A Trick of the Light cig-7

by Penny, Louise

  Then that table too fell silent.

  Except for Suzanne’s groan, “Oh, no.”

  * * *

  Chief Inspector Gamache rose as they entered and greeted them as though it was his home and they honored guests.

  No one was fooled. Nor were they meant to be. It was a courtesy, nothing more.

  “Would you have a seat, please?” He motioned to the conference table.

  “What’s all this about?” Chief Justice Thierry Pineault asked.

  “Madame,” said Gamache, ignoring Pineault and concentrating on Suzanne, pointing to a chair.

  “Messieurs.” The Chief then turned to Thierry and Brian. The Chief Justice and his tattooed, pierced, shaved companion took chairs across from Gamache. Beauvoir and Lacoste sat on either side of the Chief.

  “Can you explain that, please?” Chief Inspector Gamache’s voice was conversational. He pointed to the old La Presse article in the middle of the table, an island between their sparring continents.

  “In what way?” Suzanne asked.

  “In any way you choose,” said Gamache. He sat quietly, one hand cupped in the other.

  “Is this an interrogation, Monsieur Gamache?” the Chief Justice demanded.

  “If it was, neither of you would be sitting with us.” Gamache looked from Thierry to Brian. “This is a conversation, Monsieur Pineault. An attempt to understand an inconsistency.”

  “He means a lie,” said Beauvoir.

  “You’ve gone too far.” Pineault turned to Suzanne. “I’m going to advise you to stop answering questions.”

  “Are you her lawyer?” Beauvoir asked.

  “I’m a lawyer,” snapped Pineault. “And good thing too. You can call this what you like, but using a soothing voice and nice words doesn’t disguise what you’re trying to do.”

  “And what’s that?” demanded Beauvoir, matching the Chief Justice’s tone.

  “Trap her. Confuse her.”

  “We could have waited until she was alone and questioned her then,” said Beauvoir. “You should be glad you’re even allowed in here.”

  “All right,” said Gamache, raising his hand, though his voice was still reasonable. Both men paused, mouths open, ready to attack. “Enough. I’d like to speak with you, Mr. Justice Pineault. I think my Inspector has a good point.”

  But before speaking with the Chief Justice, Gamache took Beauvoir aside and whispered, “Keep yourself in check, Inspector. No more of that.”

  He held Beauvoir’s gaze.

  “Yessir.”

  Beauvoir took himself off to the bathroom and sat once again in a stall. Quietly. Gathering himself up. Then he washed his face and hands, and taking half a pill he looked at his reflection.

  “Annie and David are having difficulties,” he whispered and felt himself calm down. Annie and David are having difficulties. The pain in his gut began to slip away.

  Outside in the Incident Room, Chief Inspector Gamache and Chief Justice Pineault had walked a distance from the others and now stood beside the large red fire truck.

  “Your man is treading too close to the line, Chief Inspector.”

  “But he’s right. You need to decide. Are you here as Suzanne Coates’s advocate or her AA—” he paused, not sure what word to use, “—friend.”

  “I can be both.”

  “You can’t, and you know it. You’re the Chief Justice. Decide, sir. Now.”

  Armand Gamache faced Chief Justice Pineault, waiting for an answer. The Chief Justice was taken aback, clearly not thinking he’d be challenged.

  “I’m here as her AA friend. As Thierry P.”

  The answer surprised Gamache and he showed it.

  “You think that’s the weaker role, Chief Inspector?”

  Gamache didn’t say anything, but he obviously did.

  Thierry smiled briefly, then looked very serious. “Anyone can make sure her rights aren’t violated. I think you can. But what you can’t do is guard her sobriety. Only another alcoholic can help her stay sober through this. If she loses that she loses everything.”

  “Is it that fragile?” asked Gamache.

  “It’s not that sobriety is so fragile, it’s that addiction is so cunning. I’m here to guard her against her addiction. You can guard her rights.”

  “You trust me to do that?”

  “You I do. But your Inspector?” The Chief Justice nodded toward Beauvoir, who was just leaving the restrooms. “You need to watch him.”

