by Louise Penny
“Would you have liked to?”
Clara remembered the blossoming horror in her chest as she’d looked at the carvings.
“No,” she said.
TWENTY-TWO
Gamache arrived back at the Incident Room to find Superintendent Thérèse Brunel sitting at the conference table, surrounded by photographs. As he entered she rose, smiling.
“Chief Inspector.” She advanced, her hand out. “Agent Lacoste has made me so comfortable I feel I could move right in.”
Thérèse Brunel was of retirement age, though no one in the Sûreté would ever point that out. Not out of fear of the charming woman, or delicacy. But because she, more than any of them, was irreplaceable.
She’d presented herself at the Sûreté recruitment office two decades earlier. The young officer on duty thought it was a joke. Here was a sophisticated woman in her mid-forties, dressed in Chanel and wanting an application form. He’d given it to her, thinking it was almost certainly a threat for a disappointing son or daughter, then watched with increasing bafflement as she’d sat, legs crossed at the ankles, delicate perfume just a hint in the air, and filled it out herself.
Thérèse Brunel had been the chief of acquisitions at the world famous Musée des Beaux Arts in Montreal, but had nursed a secret passion for puzzles. Puzzles of all sorts. And once her children had gone off to college she’d marched right over to the Sûreté and signed up. What greater puzzle could there be than unravelling a crime? Then, taking classes at the police college from Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, she’d discovered another puzzle and passion. The human mind.
She now out-ranked her mentor and was the head of the property crime division. She was in her mid-sixties and as vibrant as ever.
Gamache shook her hand warmly. “Superintendent Brunel.”
Thérèse Brunel and her husband Jérôme had often been to the Gamaches’ for dinner, and had them back to their own apartment on rue Laurier. But at work they were “Chief Inspector” and “Superintendent.”
He then walked over to Agent Lacoste, who’d also stood as he entered.
“Anything yet?”
She shook her head. “But I just called and they expect the lab results any moment.”
“Bon. Merci.” He nodded to Agent Lacoste and she sat once more at her computer. Then he turned his attention to Superintendent Brunel.
“We’re expecting fingerprint results. I really am most grateful to you for coming at such short notice.”
“C’est un plaisir. Besides, what could be more exciting?” She led him back to the conference table and leaning close she whispered, “Voyons, Armand, is this for real?”
She pointed to the photographs scattered across the table.
“It is,” he whispered back. “And we might need Jérôme’s help as well.”
Jérôme Brunel, now retired from medicine, had long shared his wife’s love of puzzles, but while hers veered toward the human mind, his settled firmly on ciphers. Codes. From his comfortable and disheveled study in their Montreal home he entertained desperate diplomats and security people. Sometimes cracking cryptic codes and sometimes creating them.
He was a jolly and cultured man.
Gamache took the carving from his bag, unwrapped it and placed it on the table. Once again the blissful passengers were sailing across the conference table.
“Very nice,” she said, putting on her glasses and leaning closer. “Very nice indeed,” she mumbled to herself as she studied the piece, not touching it. “Beautifully made. Whoever the artist is, he knows wood, feels it. And knows art.”
She stepped back now and stared. Gamache waited for it, and sure enough her smile faded and she even leaned a little away from the work.
This was the third time he’d seen it that morning. And he had felt it himself. The carvings seemed to burrow to the core, to the part most deeply hidden and the part most commonly shared. They found people’s humanity. Then, like a dentist, they began to drill. Until that joy turned to dread.
After a moment her face cleared, and the professional mask descended. The problem-solver replaced the person. She leaned in to the work, moving herself round the table, not touching the carving. Finally, when she’d seen it from all angles, she picked it up, and like everyone else looked underneath.
“OWSVI,” she read. “Upper case. Scratched into the wood, not painted.” She sounded like a coroner, dissecting and dictating. “It’s a heavy wood, a hardwood. Cherry?” She looked closer and even sniffed. “No, the grain isn’t right. Cedar? No, the color is off, unless . . .” She took it to the window and placed it in a stream of sunshine. Then lowering it she smiled at Gamache over her glasses. “Cedar. Redwood. From British Columbia almost certainly. It’s a good choice of wood, you know. Cedar lasts forever, especially the redwood. It’s a very hard wood too. And yet it’s surprisingly easy to sculpt. The Haida on the west coast used it for centuries to make totem poles.”
“And they’re still standing.”
“They would be, if most of them hadn’t been destroyed in the late 1800s by the government or the church. But you can still see a fine one in the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa.”
The irony wasn’t lost on either of them.
“So what are you doing here?” she said to the sculpture. “And what are you so afraid of?”
“Why do you say that?”
Over at her desk Agent Lacoste looked up, wanting to know the answer too.
“Surely you felt it too, Armand?” She’d used his first name, a sign that while she appeared composed she was in fact nonplussed. “There’s something cold about this work. I hesitate to say evil . . .”
Gamache cocked his head in surprise. Evil wasn’t a word he heard often outside a sermon. Brutal, malevolent, cruel, yes. Horror, even; investigators sometimes talked about the horror of a crime.
