by Louise Penny
Swiss, Czech, German, Norwegian, Swedish all blended nicely together. They were tall, blond, good athletes if slightly thick and lived in A-frame homes with lots of paneling and milk.
He slowed the car and it meandered to a stop in front of the Parra place. All he saw was glass, some gleaming in the sun, some reflecting the sky and clouds and birds and woods, the mountains beyond and a small white steeple. The church at Three Pines, in the distance, brought forward by this beautiful house that was a reflection of all life around it.
“You just caught me. I was heading back to work,” said Roar, opening the door.
He led Beauvoir and Morin into the house. It was filled with light. The floors were polished concrete. Firm, solid. It made the house feel very secure while allowing it to soar. And soar it did.
“Merde,” Beauvoir whispered, walking into the great room. The combination kitchen, dining area and living room. With walls of glass on three sides it felt as though there was no division between this world and the next. Between in and out. Between forest and home.
Where else would a Czech woodsman live but in the woods. In a home made of light.
Hanna Parra was at the sink, drying her hands, and Havoc was just putting away the lunch dishes. The place smelled of soup.
“Not working at the bistro?” Beauvoir asked Havoc.
“Split shift today. Olivier asked if I’d mind.”
“And do you?”
“Mind?” They walked over to the long dining table and sat. “No. I think he’s pretty stressed.”
“What’s he like to work for?” Beauvoir noticed Morin take out his notebook and a pen. He’d told the young agent to do that when they arrived. It rattled suspects and Beauvoir liked them rattled.
“He’s great, but I only have my dad to compare him to.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” asked Roar. Beauvoir studied the small, powerful man for signs of aggression, but it seemed a running joke in the family.
“At least Olivier doesn’t make me work with saws and axes and machetes.”
“Olivier’s chocolate torte and ice cream are far more dangerous. At least you know to be careful with an axe.”
Beauvoir realized he’d cut to the quick of the case. What appeared threatening wasn’t. And what appeared wonderful, wasn’t.
“I’d like to show you a picture of the dead man.”
“We’ve already seen it. Agent Lacoste showed it to us,” said Hanna.
“I’d like you to look again.”
“What’s this about, Inspector?” asked Hanna.
“You’re Czech.”
“What of it?”
“Been here for a while, I know,” Beauvoir continued, ignoring her. “Lots came after the Russian invasion.”
“There’s a healthy Czech community here,” Hanna agreed.
“In fact, it’s so big there’s even a Czech Association. You meet once a month and have pot-luck dinners.”
All this and more he’d learned from Agent Morin’s research.
“That’s right,” said Roar, watching Beauvoir carefully, wondering where this was leading.
“And you’ve been the president of the association a few times,” Beauvoir said to Roar, then turned to Hanna. “You both have.”
“That’s not much of an honor, Inspector,” smiled Hanna. “We take turns. It’s on a rotation basis.”
“Is it fair to say you know everyone in the local Czech community?”
They looked at each other, guarded now, and nodded.
“So you should know our victim. He was Czech.” Beauvoir took the photograph out of his pocket and placed it on the table. But they didn’t look. All three were staring at him. Surprised. That he knew? Or that the man was Czech?
Beauvoir had to admit it could have been either.
Then Roar picked up the photo and stared at it. Shaking his head he handed it to his wife. “We’ve already seen it, and told Agent Lacoste the same thing. We don’t know him. If he was Czech he didn’t come to any dinners. He made no contact with us at all. You’ll have to ask the others, of course.”
“We are.” Beauvoir tucked the picture into his pocket. “Agents are talking to other members of your community right now.”
“Is that profiling?” asked Hanna Parra. She wasn’t smiling.
“No, it’s investigating. If the victim was Czech it’s reasonable to ask around that community, don’t you think?”
The phone rang. Hanna went to it and looked down. “It’s Eva.” She picked it up and spoke in French, saying a Sûreté officer was with her now, and no she didn’t recognize the photograph either. And yes, she was also surprised the man had been Czech.
Clever, thought Beauvoir. Hanna put down the receiver and it immediately rang again.
“It’s Yanna,” she said, this time leaving it. The phone, they realized, would ring all afternoon. As the agents arrived, interviewed and left. And the Czech community called each other.
It seemed vaguely sinister, until Beauvoir reluctantly admitted to himself he’d do the same thing.
“Do you know Bohuslav Martinù?”
“Who?”
Beauvoir repeated it, then showed them the printout.
“Oh, Bohuslav Martinù,” Roar said, pronouncing it in a way that was unintelligible to Beauvoir. “He’s a Czech composer. Don’t tell me you suspect him?”
Roar laughed, but Hanna didn’t and neither did Havoc.
“Does anyone here have ties to him?”
“No, no one,” said Hanna, with certainty.
Morin’s research of the Parras had turned up very little. Their relations in the Czech Republic seemed limited to an aunt and a few cousins. They’d escaped in their early twenties and claimed refugee status in Canada, which had been granted. They were now citizens.
Nothing remarkable. No ties to Martinù. No ties to anyone famous or infamous. No woo, no Charlotte, no treasure. Nothing.