  “He’s a senior homicide officer,” said Gamache, his voice cold. “He needs no watching.”

  “Every human needs watching.”

  That sent chills down Gamache, and he wondered at this man who had such power. Who had so many gifts, and so many flaws. And he wondered, once again, who was Chief Justice Pineault’s sponsor. What was he whispering into that powerful ear?

  “Monsieur Pineault has agreed to be Madame Coates’s AA friend and to help her in that role,” said the Chief Inspector as they took their seats.

  Both Lacoste and Beauvoir looked surprised but didn’t say anything. It made their job easier.

  “You lied to us,” Beauvoir repeated, and held the review up to Suzanne’s face. “Everyone quoted it wrong, didn’t they? Remembered it as being written about some guy no one could remember. But it wasn’t about a man, it was about a woman. You.”

  “Suzanne,” warned Thierry, then looked at Gamache. “I’m sorry. I can’t just stop being a jurist.”

  “You’ll have to try harder, monsieur,” said Gamache.

  “Besides,” said Suzanne, “it’s a little late for caution, don’t you think?” She turned back to the Sûreté officers. “A Chief Justice, a Chief Inspector, and now it appears I’ve become the chief suspect.”

  “Too many chiefs again?” asked Gamache with a rueful smile.

  “Way too many for my comfort,” said Suzanne. She waved at the sheet of paper and snorted. “Goddamned review. Bad enough to be insulted like that, but then to have it misquoted. The least they could do is get the insult right.”

  She seemed more amused than angry.

  “It threw us off,” admitted Gamache, leaning his elbows on the table. “Everyone quoted it as ‘He’s a natural…’ when in fact the review says, ‘She’s a natural.…’”

  “How’d you finally realize that?” asked Suzanne.

  “Reading the AA book helped,” said Gamache, nodding toward the large book still on his desk. “It talks about the alcoholic as ‘he,’ but clearly many are ‘she’s.’ All the way through this investigation people did it. Where a gender was in question there was an assumption it was ‘he’ and not ‘she.’ I realized it’s a sort of automatic position. When people couldn’t remember who the review was written about they just said, ‘He’s a natural…,’ when in fact Lillian wrote it about you. Agent Lacoste here finally found it in the clippings morgue of La Presse.”

  They all looked at the photocopied article. Something dragged up from a morgue. Buried in the files, but far from dead.

  There was a picture of Suzanne, unmistakable even twenty-five years younger. She was grinning and standing in front of one of her paintings. Proud. Excited. Her dream finally coming true. Her art finally noticed. After all, the reviewer for La Presse was there.

  Suzanne’s smile in the photograph was permanent, but in person it faded, to be replaced by something else. A look of almost whimsy.

  “I remember that moment. The photographer asking me to stand beside one of my works and smile. But smiling wasn’t a problem. Had he asked me to stop, that might’ve been difficult. The vernissage was at a local café. Lots of people there. And then Lillian introduced herself. I’d seen her at shows but always avoided her. She seemed so sour. But this time she was really sweet. Asked me some questions and said she was going to do a review of my show in La Presse. That photograph,” she gestured toward the paper on the table, “was taken about thirty seconds after she said that.”

  They all looked again.

 
; It showed a young Suzanne with a smile that burst out of the old photograph. It lit up the room even now. A young woman, though, who didn’t yet realize the ground had just fallen out from underneath her. Who didn’t yet appreciate she’d been tossed into mid-air. Into thin air. By the sweet woman beside her, taking notes. Also smiling.

  It was a chilling image. Like seeing a person just as the truck enters the frame. Milliseconds before the disaster.

  “She’s a natural,” said Suzanne, not needing to read the review, “producing art like it’s a bodily function.” She looked up from the table, and smiled. “Never had another solo show. Too humiliated. Even if gallery owners had forgotten I hadn’t. I didn’t think I could survive another review like that.”

  She looked at Chief Inspector Gamache.

  “All the King’s horses, and all the King’s men,” he said quietly. And she nodded.

  “I’d had a great fall.”

  “You lied to us,” said the Chief.

  “I did.” She looked directly into his eyes.

