A Trick of the Light cig-7

by Penny, Louise

  And neither could he.

  “Ahh,” he said, taking a sip of cognac. “This tastes good.”

  “What a day,” said Peter.

  “And it’s not over yet. Agent Lacoste is looking after Monsieur Castonguay and the paperwork.”

  “By herself?” asked Myrna, looking from Gamache to Beauvoir.

  “She knows what she’s doing,” said the Chief Inspector. Myrna’s look said she sure hoped he knew what he was doing.

  “So what happened?” asked Clara. “I’m all confused.”

  Gamache sat forward in the chair. Everyone took seats or perched on the arms of the easy chairs. Only Beauvoir and Peter remained standing. Peter as a good host, and Beauvoir as a good officer.

  Outside the rain had picked up and they could hear it tapping against the windowpanes. The door to the porch was still open, to let in fresh air, and they could hear rain hitting the leaves outside.

  “This murder is about contrasts,” said Gamache, his voice low, soft. “About sober and drunk. About appearance and reality. About change for the better, or for the worse. The play of light and dark.”

  He looked at their attentive faces.

  “A word was used at your vernissage.” He turned to Clara. “To describe your paintings.”

  “I’m almost afraid to ask,” she said, with a weary smile.

  “Chiaroscuro. It means the contrast between light and dark. Their juxtaposition. You do it in your portraits, Clara. In the colors you use, the shading, but also in the emotions your works evoke. Especially in the portrait of Ruth—”

  “There’s one of me?”

  “—there’s a clear contrast. The dark hues, the trees in the background. Her face partly in shadow. Her expression thunderous. Except for one tiny dot. The smallest hint of light, in her eyes.”

  “Hope,” said Myrna.

  “Hope. Or maybe not.” Gamache turned to François Marois. “You said something curious, when we were standing in front of that portrait. Do you remember?”

  The art dealer looked perplexed. “I said something useful?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  Marois was quiet for a moment, one of those rare people who could keep others waiting without distress. Finally he smiled.

  “I asked if you thought it was real,” said Marois.

  “You did,” nodded the Chief Inspector. “Was it real, or just a trick of the light? Hope offered, then denied. A particular cruelty.”

  He looked around the gathering. “That’s what this crime, this murder was about. The question of just how genuine the light actually was. Was the person really happy, or just pretending to be?”

  “Not waving but drowning,” said Clara. She noticed again Gamache’s kindly eyes beneath the deep scar.

  “Nobody heard him,” Clara quoted, “the dead man,

  But still he lay moaning:

  I was much further out than you thought

  And not waving but drowning.”

  But this time, as Clara recited the poem, Peter didn’t come to mind. This time Clara thought of someone else.

  Herself. Pretending, for a lifetime. Looking on the bright side, but not always feeling it. But no more. Things were going to change.

  The room fell silent, except for the gentle tip-tapping of the rain.

  “C’est ça,” said Gamache. “How often have we mistaken the one for the other? Too afraid, or in too much of a hurry to see what was really happening? To see someone sinking?”

  “But drowning men are sometimes saved.”

  They swung their eyes from Gamache to the man who’d spoken. The young man. Brian.

  Gamache regarded him for a few moments in silence, taking in the tattoos, the piercing, the studs on the clothing, and through the skin. Slowly the Chief Inspector nodded, then shifted his glance to the others.

  “The question that we struggled with was whether Lillian Dyson was saved. Had she changed? Or was it just a false hope? She was an alcoholic. A cruel, bitter, self-absorbed woman. She hurt everyone who ever knew her.”

  “But she wasn’t always like that,” said Clara. “She was nice once. A good friend, once.”

  “Most people are,” said Suzanne, “at first. Most people aren’t born in prison or under a bridge or in a crack house. They become like that.”

  “People can change for the worse,” said Gamache. “But how often do people really change for the better?”

  “I believe we do,” said Suzanne.

  “Had Lillian changed?” Gamache asked her.