But never evil. But that was what made Thérèse Brunel a brilliant investigator, a solver of puzzles and crimes. And his friend. She placed conviction above convention.
“Evil?” asked Lacoste from her desk.
Superintendent Brunel looked at Agent Lacoste. “I said I hesitated to call it that.”
“And do you still hesitate?” Gamache asked.
Brunel picked up the work once again and bringing it up to eye level she peered at the Lilliputian passengers. All dressed for a long voyage, the babies in blankets, the women with bags of bread and cheese, the men strong and resolute. And all looking ahead, looking forward to something wonderful. The detail was exquisite.
She turned it round then jerked it away from her as though it had bitten her nose.
“What is it?” Gamache asked.
“I’ve found the worm,” she said.
Neither Carole Gilbert nor her son had slept well the night before, and she suspected Dominique hadn’t either. To Vincent, sleeping in the small room off the landing, she gave no thought. Or rather every time he emerged into her conscious mind she shoved him back into his little room, and tried to lock the door.
It had been a lovely, soft dawn. She’d shuffled around the kitchen making a pot of strong French Pressé coffee, then putting a mohair throw round her shoulders she’d picked up the tray and taken it outside, installing herself on the quiet patio overlooking the garden and the mist-covered fields.
The day before had felt like one endless emergency, with claxtons sounding in her head for hours on end. They’d pulled together as a family and presented a united front through revelation after revelation.
That Marc’s father was still alive.
That Vincent was in fact standing right there.
That the murdered man had been found in their new home.
And that Marc had moved him. To the bistro. In a deliberate attempt to hurt, perhaps even ruin, Olivier.
By the time Chief Inspector Gamache had left they all felt punch-drunk. Too dazed and tired to go at each other. Marc had made his feelings clear, then gone into the spa area to plaster and paint and hammer. Vincent ha
’Twould ring the bells of Heaven, Carole thought to herself as she stared at the horses, now in the misty field. Grazing. Leery of one another. Even from there she could see their sores.
The wildest peal for years,
If Parson lost his senses
And people came to theirs,
And he and they together
knelt down with fervent prayers
For tamed and shabby tigers,
And dancing dogs and bears.
“Mother.”
Carole jumped, lost in her own thoughts and now found by her son. She got to her feet. He looked bleary, but showered and shaved. His voice was cold, distant. They stared at each other. Would they blink, sit down, pour coffee and talk about the weather? The headlines? The horses. Would they try to pretend the storm wasn’t all around them? And wasn’t of their own making.
Who had done worse? Carole by lying to her son for years, and telling him his father was dead? Or Marc by moving a dead man down to the bistro, and in one gesture ruining their chances of being accepted in the small community.
She’d marred his past, and he’d marred their future.
They were quite a team.
“I’m sorry,” said Carole, and opened her arms. Silently Marc moved across the stones and almost fell into them. He was tall and she wasn’t, but still she held him and rubbed his back and whispered, “There, there.”
Then they sat, the tray with croissants and fresh strawberry jam between them. The world looked very green that morning, very fresh, from the tall maples and oaks to the meadow. Marc poured coffee while Carole pulled the mohair throw round her shoulders and watched as the horses ate grass in the field and occasionally looked up into a day they should not have seen, into a world they should have left two days ago. Even now, standing in the mist, they seemed to straddle the two worlds.
“They almost look like horses,” said Marc, “if you squint.”
Carole looked over at her son and laughed. He was making a face, trying to morph the creatures in the field into the magnificent hunters he’d been expecting.
“Seriously, is that really a horse?” He pointed to Chester, who in the uncertain light looked like a camel.
Carole was suddenly very sad that they might have to leave this house, cast out by their own actions. The garden had never looked lovelier, and with time it would only get better as it matured and the various plants mingled and grew together.
“I’m worried about that one.” Marc pointed to the darkest horse, off on his own. “Thunder.”
“Yes, well.” Carole shifted uncomfortably to look at him. “About him . . .”
“Suppose he decides to bite one of the guests? Not that I don’t appreciate what he did to Dad.”
Carole suppressed a smile. Seeing the Great Man with horse slime on his shoulder was the only good thing about a very bad day.
“What do you suggest?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
Carole was silent. They both knew what Marc was suggesting. If the horse didn’t learn manners in a month, by Thanksgiving he’d have to be put down.
“For wretched, blind pit ponies,” she murmured. “And little hunted hares.”
“Pardon?” asked Marc.
“His, ah, his name isn’t really Thunder. It’s Marc.”
“You’re kidding.” But neither was laughing. Marc looked out into the field at the malevolent, mad animal keeping his distance from the others. A black blotch in the misty meadow. Like a mistake. A mar.
A Marc.
Later, when Marc headed off with Dominique to get groceries and building supplies, Carole found four carrots in the kitchen and fed them to the horses, who at first were reluctant to trust. But first Buttercup, then Macaroni and finally Chester tiptoed forward and seemed to kiss the carrot off her palm.
But one remained.