  “Suzanne.” The Chief Justice placed a hand on her arm.

  “It’s OK,” she said. “I was always going to tell them the truth, you know that. It’s just a shame they came for me first, before I had a chance to volunteer it.”

  “You had plenty of chances,” said Beauvoir.

  Pineault jerked, springing to her defense, but contained himself.

  “You’re right,” said Suzanne.

  “She’s telling the truth,” said Brian.

  Everyone turned to him, surprised by the words, but also the voice. It was shockingly young, reminding them that beneath the ink and torn skin was a boy.

  “Suzanne asked Thierry and me to join her for dinner. To talk,” said Brian. “She told us all about that.” He gestured an inked hand casually toward the article. “And said she was going to speak to you first thing in the morning.”

  It was also shocking to hear this tattooed, pierced kid call the Chief Justice by his first name. Gamache looked at Pineault and couldn’t decide if he admired him for helping such a damaged young man, or felt he’d lost all sense.

  What other mistakes in judgment was the distinguished jurist making?

  The Chief Inspector turned experienced eyes on Brian. The young man was relaxed, comfortable even. Was he high? Gamache wondered. He certainly seemed removed from the situation. Not amused, but not upset either. Sort of floating above it.

  “And what did you tell her?” asked Beauvoir, keeping his eye on Brian. He’d met punks like this before, and it rarely ended well.

  “I was torn,” admitted Pineault. “The jurist in me thought she should get a lawyer, who’d probably tell her to keep quiet. Not volunteer information. The AA member thought she should tell the truth immediately.”

  “And who won?” asked Beauvoir.

  “Your people arrived before I could say anything.”

  “You must have known, though, that this was improper,” said Gamache.

  “The Chief Justice giving advice to a murder suspect?” Thierry asked. “Of course I knew it was improper, perhaps even unethical. But if your daughter or son were suspected of murder and came to you, would you send them off to someone else?”

  “Of course not. But you’re not saying Suzanne is a blood relative?”

  “I’m saying I know Suzanne better than most, and she knows me. Better than any parent, sibling, child. Just as we know Brian, and he us.”

  “I appreciate that you understand each other’s addiction to alcohol,” said Gamache. “But you can’t claim to know what’s in each other’s hearts. You can’t be saying that just by virtue of being sober and belonging to AA Suzanne is innocent. You can’t possibly know if she’s even telling the truth now. And you can’t possibly know if she’s guilty of murder.”

  Thierry bristled at that and the two powerful men stared at each other.

  “We owe each other our lives,” said Brian.

  Gamache leaned forward, fixing sharp eyes on the young man. “And one of you is dead.”

  Still staring at Brian he pointed to the wall behind him. Filled with photographs of Lillian, sprawled in the Morrows’ garden. Gamache had deliberately placed all three facing the wall. And facing the pictures. So that none could forget why they were there.

  “You don’t understand,” said Suzanne, her voice rising, an edge of desperation in it now. “When Lillian did that to me,” she pointed to the review, “we were different. Two drunks. I was nearing the end of my drinking and she was just starting. And yes, I hated her for it. I was already fragile and it pushed me right over the edge. After that I spent all day getting pissed and high. Whoring for my next drink. It was disgusting. I was disgusting. And finally I hit bottom and came into AA. And started to put my life together again.”

  “And when Lillian walked through the doors of AA twenty years later?” Gamache asked.

  “I was surprised how much I still hated her—”

  “Suzanne,” the Chief Justice cautioned again.

  “Look, Thierry, I’m either going to tell it all, or why bother. Right?”

  He looked unhappy, but agreed.

  “But then she asked me to be her sponsor,” said Suzanne, turning back to the investigators, “and something weird happened.”

  “What?” asked Beauvoir.

  “I forgave her.”

  This was met with silence, broken eventually by Beauvoir.

  “Just like that?”

  “Not quite just like that, Inspector. I first had to agree. There’s something freeing, when you help your enemy.”

  “Did she ever apologize for that review?” the Chief asked.

  “She did. About a month ago.”

  “Was she sincere, do you think?” Agent Lacoste asked.