  “I think so. At least, she was trying.”

  “Have you?” he asked.

  “Have I what?” asked Suzanne, though she must have known what he meant.

  “Changed.”

  There was a long pause. “I hope so,” said Suzanne.

  Gamache lowered his voice so that they had to strain to hear. “But is it real hope? Or just a trick of the light?”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “You lied to us at every turn, then dismissed it as simply habit.” Gamache continued to stare at Suzanne. “That doesn’t sound like real change to me. It sounds like situational ethics. Change, as long as it’s convenient. And a lot about what’s happened in the last few days has been extremely inconvenient. But some was very convenient. For instance, your sponsee coming to Clara’s party.”

  “I didn’t know Lillian was even here,” said Suzanne. “I told you that.”

  “True. But then you told us a lot of things. For instance, that you didn’t know who the famous line He’s a natural, producing art like it’s a bodily function was about. It was you.”

  “You?” said Clara, turning to the lively woman beside her.

  “That review was the last shove,” said Gamache. “After that you went into free-fall. And landed in AA, where you may or may not have changed. But you weren’t the only one of your group to lie.”

  Gamache shifted his gaze to the man sitting beside Suzanne on the sofa. “You also lied, sir.”

  Chief Justice Pineault looked amazed. “I lied? How?”

  “It was, to be sure, more a sin of omission, but it was still a lie. You know André Castonguay, don’t you?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Well, let me save you the trouble. Monsieur Castonguay had to stop drinking if he had any hope of keeping the Kelley Foods contract. As he himself said, they’re a notoriously sober company. And he was becoming notoriously inebriated. So he tried AA.”

  “If you say,” said Thierry.

  “When you arrived in Three Pines yesterday you spent an hour in Myrna’s bookstore. It’s a lovely store, but an hour seemed excessive. And then, when we sat outside you insisted on a table by the wall and sat with your back to the village.”

  “It was a courtesy, Chief Inspector, to take the worst seat for myself.”

  “It was also a convenience. You were hiding from someone. But then, at the end of our talk you got up and happily walked over to the B and B with Suzanne.”

  Thierry Pineault and Suzanne exchanged looks.

  “You were no longer hiding. I looked around and tried to figure out what had changed. And only one thing had. André Castonguay had left. He was making his drunken way back to the inn and spa.”

  Chief Justice Pineault was giving nothing away. He stared, stone-faced, at Gamache.

  “I made a small mistake tonight,” admitted Gamache. “When we arrived you and Castonguay were talking in the corner. You appeared to be arguing and I assumed it was about Clara’s art.”

  He looked, and they followed his gaze, into the corner where the study of the hands was hanging.

  “Désolé,” he said to Clara, who smiled.

  “People argue about my art all the time. No harm done.”

  But Gamache didn’t believe that. Harm had been done. A great deal of it.

  “I was wrong, though,” the Chief continued. “You weren’t arguing about whether Clara’s art was any good, you were arguing about AA.”

  “We
weren’t arguing,” said Pineault. He took a deep breath. “We were discussing. It’s no use arguing with a drunk. And no use trying to sell someone on AA.”

  “Besides,” said Gamache, “he’d already tried it.”

  The two men stared at each other and finally Pineault nodded.

  “He came in about a year ago, desperate to get sober,” Pineault admitted. “It didn’t work.”

  “You knew him there,” said Gamache. “And I suspect you more than knew him.”

  Again Pineault nodded. “He was my sponsee. I tried to help, but he couldn’t stop drinking.”

  “When did he stop going to AA?” Gamache asked.

  Pineault thought. “About three months ago. I tried calling him but he never returned my calls. Eventually I stopped, figuring he’d come back when he’d bottomed.”

  “When you saw him here yesterday, drunk, you immediately appreciated the problem,” said Gamache.

  “What problem?” asked Suzanne.

