The woman beside him snickered.
Across the room, Annie Gamache laid a hand on her husband’s arm, but he seemed oblivious.
Beauvoir put his hand on his own arm, gently. That’s what it would feel like.
“There you are, Clara,” said the chief curator of the Musée, taking her by the arm and leading her away from Myrna. “Congratulations. It’s a triumph!”
Clara had been around enough artistic people to know what they call “a triumph” others might call simply an event. Still, it was better than a kick in the shins.
“Is it?”
“Absolument. People are loving it.” The woman gave Clara an enthusiastic hug. Her glasses were small rectangles over her eyes. Clara wondered if there was a permanent slash of frame across her world, like an astigmatism. Her hair was short and angular, as were her clothes. Her face was impossibly pale. She was a walking installation.
But she was kind, and Clara liked her.
“Very nice,” said the curator, stepping back to take in Clara’s new look. “I like it. Very retro, very chic. You look like…” She moved her hands around in a contained circle, trying to find the right name.
“Audrey Hepburn?”
“C’est ça,” clapped the curator and laughed. “You’re sure to start a trend.”
Clara laughed too, and fell in love just a little. Across the room she saw Olivier standing, as always, beside Gabri. But while Gabri was gabbing away to a complete stranger, Olivier was staring through the crowd.
Clara followed his sharp gaze. It ended at Armand Gamache.
“So,” said the curator, putting her arm around Clara’s waist. “Who do you know?”
Before Clara could answer, the woman was pointing out various people in the crowded room.
“You probably know them.” She nodded to the middle-aged couple behind Beauvoir. They seemed riveted by Clara’s painting of the Three Graces. “Husband and wife team. Normand and Paulette. He draws the works and she does the fine detailing.”
“Like the Renaissance masters, working as a team.”
“Sort of,” said the curator. “More like Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Very rare to find a couple of artists so in sync. They’re actually very good. And I see they adore your painting.”
Clara did know them, and suspected “adore” wasn’t the word they themselves would use.
“Who’s that?” Clara asked, pointing to the distinguished man beside Gamache.
“François Marois.”
Clara’s eyes widened and she looked around the crowded room. Why was there no stampede to speak to the prominent art dealer? Why was Armand Gamache, who wasn’t even an artist, the only one speaking to Monsieur Marois? If these vernissages were for one thing it wasn’t to celebrate the artist. It was to network. And there was no greater catch than François Marois. Then she realized few in the room probably even knew who he was.
“As you know, he almost never comes to shows, but I gave him one of the catalogs and he thought your works were fabulous.”
“Really?”
Even allowing for the translation from “art” fabulous to “normal people” fabulous, it was a compliment.
“François knows everyone with money and taste,” said the curator. “This really is a coup. If he likes your works, you’re made.” The curator peered more closely. “I don’t know the man he’s talking to. Probably some professor of art history.”
Before Clara could say the man wasn’t a professor she saw Marois turn from the portrait to Armand Gamache. A look of shock on his face.
Clara wondered what he’d just seen. And what it meant.
“Now,” said the curator, pointing Clara in the opposite direction. “André Castonguay over there’s another catch.” Across the room Clara saw a familiar figure on the Québec art scene. Where François Marois was private and retiring, André Castonguay was ever-present, the éminence grise of Québec art. Slightly younger than Marois, slightly taller, slightly heavier, Monsieur Castonguay was surrounded by rings of people. The inner circle was made up of critics from various powerful newspapers. Radiating out from there were rings of lesser gallery owners and critics. And finally, in the outer circle, were the artists.
They were the satellites and André Castonguay the sun.
“Let me introduce you.”
“Fabulous,” said Clara. In her head she translated that “fabulous” into what she really meant. Oh merde.
“Is it possible?” François Marois asked, searching Chief Inspector Gamache’s face.
Gamache looked at the older man, and smiling slightly he nodded.
Marois turned back to the portrait.
The din in the gallery was almost deafening as more and more guests crowded into the vernissage.
But François Marois had eyes for only one face. The disappointed elderly woman on the wall. So full of censure and despair.
“It’s Mary, isn’t it?” asked Marois, almost in a whisper.
Chief Inspector Gamache wasn’t sure the art dealer was talking to him, so he said nothing. Marois had seen what few others grasped.
Clara’s portrait wasn’t simply of an angry old woman. She’d in fact painted the Virgin Mary. Elderly. Abandoned by a world weary and wary of miracles. A world too busy to notice a stone rolled back. It had moved on to other wonders.
This was Mary in the final years. Forgotten. Alone.
Glaring out at a room filled with bright people sipping good wine. And walking right by her.
Except for François Marois, who now tore his eyes from the painting to look at Gamache once again.
“What has Clara done?” he asked quietly.
Gamache was silent for a moment, gathering his thoughts before answering.
“Hello, numb nuts.” Ruth Zardo slipped a thin arm through Jean Guy Beauvoir’s. “Tell me how you are.”
It was a command. Few had the fortitude to ignore Ruth. But then, few were ever asked how they were, by Ruth.
“I’m doing well.”
“Bullshit,” said the old poet. “You look like crap. Thin. Pale. Wrinkled.”
“You’re describing yourself, you old drunk.”
Ruth Zardo cackled. “True. You look like a bitter old woman. And that’s not the compliment it might seem.”
Beauvoir smiled. He’d actually been looking forward to seeing Ruth again. He examined the tall, thin, elderly woman leaning on her cane. Ruth’s hair was white and thin and cut close to her head, so that it looked like her skull was exposed. Which seemed to Beauvoir about right. Nothing inside Ruth’s head was ever unexposed or unexpressed. It was her heart she kept hidden.
But it came out in her poetry. Somehow, and Beauvoir couldn’t begin to guess how, Ruth Zardo had won the Governor General’s Award for poetry. None of which he understood. Fortunately, Ruth in person was a lot easier to decode.
“Why’re you here?” she demanded and fixed him with a steady look.
“Why’re you? You can’t tell me you came all the way from Three Pines to support Clara.”
Ruth looked at him as though he’d lost his mind. “Of course not. I’m here for the same reason everyone else is. Free food and drink. But I’ve had my fill now. Are you coming back to the party in Three Pines later?”
“We were invited, but I don’t think so.”
Ruth nodded. “Good. More for me. I heard about your divorce. I suppose she cheated on you. Only natural.”
“Hag,” muttered Beauvoir.
“Dick-head,” said Ruth. Beauvoir’s eyes had wandered and Ruth followed his stare. To the young woman across the room.
“You can do better than her,” said Ruth and felt the arm she was holding tense. Her companion was silent. She turned sharp eyes on him then looked once again at the woman Beauvoir was staring at.