  Suzanne paused to think, then nodded. “I wouldn’t have accepted it if I thought it wasn’t. I really believe she was sorry she’d done that to me.”

  “And to others?” asked Lacoste.

  “And to others,” agreed Suzanne.

  “So, if she apologized to you for that review,” Chief Inspector Gamache nodded to the page on the table, “presumably she was also going around apologizing to other people she reviewed.”

  “I think that’s probably true. She didn’t tell me about it if she was. I thought her apology to me was just because we were sponsor-sponsee and she needed to clear it up. But now that I think about it I think you’re right. I’m not the only one she apologized to.”

  “And not the only artist whose career she destroyed?” asked Gamache.

  “Probably not. Not every review was as spectacularly cruel as mine. I take some pride in that. But they’d have been no less effective.”

  Suzanne smiled but the officers facing her had caught the sharp edge that sliced toward them on the words “spectacularly cruel.”

  She hasn’t forgiven, thought Gamache. At least, not completely.

  * * *

  When Suzanne and the others had left, the three officers sat around the conference table.

  “Do we have enough to make an arrest?” asked Lacoste. “She admits to harboring a long-standing hatred of the victim and to being here. She had motive and opportunity.”

  “But there’s no proof,” said Gamache, leaning back in his chair. It was frustrating. They were so close to making a case against Suzanne Coates, but they couldn’t quite nail it. “It’s all suggestive. Very suggestive.” He picked up the review and stared at it, then lowered it and looked at Lacoste.

  “You need to go back to La Presse.”

  Isabelle Lacoste’s face fell. “Anything but that, patron. Can’t you just shoot me?”

  “I’m sorry,” he smiled a little wearily. “I think that morgue has more bodies in it.”

  “How so?” asked Beauvoir.

  “The other artists whose careers Lillian killed.”

  “The other people she was apologizing to,” said Lacoste, resigned, getting to her feet. “Maybe she came down to Clara’s party n
ot to say sorry to Clara, but to apologize to someone else.”

  “You don’t think Suzanne Coates killed Lillian?” asked Beauvoir.

  “I don’t know,” admitted the Chief. “But I suspect if Suzanne wanted to kill her she’d have done it sooner. And yet…” Gamache paused. “Did you notice her reaction when talking about the review?”

  “She’s still angry,” said Lacoste.

  Gamache nodded. “She’s spent twenty-three years in AA trying to get over her resentments, and she’s still angry. Can you imagine someone who hasn’t been trying? How angry they must be?”

  Beauvoir picked up the review and stared at the joyous young woman.

  What happened when not only hopes were dashed, but dreams and careers. A whole life? But of course, he knew the answer to that. They all did.

  It was tacked on the wall behind them.

  * * *

  Jean Guy Beauvoir splashed water on his face and felt the stubble beneath his hands. It was two thirty in the morning and he couldn’t sleep. He’d woken with an ache, had lain in bed hoping it would go. But of course, it didn’t.

  So he’d dragged himself up, and to the bathroom.

  Now he turned his face this way and that. Staring at his reflection. The man in the mirror was drawn. With lines. Bold strokes of lines not created by laughter, around his eyes and mouth. Between his brows. On his forehead. He brought his hand up and stroked his cheeks, trying to iron out the wrinkles. But they wouldn’t go.

  And now he bent closer. The stubble, in the bright glare of the B and B bathroom, was gray.

  He turned his head to the side. There was gray at his temples. His whole head was shot through with gray. When had that happened?

  My God, he thought. Is this what Annie sees? An old man? Worn and gray? Oh, God, he thought.

  Annie and David are having difficulties. But too late.

  Beauvoir walked back into the bedroom and sat on the side of the bed, staring into space. Then he slid his hand beneath the pillow and taking the top off the bottle he shook out a pill. It sat in the palm of his hand. Staring at it, slightly bleary, he closed his fist over it. Then he swiftly opened his hand and tossed the pill into his mouth, then chased it down with a gulp of water from the glass on the nightstand. Beauvoir waited. For the now familiar sensation. Slowly he began to feel the ache subside. But another, deeper hurt remained.