”

  “What wasn’t?” asked Gamache, also watching the gallery owner. Castonguay had stopped at the top of the hill, swayed a bit, then carried on. “It seemed to me Monsieur Castonguay was the one being abusive.”