A Trick of the Light cig-7

by Penny, Louise

  Clara turned around and the smile froze on Peter’s face.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  “I’ve done something terrible,” she said. “I need to speak to Myrna.”

  Clara went to walk around him, making for the door.

  “No, wait, Clara. Talk to me. Tell me about it.”

  * * *

  “Did you see her face?” Beauvoir asked, as he hurried to catch up with Gamache.

  The two men were walking across the village green, having left Suzanne sitting on the verandah. The rocking chair stilled. The watercolor on her lap, of Gabri’s exuberant garden, crunched and ruined. By her own hand. The hand that made it had destroyed it.

  But Beauvoir had also seen Gamache’s face. The hardening, the chill in his eyes.

  “Do you think that beginner’s chip was hers?” asked Beauvoir, falling into step beside the Chief.

  Gamache slowed. They were almost on the bridge once again.

  “I don’t know.” His face was set. “Thanks to you we know she lied about being in Three Pines on the night Lillian died.”

  “She says she never left the kitchen,” said Beauvoir, surveying the village. “But it would’ve been easy for her to sneak around back of the shops and into Clara’s garden.”

  “And meet Lillian there,” said Gamache. He turned and looked toward the Morrow home. They were standing on the bridge. A few trees and lilac bushes had been planted, to give Clara and Peter’s garden privacy. Even guests on the bridge wouldn’t have seen Lillian there. Or Suzanne.

  “She must have told Lillian about Clara’s party, knowing that Clara was on Lillian’s apology list,” said Beauvoir. “I bet she even encouraged Lillian to come down. And arranged to meet her in the garden.” Beauvoir looked around again. “It’s the closest garden to the bistro, the most convenient. That explains why Lillian was found there. It could’ve been anyone’s, it just happened to be Clara’s.”

  “So she lied about telling Lillian about the party,” said Gamache. “And she lied about not knowing who the party was for.”

  “I can guarantee you, sir. Everything that woman says is a lie.”

  Gamache nodded. It was certainly beginning to look like that.

  “Lillian might have even gotten a lift with Suzanne—” said Beauvoir.

  “That won’t work,” said Gamache. “She had her own car.”

  “Right,” said Beauvoir, thinking, trying to see the sequence of events. “But she might have followed Suzanne down.”

  Gamache considered that, nodding. “That would explain how she found Three Pines. She followed Suzanne.”

  “But no one saw Lillian at the party,” said Beauvoir. “And in that red dress, if she was here someone would have seen her.”

  Gamache considered that. “Maybe Lillian didn’t want to be seen, until she was ready.”

  “For what?”

  “To make an amend to Clara. Maybe she stayed in her car until an appointed hour, when she’d arranged to meet her sponsor in the garden. Perhaps with the promise of a final word of support before going out to make a difficult amend. She must have thought Suzanne was doing her a great favor.”

  “Some favor. Suzanne killed her.”

  Gamache stood there and thought, then shook his head. It fit, maybe. But did it make sense? Why would Suzanne kill her sponsee? Kill Lillian? And in a way that was so premeditated. And so personal. To wrap her hands around Lillian’s neck, and break it?

  What could have driven Suzanne to do that?

  Was the victim not quite the woman Suzanne described? Was Beauvoir right again? Maybe Lillian hadn’t changed, but was the same cruel, taunting, manipulative woman Clara had known. Had she pushed Suzanne over the edge?

  Did Suzanne have a great fall, but this time did she reach up and take Lillian with her? By the throat.

  Whoever killed Lillian had hated her. This was not a dispassionate crime. This was thought out and deliberate. As was the weapon. The murderer’s own hands.

  “I made such a terrible mistake, Peter.”

  Gamache turned toward the voice, as did Beauvoir. It was Clara, and it came from behind the lush screen of leaves and lilacs.

  “Tell me, you can tell me,” said Peter, his voice low and reassuring, as though trying to coax a cat from under the sofa.

  “Oh, God,” said Clara, taking rapid, shallow breaths. “What’ve I done?”

  “What did you do?”