  “When André joined our group he met a lot of people,” said Pineault. “Including Lillian. And she, of course, met him. And knew who he was right away. She told him about her art, and even showed him her portfolio. He told me about it, and I advised him not to pursue it. That men needed to stick with men, and besides, this wasn’t a networking opportunity.”

  “Was talking about her art against the rules?” asked Gamache.

  “There aren’t any rules,” said Thierry. “It’s just not a great idea. It’s hard enough getting sober without mixing in business.”

  “But Lillian did,” said Gamache.

  “I didn’t know about this,” said Suzanne. “If she’d told me I’d have told her to stop. Probably why she never told me.”

  “Then André quit AA,” said Gamache, and Pineault nodded. “But there was a problem.”

  “As you said, André had one big client,” said Thierry. “Kelley Foods. He lived in terror someone was going to tell them about his drinking.”

  “But he couldn’t keep it secret for long,” said Myrna. “If his time here is anything to go by, he was drunk more than he was sober.”

  “True,” said Thierry. “It was just a matter of time before André lost everything.”

  “As soon as you saw him here you realized what might have happened,” said Gamache. “You listen to trials all the time, often murder trials. You put things together.”

  Pineault seemed to be considering what to say next. Everyone naturally leaned forward, toward the Chief Justice. Drawn to the silence, and the promise of a story.

  “I was afraid that Lillian had come to the party to confront him. That she’d met him in Clara’s garden and threatened to tell the Kelley people about his drinking unless André represented her,” said Pineault. “You saw him tonight. There’s no control left, of his drinking or his anger.”

  When Pineault was silent for a few moments Gamache gently prodded.

  “Go on.”

  Still they waited. Their eyes wide, their breathing shallow.

  “I was afraid Lillian had pushed him over the edge. Threatening blackmail.”

  Pineault stopped again, and again, after an excruciating pause, Gamache prodded.

  “Go on.”

  “I was afraid he killed her. In a blackout probably. Probably couldn’t even remember doing it.”

  Gamache wondered if a jury, or a judge, would believe that. And whether it would matter. He also wondered if anyone else had caught what he had.

  The Chief Inspector waited.

  “But,” said Clara, perplexed. “Didn’t Monsieur Castonguay just accuse you of stealing Lillian from him?”

  She turned to François Marois. The elderly art dealer was silent. Clara’s brows were drawn together in concentration. As she tried to figure it out. Her gaze shifted to Gamache.

  “Have you seen Lillian’s art?”

  He nodded.

  “Was it that good? Worth fighting over?”

  He nodded again.

  Clara looked surprised, but accepted Gamache’s judgment. “So she wouldn’t have had to blackmail Castonguay. In fact, it sounds like Castonguay was desperate to sign Lillian. There’d be no need for her to confront him. He was sold, he wanted her art. Unless,” said Clara, making the connections, “that’s what pushed him over the edge.”

  She looked at Gamache, but his face told her nothing. He was listening, attentive, but nothing more.

  “Castonguay knew he’d lose Kelley,” said Clara, walking carefully through the facts. “Once he quit AA that was inevitable. His only hope was to find something to replace Kelley Foods. An artist. But not just anyone. They had to be brilliant. They’d save his gallery. His career. But it had to be someone no one else knew about. His own find.”

  Around her there was silence. Even the rain had stopped, perhaps to better listen.

  “Lillian and her art would save him,” Clara continued. “But Lillian did something Castonguay never expected. She did what she always did. She looked after herself. She spoke to Castonguay, but she also approached Monsieur Marois, the more powerful dealer.” Clara turned to Marois. “And you took her on.”

  François Marois’s face had slid from a benign, kindly smile to a sneer.

  “Lillian Dyson was a grown woman. She wasn’t indentured to André,” said Marois. “She was free to choose whoever she wanted.”

  “Castonguay saw her at the party here,” Clara continued, trying not to be intimidated by Marois’s glare. “He probably wanted a quiet word with her. He must have led her into our garden for privacy.”

  They all imagined the scene. The fiddlers, the dancing and laughing.