And yet Beauvoir was convinced they knew more than they were telling. More than Morin had managed to find.
As they drove away, their retreating reflection in the glass house, Beauvoir wondered if the Parras were quite as transparent as their home.
I have a question for you,” said Gamache as they wandered back into the Brunel living room. Jerome looked up briefly then went back to trying to tease some sense from the cryptic letters.
“Ask away.”
“Denis Fortin—”
“Of the Galerie Fortin?” the Superintendent interrupted.
Gamache nodded. “He was visiting Three Pines yesterday and saw one of the carvings. He said it wasn’t worth anything.”
Thérèse Brunel paused. “I’m not surprised. He’s a respected art dealer. Quite remarkable at spotting new talent. But his specialty isn’t sculpture, though he handles some very prominent sculptors.”
“But even I could see the carvings are remarkable. Why couldn’t he?”
“What’re you suggesting, Armand? That he lied?”
“Is it possible?”
Thérèse considered. “I suppose. I always find it slightly amusing, and sometimes useful, the general perception of the art world. People on the outside seem to think it’s made up of arrogant, crazed artists, numbskull buyers and gallery owners who bring the two together. In fact it’s a business, and anyone who doesn’t understand that and appreciate it gets buried. In some cases hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake. But even bigger than the piles of cash are the egos. Put immense wealth and even larger egos together and you have a volatile mix. It’s a brutal, often ugly, often violent world.”
Gamache thought about Clara and wondered if she realized that. Wondered if she knew what was waiting for her, beyond the pale.
“But not everyone’s like that, surely,” he said.
“No. But at that level,” she nodded to the carvings on the table by her husband, “they are. One man’s dead. It’s possible as we look closer others have been killed.”
“Over these
“Over the money.”
Gamache peered at the sculpture. He knew that not everyone was motivated solely by money. There were other currencies. Jealousy, rage, revenge. He looked not at the passengers sailing into a happy future, but at the one looking back. To where they’d been. With terror.
“I do have some good news for you, Armand.”
Gamache lowered the ship and looked at the Superintendent.
“I’ve found your ‘woo.’ ”
THIRTY
“There it is.” Thérèse Brunel pointed.
They’d driven into downtown Montreal and now the Superintendent was pointing at a building. Gamache slowed the car and immediately provoked honking. In Quebec it was almost a capital crime to slow down. He didn’t speed up, ignored the honking, and tried to see what she was pointing at. It was an art gallery. Heffel’s. And outside was a bronze sculpture. But the car had drifted past before he got a good look. He spent the next twenty minutes trying to find a parking spot.
“Can’t you just double-park?” asked Superintendent Brunel.
“If we want to be slaughtered, yes.”
She harrumphed, but didn’t disagree. Finally they parked and walked back along Sherbrooke Street until they were in front of Heffel’s Art Gallery, staring at a bronze sculpture Gamache had seen before but never stopped to look at.
His cell phone vibrated. “Pardon,” he said to the Superintendent, and answered it.
“It’s Clara. I’m wondering when you might be ready.”
“In just a few minutes. Are you all right?” She’d sounded shaky, upset.
“I’m just fine. Where can I meet you?”
“I’m on Sherbrooke, just outside Heffel’s Gallery.”
“I know it. I can be there in a few minutes. Is that okay?” She sounded keen, even anxious, to leave.
“Perfect. I’ll be here.”
He put the phone away and went back to the sculpture. Silently he walked around it while Thérèse Brunel watched, a look of some amusement on her face.
What he saw was an almost life-sized bronze of a frumpy middle-aged woman standing beside a horse, a dog at her side and a monkey on the horse’s back. When he arrived back at Superintendent Brunel he stopped.
“This is ‘woo’?”
“No, this is Emily Carr. It’s by Joe Fafard and is called Emily and Friends.”
Gamache smiled then and shook his head. Of course it was. Now he could see it. The woman, matronly, squat, ugly, had been one of Canada’s most remarkable artists. Gifted and visionary, she’d painted mostly in the early 1900s and was now long dead. But her art only grew in significance and influence.
He looked more closely at the bronze woman. She was younger here than the images he’d seen of her in grainy old black-and-white photos. They almost always showed a masculine woman, alone. In a forest. And not smiling, not happy.
This woman was happy. Perhaps it was the conceit of the sculptor.
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” Superintendent Brunel said. “Normally Emily Carr looks gruesome. I think it’s brilliant to show her happy, as she apparently only was around her animals. It was people she hated.”
“You said you’d found ‘woo.’ Where?”
He was disappointed and far from convinced Superintendent Brunel was right. How could a long dead painter from across the continent have anything to do with the case?
Thérèse Brunel walked up to the sculpture and placed one manicured hand on the monkey.
“This is Woo. Emily Carr’s constant companion.”
“Woo’s a monkey?”
“She adored all animals, but Woo above all.”
Gamache crossed his arms over his chest and stared. “It’s an interesting theory, but the ‘woo’ in the Hermit’s cabin could mean anything. What makes you think it’s Emily Carr’s monkey?”
“Because of this.”