  Gamache and Beauvoir exchanged looks and both edged quietly closer to the stone wall of the bridge.

  “I went to visit Lillian’s parents.”

  Neither Sûreté officer could see Peter’s face, or Clara’s for that matter, but they could imagine it.

  There was a long pause.

  “That was kind,” said Peter, but his voice was uncertain.

  “It wasn’t kind,” snapped Clara. “You should’ve seen their faces. It was like I’d found two people almost dead and then decided to skin them. Oh, God, Peter, what’ve I done?”

  “Are you sure you don’t want a beer?”

  “No, I don’t want a beer. I want Myrna. I want…”

  Anybody but you.

  It wasn’t said, but everyone heard it. The man in the garden and the men on the bridge. And Beauvoir found his heart aching for Peter. Poor Peter. So at a loss.

  “No wait, Clara,” Peter’s voice called. It was clear Clara was walking away from him. “Just tell me, please. I knew Lillian too. I know that you were once good friends. You must’ve loved the Dysons too.”

  “I did,” said Clara, stopping. “I do.” Her voice was clearer. She’d turned to face Peter, to face the officers hidden behind the trees. “They were only ever kind to me. And now I’ve done this.”

  “Tell me,” said Peter.

  “I asked a bunch of people before I went and they all said the same thing,” said Clara, walking back toward Peter. “Not to go. That the Dysons would be too hurt to see me. But I went anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanted to say how sorry I was. About Lillian. But also about our falling out. I wanted to give them the chance to talk about old times, about Lillian as a kid. To exchange stories maybe, with someone who knew and loved her.”

  “But they didn’t want to?”

  “It was horrible. I knocked on the door and Mrs. Dyson answered. She’d obviously been crying for a long time. She looked all collapsed. It took her a moment to recognize me but when she did—”

  Peter waited. They all waited. Imagining the elderly woman at the door.

  “—I’ve never seen such hate. Never. If she could’ve killed me right there she would’ve. Mr. Dyson joined her. He’s tiny, barely there, barely alive. I remember when he was huge. He used to pick us up and carry us on his shoulders. But now he’s all stooped over and,” she paused, obviously searching for words, “tiny. Just tiny.”

  There were no words. Or hardly any more.

  “‘You killed our daughter,’ he said. ‘You killed our daughter.’ And then he tried to swing his cane at me but it got all caught in the door and he just ended up crying in frustration.”

  Beauvoir and Gamache could see it now. Frail, grieving, gentlemanly Mr. Dyson reduced to a murderous rage.

  “You tried, Clara,” said Peter, in a calming, comforting voice. “You tried to help them. You couldn’t have known.”

  “But everyone else did. Why didn’t I?” demanded Clara with a sob. And once again Peter was wise enough to stay quiet. “I thought about it all the way back here and you know what I realized?”

  Again Peter waited, though Beauvoir, hidden fifteen feet away, almost spoke, almost asked, “What?”

  “I convinced myself it was somehow courageous, saintly even, to go and comfort the Dysons. But I really did it for myself. And now look what I’ve done. If they weren’t so old I think Mr. Dyson would’ve killed me.”

  Gamache and Beauvoir could hear muffled sobs, as Peter hugged his wife.

  The Chief I
nspector turned away from the bridge, and started walking toward the Incident Room, on the other side of the Rivière Bella Bella.

  * * *

  At the Incident Room they separated, Beauvoir to follow up the now promising leads and Gamache to head in to Montréal.

  “I’ll be back by dinner,” he said, slipping behind the wheel of his Volvo. “I need to speak with Superintendent Brunel about Lillian Dyson’s art. About what it might be worth.”

  “Good idea.”

  Beauvoir, like Gamache, had seen the art on the victim’s walls. They just looked like weird, distorted images of Montréal streets. Familiar, recognizable, but where the streets and buildings in real life were angular, the ones in the paintings were rounded, flowing.

  They made Beauvoir slightly nauseous. He wondered what Superintendent Brunel would make of them.

  So did Chief Inspector Gamache.

