“It’s incredible,” said Clara. “I’d heard about the painting, but have never seen it.”
“Even if it is a copy or an early study,” said Harriet, “what’s it doing here in your loft, Auntie Myrna?”
“More to the point,” said Ruth, “why was it walled up?”
“May I see that letter again?” Armand asked. When Billy handed it over, Armand reread it, examining it more closely. “There’s Monsieur Stone’s return address on the envelope—”
“It’s my family home, though we no longer live there,” said Billy.
“—but we can’t see who he sent it to. Someplace in Québec City, but the address itself is smudged. All we have is the salutation. My dear Clémence. But no last name.”
“Does it matter?” Olivier asked.
“It would be interesting to know if Monsieur Stone wrote any more letters to this Clémence,” said Reine-Marie, the archivist kicking in. “Maybe with more explanation.”
“But he never spoke to his employer or looked into the room,” said Gabri. “So there’s not much more he could say.”
“We don’t know that,” said Armand. “We know the instructions Pierre was given, but not what he actually did.”
“He might’ve peeked,” said Clara. “Wouldn’t most people?”
“I always do,” agreed Gabri.
“But all he’d see is what we see,” said Olivier. “So any letter wouldn’t really tell us anything we don’t already know.”
“Not true,” said Armand. “It might tell us why those things had to be walled up and hidden. You say you received this a few weeks ago,” he said to Billy. “How?”
“Through the mail.”
“Yes, but how did it find you? Monsieur Stone’s return address is on his letter, not yours.”
“The new owners of the family home found it and forwarded it to me.”
He’d said “new” owners, but Myrna knew they’d lived there now for more than ten years. But they would always, in Billy’s mind, be new.
It was the home Pierre Stone himself built. It had been in the family for generations. Billy’s parents had sold the place when it got beyond them.
Times change. You had to roll with it. But it was impossible to roll without getting bruised.
Armand, now standing by the hole in the wall, looked up from the letter and at the painting. It seemed stuck in time. But it actually was a testament to a changing world. A larger, more wonderous, in many ways more wicked world. One where lobsters existed. And so did the slave trade.
“I guess someone found the letter and decided to send it back,” said Billy. “All they had was the old address.”
“It’s curious. I wonder why,” said Armand.
“Why what?” asked Myrna.
“Why send it back to an address obviously more than a century and a half old?”
“Why not?” said Clara. “Old documents pop up all the time, right?”
“True,” said Reine-Marie. “The descendants of this Clémence must’ve been clearing out an old home and came across it.”
“It’s strange,” said Gabri. “Wouldn’t you just toss it out? Why go through the trouble of mailing back some letter between two long-dead people you’d never heard of? To an address that’s more than a hundred years old?”
“I agree with Monsieur Gamache,” said Fiona. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“I didn’t say it didn’t make sense,” said Armand, looking at her.
He’d tried not to make eye contact with Fiona all day. He was used to hiding things from suspects. But what she’d done wasn’t criminal, it was personal. In letting Sam into their home, Fiona had betrayed his trust.
He didn’t want her to see that he knew. And he didn’t want her to see his hurt.
But as he looked at her now, all he saw was the young woman who’d worked so hard to put her life back together.
“I just said I was curious.” Armand held her eyes for a moment before turning to Billy. “When your family sold the house, were there old letters and things you had to go through?”
“I don’t know,” said Billy. “My sisters and I offered to help our parents sort through things, but they preferred to do it themselves. I think they threw a lot away, and anything else went to charity jumble sales.”
“What’s bothering you, Armand?” Reine-Marie asked.
He shook his head. “It just seems”—he looked at Fiona and smiled—“curious.”
She smiled back.
Harriet had wandered away from the dissection of an old letter, by old people, and was looking at the painting.
“Have you noticed that this isn’t exactly The Paston Treasure? At least, not the one we see online.”
“Well, we already know that,” said Ruth. “The real one’s someplace in England. This’s just a copy.”
“That’s not what I mean,” said Harriet. “Come see. It’s made to look like the other one, but it’s different. Look.”
Reine-Marie leaned closer, then pulled back as though given an electric jolt. “Is the girl in the painting wearing—”
“A digital watch,” said Harriet.
“You’re kidding,” said Olivier. He and the others crowded around.
Now that they examined it more closely, they could see other anomalies. Oddities.
The boy held a small model airplane. A straight-back chair was upholstered in a William Morris print.
What had looked like a rolled-up scroll was actually a tourist poster. They could just make out the lettering. It featured the Manneken Pis and the Atomium, in Brussels. Armand knew that because he’d been there.
Something stirred in him. Something deep and dark and disconcerting.
This painting was strange, there was no denying that. How did it get here? Why reimagine The Paston Treasure? And if the room had been bricked up more than a century ago, how did these modern elements get into the painting?
And why?
Why?
Why?
And who?
Yes, it was definitely strange, but not necessarily alarming.
So why was he alarmed?
“Oh, my God.” Reine-Marie’s voice came from the other side of the painting.
“What?” said Armand, hurrying around. “What’s wrong?”
She was holding, grasping, the dust-covered book and looking down at it. Then she raised her eyes to his.
“Look.” She held it out.
“What is it?”
“It’s a grimoire.”
And now his alarm spiked.
CHAPTER 17
“So what’s a grim…,” Clara began. “A grimmmm—” she continued in the hopes it would come to her.
“Grimoire.” Reine-Marie turned to Myrna. “Do you know it?”
“Never heard of it.”
While Olivier had had to go back down to the bistro for the lunch service, and Fiona had left to meet Sam, the rest had returned to Myrna’s living room.
No one really wanted to move far from the newly discovered room and its collection of increasingly odd oddities.
Reine-Marie clasped the book on her lap, reluctant to give up this long-searched-for treasure.
Ruth hadn’t taken her eyes off the book since it was found. It was difficult to tell if the elderly woman was looking at it or watching it.
“You know what it is,” said Reine-Marie.
Ruth nodded, but remained uncharacteristically quiet, her eyes fixed on the leather cover. It was plain, simple, without design or writing, though it was scorched.
There was no title. Nothing to identify it. And for good reason.
The book dated from the 1600s, and anyone found to be in possession of a grimoire then would almost certainly have been burned at the stake. In fact, it looked like an effort had been made to do just that.