  Castonguay spots Lillian just arriving, coming down du Moulin from where she’d parked the car. He’s had a few drinks and hurries to intercept her. Anxious to pin down their deal before she gets a chance to speak to others at the party. All the dealers and curators and gallery owners.

  He steers her into the nearest garden.

  “He probably didn’t even realize it was ours,” said Clara. Still watching Gamache. And still he revealed nothing. Just listened.

  They breathed silence. It felt as though the world had stopped, the world had shrunk. To this instant, and this place. And these words.

  “Then Lillian told him that she’d signed with François Marois.”

  Clara stopped, seeing in her mind the stricken gallery owner. Well into his sixties, and ruined. A broken, drunken man. Given the final blow. And what does he do?

  “She was his last hope,” said Clara softly. “And now it’s gone.”

  “He’ll plead to diminished capacity or manslaughter,” said Chief Justice Pineault. “He must have been drunk at the time.”

  “At the time of what?” asked Gamache.

  “At the time he killed Lillian,” said Thierry.

  “Oh, André Castonguay didn’t kill her. One of you did.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Even Ruth was paying attention now. Outside, the rain had begun again, falling from the dark sky and hitting the windows in great lashes, the water streaming down the old glass. Peter walked over to the door onto the porch and closed it.

  They were sealed in now.

  He rejoined the group, huddled together in a ragged circle. Staring at each other.

  “Castonguay didn’t kill Lillian?” Clara repeated. “Then who did?”

  They shot glances at each other, careful not to lock eyes. And then all eyes arrived back at Gamache. The center of the circle.

  The lights flickered and even through the sealed windows they could hear a rumble of thunder. And see a flash as the dark forest around them was illuminated. Briefly. Then fell back to darkness.

  Gamache spoke quietly. Barely heard above the rain and the rumble.

  “One of the first things to strike us about this case was the contrast between the two Lillians. The vile woman you knew.” He looked at Clara. “And the kind, happy woman you knew.” He turned to Suzanne.

  “Chiaroscuro,” said Denis Fo
rtin.

  Gamache nodded. “Exactly. The dark and the light. Who was she really? Which was the real Lillian?”

  “Do people change?” asked Myrna.

  “Do people change,” repeated Gamache. “Or do they revert to type, eventually? There seemed little doubt Lillian Dyson was once a dreadful person, hurting anyone unfortunate enough to come close. She was filled with bitterness and self-pity. She expected everything would just be given to her, and when it wasn’t she couldn’t cope. It took forty years but finally her life spiraled out of control, hurried along by alcohol.”

  “She hit bottom,” said Suzanne.

  “And she shattered,” said Gamache. “And while it was clear to us she was once a horrendous mess, it was equally clear she was trying to heal. To pick herself up with the help of AA and find,” he looked at Suzanne, “what did you call it?”

  She looked puzzled for a moment then smiled slightly. “A quiet place in the bright sunshine.”

  Gamache nodded, thoughtful. “Oui. C’est ça. But how to find it?”

  The Chief scanned their faces and stopped, briefly, on Beauvoir, who looked as though he might weep.

  “The only way was to stop drinking. But as I’ve found out in the last few days, for alcoholics stopping drinking is just the beginning. They have to change. Their perceptions, attitudes. And they have to clean up the mess they left behind. The alcoholic is like a tornado, roaring his way through the lives of others,” Gamache quoted. “Lillian underlined those words in her AA book. She underlined another passage. Hearts are broken. Sweet relationships are dead.”

  His eyes fell on Clara now. She looked stricken.

  “I think she was genuinely sorry about what she did to you and your friendship. By not only failing to be supportive, but actually trying to destroy your career. It was one of the things she was sincerely ashamed of. I don’t know for sure, of course,” said Gamache, and it seemed to Clara as though everyone else had disappeared, and they were alone in the room. “But I believe that beginner’s chip you found in the garden was hers. I think she brought it with her and was holding it, trying to get up the courage to speak with you. To say she was sorry.”