  It was late afternoon by the time he arrived in Montréal and made his way through rush hour traffic to Thérèse Brunel’s Outremont apartment.

  He’d called ahead, making sure the Brunels were home, and as he climbed the stairs Jérôme opened the door. He was an almost perfect square, and was certainly a perfect host.

  “Armand.” He extended his hand and grasped the Chief Inspector’s. “Thérèse is in the kitchen, preparing a little tray. Why don’t we sit on the balcony. What can I get you to drink?”

  “Just a Perrier, si te plaît, Jérôme,” said Gamache, following his host through the familiar living room, past the piles of open reference books and Jérôme’s puzzles and ciphers. They walked onto the front balcony, which looked across the street and onto a leafy, green park. It was hard to believe that just around the corner was avenue Laurier, filled with bistros and brasseries and boutiques.

  He and Reine-Marie lived just a few streets over and had been to this home many times, for dinner or for cocktails. And the Brunels had been to their home many times as well.

  While this wasn’t exactly a social call the Brunels managed to make everything feel comfortable. If it was necessary to talk about crime, about murder, why not do it over drinks and cheese and spiced sausage and olives?

  Armand Gamache’s feelings exactly.

  “Merci, Jérôme,” said Thérèse Brunel, handing the tray of food to her husband and accepting a white wine.

  They stood on the balcony in the afternoon sun, looking out over the park.

  “Lovely time of year, isn’t it?” said Thérèse. “So fresh.”

  Then she turned her attention to the man beside her. And he to her.

  Armand Gamache saw a woman he’d known for more than ten years. Had trained, in fact. Had taught at the academy. She’d stood out from the rest of the cadets, not only for her obvious intelligence but because she was old enough to be their mother. She was, in fact, a full decade older than Gamache himself.

  She’d joined the Sûreté after a distinguished career as the chief curator at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Montréal. A celebrated art historian and advocate, she’d been consulted by the Sûreté on the appearance of a mysterious painting. Not the disappearance, mind, but the sudden appearance of one.

  In that instance, in that crime, she’d discovered a love of puzzles. After helping on a few cases she’d realized it was what she really wanted to do, was meant to do.

  So she’d taken herself off to a quite astonished recruiting officer and signed up.

  That had been twelve years ago. And now she was one of the senior officers in the Sûreté, outstripping her teacher and mentor. But only, they both knew, because he’d chosen, and been given, a different path.

  “How can I help, Armand?” she asked, indicating one of their balcony chairs with an elegant, slender hand.

  “Shall I leave you?” Jérôme asked, struggling out of his seat.

  “No, no,” Gamache waved him down, “please stay if you’d like.”

  Jérôme always liked. A retired emergency room doctor, he’d loved puzzles all his life and was more than amused that his wife, always gently poking fun at his endless ciphers, was now neck deep in puzzles herself. Of a more serious nature, to be sure.

  Chief Inspector Gamache put his Perrier down and brought the dossier out of his satchel. “I’d like you to look at these and tell me what you think.”

  Superintendent Brunel spread the photographs on the wrought iron table, using their glasses and food platter to pin them down against the slight breeze.

  The men waited quietly as she studied them. She took her time. Cars drove by. Across the way, in the park, children kicked around a soccer ball and played on the swings.

  Armand Gamache sipped his sparkling water, stirring the bubbly wedge of lime with his finger, and watched as she examined the paintings from Lillian Dyson’s apartment. Thérèse looked stern, a seasoned investigator handed an element in a murder case. Her eyes darted here and there, scanning the paintings. And then they slowed and rested first on one image then another. She moved the paintings about on the table, tilting her coiffured head to the side.

  Her eyes never softened, but her expression did, as she began to lose herself in the paintings and the puzzle.

  Armand hadn’t told her anything about them. About who’d done them, about what he wanted to know. He’d given her no information, except that they were from a murder investigation.

  He wanted her to form her own opinion, unsullied by his questions or comments.

  The Chief Inspector had taught her at the academy that a crime scene wasn’t simply on the ground. It was in people’s heads. Their memories and perceptions. Their feelings. And you don’t want to contaminate those with leading questions.

