His works looked abstract. It gave Peter huge satisfaction to know they weren’t. They were reality in the extreme. So real no one recognized them. And now it was the log’s turn. He’d picked it up off the pile beside their fireplace and it was waiting for him in his studio.
The desserts were served, coffee and cognac poured; people wandered about, Gabri played the piano, Gamache kept being drawn to the paintings. Particularly the one of the unknown woman. Looking back. Clara joined him.
“My God, Clara, they’re the best works of art ever produced by anyone, anywhere.”
“Do you mean it?” she asked in mock earnestness.
He smiled. “They are brilliant, you know. You have nothing to be afraid of.”
“If that was true I’d have no art.”
Gamache nodded toward the painting he’d been staring at. “Who is she?”
“Oh, just someone I know.”
Gamache waited, but Clara was uncharacteristically closed, and he decided it really didn’t matter. She wandered off and Gamache continued to stare. And as he did so the portrait changed. Or perhaps, he thought, it was a trick of the uncertain light. But the more he stared the more he got the sense Clara had put something else in the painting. Where Ruth’s was of an embittered woman finding hope, this portrait also held the unexpected.
A happy woman seeing in the near and middle distance things that pleased and comforted her. But her eyes seemed to just be focusing on, registering, something else. Something far off. But heading her way.
Gamache sipped his cognac and watched. And gradually it came to him what she was just beginning to feel.
Fear.
NINE
The three Sûreté officers said their good-byes and walked across the village green. It was eleven o’clock and pitch-black. Lacoste and Gamache paused to stare at the night sky. Beauvoir, a few paces ahead as always, eventually realized he was alone and stopped as well. Reluctantly he looked up and was quite surprised to see so many stars. Ruth’s parting words came back to him.
“ ‘Jean Guy’ and ‘bite me’ actually rhyme, don’t they?”
He was in trouble.
Just then a light went on above Myrna’s bookstore, in her loft. They could see her moving about, making herself tea, putting cookies on a plate. Then the light went out. “We just saw her pour a drink and put cookies on a plate,” said Beauvoir.
The others wondered why he’d just told them the obvious.
“It’s dark. To do anything inside you need light,” said Beauvoir.
Gamache thought about this string of obvious statements, but it was Lacoste who got there first.
“The bistro, last night. Wouldn’t the murderer need to put on the lights? And if he did, wouldn’t someone have seen?”
Gamache smiled. They were right. A light at the bistro must have been noticed.
He looked around to see which houses were the most likely to have seen anything. But the homes fanned out from the bistro like wings. None would have a perfect view, except the place directly opposite. He turned to look. The three majestic pines on the village green were there. They’d have seen a man take another man’s life. But there was something else directly opposite the bistro. Opposite and above.
The old Hadley house. It was a distance away, but at night, with a light on in the bistro, it was just possible the new owners could have witnessed a murder.
“There’s another possibility,” said Lacoste. “That the murderer didn’t put the lights on. He’d know he could be seen.”
“He’d use a flashlight, you mean?” asked Beauvoir, imagining the murderer in there the night before, waiting for his victim, turning a flashlight on to make his way around.
Lacoste shook her head. “That could also be seen from outside. He wouldn’t want to risk even that, I think.”
“So he’d leave the lights off,” said Gamache, knowing where this was leading. “Because he wouldn’t need lights. He’d know his way around in the dark.”
The next morning dawned bright and fresh. There was some warmth in the sun again and Gamache soon took off his sweater as he walked around the village green before breakfast. A few children, up before parents and grandparents, did some last-minute frog hunting in the pond. They ignored him and he was happy to watch them from a distance then continue his solitary and peaceful stroll. He waved at Myrna, cresting the hill on her own solitary walk.
This was the last day of summer vacation, and while it had been decades since he’d gone to school, he still felt the tug. The mix of sadness at the end of summer, and excitement to see his chums again. The new clothes, bought after a summer’s growth. The new pencils, sharpened over and over, and the smell of the shavings. And the new notebooks. Always strangely thrilling. Unmarred. No mistakes yet. All they held was promise and potential.
A new murder investigation felt much the same. Had they marred their books yet? Made any mistakes?
As he slowly circled the village green, his hands clasped behind his back and his gaze far off, he thought about that. After a few leisurely circuits he went inside to breakfast.
Beauvoir and Lacoste were already down, with frothy café au lait in front of them. They stood up as he entered the room, and he motioned them down. The aroma of maple-cured back bacon and eggs and coffee came from the kitchen. He’d barely sat down when Gabri swept out of the kitchen with plates of eggs Benedict, fruit and muffins.
“Olivier’s just left for the bistro. He’s not sure if he’ll open today,” said the large man, who looked and sounded a great deal like Julia Child that morning. “I told him he should, but we’ll see. I pointed out he’d lose money if he didn’t. That usually does the trick. Muffin?”
“S’il vous plaît,” said Isabelle Lacoste, taking one. They looked like nuclear explosions. Isabelle Lacoste missed her children and her husband. But it amazed her how this small village seemed able to heal even that hole. Of course, if you stuff in enough muffins even the largest hole is healed, for a while. She was willing to try.
Gabri brought Gamache his café au lait and when he left Beauvoir leaned forward.
“What’s the plan for today, Chief?”
“We need background checks. I want to know all about Olivier, and I want to know who might have a grudge against him.”
“D’accord,” said Lacoste.
“And the Parras. Make inquiries, here and in the Czech Republic.”
“Will do,” said Beauvoir. “And you?”
“I have an appointment with an old friend.”
Armand Gamache climbed the hill leading out of Three Pines. He carried his tweed jacket over his arm and kicked a chestnut ahead of him. The air smelled of apples, sweet and warm on the trees. Everything was ripe, lush, but in a few weeks there’d be a killing frost. And it would all be gone.
As he walked the old Hadley house grew larger and larger. He steeled himself against it. Prepared for the waves of sorrow that rolled from it, flowing over and into anyone foolish enough to get close.
But either his defenses were better than he’d expected, or something had changed.
Gamache stopped in a spot of sunshine and faced the house. It was a rambling Victorian trophy home, turreted, shingles like scales, wide swooping verandas and black wrought-iron rails. Its fresh paint gleamed in the sun and the front door was a cheery glossy red. Not like blood, but like Christmas. And cherries. And crisp autumn apples. The path had been cleared of brambles and solid flagstones laid. He noticed the hedges had been clipped and the trees trimmed, the deadwood removed. Roar Parra’s work.