She whispered to Marc the horse, cooing at him. Enticing him. Begging him. Standing at the fence she leaned forward, quietly holding the carrot out as far as she could. “Please,” she coaxed. “I won’t hurt you.”
But he didn’t believe her.
She went inside, climbed the stairs and knocked on the door to the small bedroom.
Armand Gamache took the carving and stared into the crowd on deck.
It was easy to miss, but still he could have kicked himself. It now appeared so obvious. The small figure at the very back of the boat, crouching just in front of the matronly woman and her large sack.
He felt his skin crawl as he examined the face of the tiny wooden man, barely more than a boy, looking over his shoulder. Past the matronly woman. Looking behind the boat. While everyone else was gazing ahead, he was slumped down and staring back. To where they’d been.
And the look on his face turned Gamache’s blood cold. Cold to the bone, cold to the marrow. Cold to the core.
This was what terror looked like. Felt like. The small, wooden face was a transmitter. And its message was horrific. Gamache suddenly had the nearly uncontrollable urge to look behind himself, see what might be lurking there. Instead, he put his glasses on and leaned closer.
In his arms the young man was gripping a package.
Finally Gamache put it down and removed his glasses. “I see what you mean.”
Superintendent Brunel sighed. “Evil. There’s evil on that voyage.”
Gamache didn’t disagree. “Does it look familiar? Could the carving be on your active list of stolen art?”
“There’re thousands of items on that list,” she smiled. “Everything from Rembrands to engraved toothpicks.”
“And I bet you have them all memorized.”
Her smile broadened and she inclined her head slightly. He knew her well.
“But nothing like this. It would stand out.”
“Is it art?”
“If you mean is it valuable, I’d say it’s almost priceless. If one of these had come on the market while I was at the Musée des Beaux Arts I’d have jumped at it. And paid a small fortune.”
“Why?”
She looked at the large, calm man in front of her. So like an academic. She could see him in cap and gown moving like a ship of state through the halls of an ancient university, eager students in his wake. When she’d first met him, lecturing at the police college, he’d been twenty years younger but still a commanding figure. Now he carried that authority with even greater ease. His wavy dark hair was receding, his temples were graying as was his trim mustache, his body was expanding. As was, she knew, his influence.
He’d taught her many things. But one of the most valuable was not to just see, but to listen. As he listened to her now.
“What makes a work of art unique isn’t its color or composition or subject. It has nothing whatsoever to do with what we see. Why are some paintings masterpieces while others, perhaps even more competent, are forgotten? Why are some symphonies still beloved hundreds of years after the composer has died?”
Gamache thought about it. And what came to mind was the painting placed so causally on an easel after dinner a few nights ago. Badly lit, unframed.
And yet he could have stared at it forever.
It was the painting of the elderly woman, her body headed forward, but her face turned back.
He’d known her longing. That same root which spasmed when gazing at the carving had ached when he’d looked at that woman. Clara hadn’t simply painted a woman, hadn’t even painted a feeling. She’d created a world. In that one image.
That was a masterpiece.
He suddenly felt very badly for Peter, and hoped deeply that Peter was no longer trying to compete with his wife. She was nowhere to be found on that battlefield.
“That,” Superintendent Brunel pointed with one manicured finger at the carving, “will be remembered long after you and I are dead. Long after this charming village has fallen to dust.”
“There’s another one, you know,” he said and had the rare pleasure of seeing Thérèse Brunel surprised. “But before we see it I think we should head to the cabin.”
He looked at her feet. She wore elegant new shoes.
“I’ve brought boots with me, Chief Inspector,” she said, her voice holding a faint and mocking reproach as she walked briskly ahead of him to the door. “When have you ever taken me anywhere that didn’t have mud?”
“I believe they hosed down Place des Arts before the last symphony we were at,” he said, smiling over his shoulder at Agent Lacoste as they left.
“Professionally, I meant. Always mud and always a body.”
“Well this time there is certainly mud, but no body.”
“Sir.” Lacoste jogged over to the car, holding a printout. “I thought you’d like to see this.”
She handed the paper to him and pointed. It was a lab report. The results were beginning to come in, and would continue all day. And this one brought a satisfied smile to his face. He turned to Thérèse Brunel.
“They found woodchips, sawdust really, beside a chair in the cabin. They also found traces on his clothes. The lab says it was red cedar. From British Columbia.”
“I guess we found the artist,” she said. “Now if we only knew why he carved so much terror.”
Why indeed, thought Gamache as he got into the car and drove up du Moulin. ATVs were waiting for them and they headed deep into the Quebec forest. A professor and an elegant expert on art. Neither was as they appeared, and they were heading for a rustic cabin that certainly wasn’t.
Gamache stopped the ATV just before the final turn in the path. He and Superintendent Brunel dismounted and walked the rest of the way. It was another world inside the forest, and he wanted to give her a feeling for where the victim had chosen to live. A world of cool shadows and diffuse light, of rich dark scents of things decaying. Of creatures unseen but heard, scampering and scurrying.
Gamache and Brunel were very aware of being the outsiders here.
And yet it wasn’t threatening. Not now. In twelve hours, when the sun was down, it would feel different again.
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