  Finally she leaned away from the table and looked up, first as always at Jérôme, then to Gamache.

  “Well, Superintendent?”

  “Well, Chief Inspector, I can tell you I’ve never seen these works or this artist before. The style is singular. Like nothing else out there. Deceptively simple. Not primitive, but not self-conscious either. They’re beautiful.”

  “Would they be valuable?”

  “Now there’s a question.” She considered the images again. “Beautiful isn’t in fashion. Edgy, dark, stark, cynical, that’s what galleries and curators want. They seem to think they’re more complex, more challenging, but I can tell you, they’re not. Light is every bit as challenging as dark. We can discover a great deal about ourselves by looking at beauty.”

  “And what do these,” Gamache indicated the paintings on the table, “tell you?”

  “About myself?” she asked with a smile.

  “If you’d like, but I was thinking more about the artist.”

  “Who is he, Armand?”

  He hesitated. “I’ll tell you in a moment, but I’d like to hear what you think.”

  “Whoever painted these is a wonderful artist. Not, I think, a young artist. There’s too much nuance. As I said, they’re deceptively simple, but if you look closely they’re made up of grace notes. Like here.” She pointed to where a road swept around a building, like a river around a rock. “That slight play of light. And over here, in the distance, where sky and building and road all meet and become difficult to distinguish.”

  Thérèse looked at the paintings, almost wistfully. “They’re magnificent. I’d like to meet the artist.” She looked into Gamache’s eyes and held them for a moment longer than necessary. “But I suspect I won’t. He’s dead, isn’t he? He’s the victim?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Besides the fact you’re the head of homicide?” She smiled and beside her Jérôme gave a harrumph of amusement. “Because for you to bring these to me the artist would have to be either a suspect or the victim, and whoever painted these would not kill.”

  “Why not?”

  “Artists tend to paint what they know. A painting is a feeling. The best artists reveal themselves in their works,” said Superintendent Brunel, glancing again at the art. “Whoever painted this was content. Not, perhaps, perfe
ct, but a content man.”

  “Or woman,” said the Chief Inspector. “And you’re right, she’s dead.”

  He told them about Lillian Dyson, her life and her death.

  “Do you know who killed her?” Jérôme asked.

  “I’m getting closer,” said Gamache, gathering up the photographs. “What can you tell me about François Marois and André Castonguay?”

  Thérèse raised a finely shaped brow. “The art dealers? Are they involved?”

  “Along with Denis Fortin, yes.”

  “Well,” said Thérèse, sipping her white wine. “Castonguay has his own gallery, but most of his income comes from the Kelley contract. He landed it decades ago and has managed to hold on to it.”

  “You make it sound tenuous.”

  “I’m actually amazed he still has it. He’s lost a lot of his influence in recent years, with new, more contemporary galleries opening.”

  “Like Fortin’s?”

  “Exactly like Fortin. Very aggressive. Fortin’s taken a real run at the gentlemen’s club. Can’t say I blame him. They shut him out so he had no choice but to pound down the doors.”

  “Denis Fortin doesn’t seem content with pounding down just the doors,” said Gamache, taking a thin slice of cured Italian sausage and a black olive. “I get the impression he wants everything to come crashing down around Castonguay’s ears. Fortin wants it all, and means to get it.”

  “Van Gogh’s ear,” said Thérèse, and smiled as Gamache paused before putting the sliced sausage in his mouth. “Not the cold cut, Armand. You’re safe. Though I can’t vouch for the olives.”

  She gave him a wicked look.

  “Did you just say, ‘Van Gogh’s ear’?” asked the Chief Inspector. “Someone else used the same expression earlier in the investigation. Can’t remember who now. What does it mean?”

  “It means scooping up everything for fear of missing something important. Like they missed Van Gogh’s genius in another era. Denis Fortin is doing just that. Grabbing up all the promising artists, in case one of them turns out to be the new Van Gogh, or Damien Hirst or Anish Kapoor.”

  “The next big thing. He missed it with Clara Morrow.”