She opened her handbag and handed him a glossy brochure. It was for a retrospective of the works of Emily Carr, at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Gamache looked at the photographs of Carr’s unmistakable paintings of the West Coast wilderness almost a century ago.
Her work was extraordinary. Rich greens and browns swirled together so that the forest seemed both frenzied and tranquil. It was a forest long gone. Logged, clear-cut, ruined. But still alive, thanks to the brush and brilliance of Emily Carr.
But that wasn’t what had made her famous.
Gamache flipped through the brochure until he found them. Her signature series. Depicting what haunted any Canadian soul who saw them.
The totem poles.
Sitting on the shores of a remote Haida fishing village in northern British Columbia. She’d painted them where the Haida had put them.
And then a single perfect finger pointed to three small words.
Queen Charlotte Islands.
That’s where they were.
Charlotte.
Gamache felt a thrill. Could they really have found Woo?
“The Hermit’s sculptures were carved from red cedar,” said Thérèse Brunel. “So was the word Woo. Red cedar grows in a few places, but not here. Not Quebec. One of the places it grows is in British Columbia.”
“On the Queen Charlotte Islands,” whispered Gamache, mesmerized by the paintings of the totem poles. Straight, tall, magnificent. Not yet felled as heathen, not yet yanked down by missionaries and the government.
Emily Carr’s paintings were the only images of the totems as the Haida meant them to be. She never painted people, but she painted what they created. Long houses. And towering totem poles.
Gamache stared, losing himself in the wild beauty, and the approaching disaster.
Then he looked again at the inscription. Haida village. Queen Charlottes.
And he knew Thérèse was right. Woo pointed to Emily Carr, and Carr pointed to the Queen Charlotte Islands. This must be why there were so many references to Charlotte in the Hermit’s cabin. Charlotte’s Web, Charlotte Brontë. Charlotte Martinù, who’d given her husband the violin. The Amber Room had been made for a Charlotte. All leading him here. To the Queen Charlotte Islands.
“You can keep that.” Superintendent Brunel pointed to the brochure. “It has a lot of biographical information on Emily Carr. It might be helpful.”
“Merci.” Gamache closed the catalog and stared at the sculpture of Carr, the woman who had captured Canada’s shame, not by painting the displaced, broken people, but by painting their glory.
Clara stared at the gray waters of the St. Lawrence as they drove over the Champlain Bridge.
“How was your lunch?” Gamache asked when they were on the autoroute heading to Three Pines.
“Well, it could have been better.”
Clara’s mood was swinging wildly from fury to guilt to regret. One moment she felt she should have told Denis Fortin more clearly what a piece of merde he was, the next she was dying to get home so she could call and apologize.
Clara was a fault-magnet. Criticisms, critiques, blame flew through the air and clung to her. She seemed to attract the negative, perhaps because she was so positive.
Well, she’d had enough. She sat up straighter in her seat. Fuck him. But, then again, maybe she should apologize and stand up for herself after the solo show.
What an idiot she’d been. Why in the world had she thought it was a good idea to piss off the gallery owner who was offering her fame and fortune? Recognition. Approval. Attention.
Damn, what had she done? And was it reversible? Surely she could have waited until the day after the opening, when the reviews were in the New York Times, the London Times. When his fury couldn’t ruin her, as it could now.
As it would now.
She’d heard his words. But more important, she’d seen it in Fortin’s face. He would ruin her. Though to ruin implied there was something built up to tear down. No, what he’d do was worse. He’d make sure the world never heard of Clara Morrow. Never saw her paintings.
She looked at the time on Gamache’s dashboard.
Ten to four. The heavy traffic out of the city was thinning. They’d be home in an hour. If they got back before five she could call his gallery and prostrate herself.
Or maybe she should call and tell him what an asshole he was.
It was a very long drive back.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Gamache asked after half an hour of silence. They’d turned off the highway and were heading toward Cowansville.
“I’m not really sure what to say. Denis Fortin called Gabri a fucking queer yesterday in the bistro. Gabri didn’t hear it, but I did, and I didn’t say anything. I talked to Peter and Myrna about it, and they listened, but they pretty much left it up to me. Until this morning when Peter kinda said I should talk to Fortin.”
Gamache turned off the main road. The businesses and homes receded and the forest closed in.
“How did Fortin react?” he asked.
“He said he’d cancel the show.”
Gamache sighed. “I’m sorry about that, Clara.”
He glanced over at her unhappy face staring out the window. She reminded him of his daughter Annie the other night. A weary lion.
“How was your day?” she asked. They were on the dirt road now, bumping along. It was a road not used by many. Mostly just by people who knew where they were going, or had completely lost their way.
“Productive, I think. I have a question for you.”
“Ask away.” She seemed relieved to have something else to do besides watching the clock click closer to five.
“What do you know about Emily Carr?”
“Now, I’d never have bet that was the question,” she smiled, then gathered her thoughts. “We studied her in art school. She was a huge inspiration to lots of Canadian artists, certainly the women. She inspired me.”
“How?”
“She went into the wilderness where no one else dared to go, with just her easel.”
“And her monkey.”
“Is that a euphemism, Chief Inspector?”
Gamache laughed. “No. Go on.”
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