The quicker they could get a handle on what was important and what was not, the better.
A conference table had been set up, and Jean-Guy pointed toward it. “Can we go over the timeline? I just need to be clear, patron.”
Gamache nodded. He too wanted to be clear.
“In,” Beauvoir started, already consulting his notes, “1862, Pierre Stone is approached to build a wall.”
Beauvoir could barely believe he was saying those words. In a murder investigation they always looked to the past, but never that far past.
“C’est correct,” said Gamache.
“He writes a letter to a woman named Clémence, describing the commission.”
Gamache nodded and looked at the copy of the letter, sitting between them on the table. The original, along with the other documents, had been sent to Montréal for analysis.
“He builds the wall and seals up the room next to what is now Myrna’s loft.”
“The row of buildings was originally put up as workers’ cottages by the owner of the mill,” said Gamache. “The date on the bricks corresponds to the date on Pierre Stone’s letter.”
“So that fits,” said Beauvoir. “But the letter doesn’t. You don’t think Stone wrote it.”
“What letter?” said Agent Choquet. “Is this it?”
They looked up and realized all the technicians had gone and the Incident Room had been set up, complete with coffee machine, mini-fridge, blackboard, desks, computers. And fiber-optic cable, something Inspector Beauvoir rarely managed to get technicians to connect.
She must’ve scared them silly, thought Gamache.
She must’ve scared them shitless, thought Beauvoir.
Both were correct.
Gamache was about to suggest Amelia join them, but she’d already taken a seat and was reading the letter.
“He was a stonemason in the mid-1800s?” she asked. “There’s no way he wrote this.” She shoved it away from her.
“Thank you,” said the Chief Inspector, before turning back to Beauvoir, who was glaring at Agent Choquet. “Continue, Inspector. And you”—Gamache turned to Amelia—“listen.”
Beauvoir actually smiled. It was almost exactly what the Chief had said to him that day years ago, by the shores of that lake.
“Fast-forward to five weeks ago, when the Stone letter arrives at the former home of Pierre Stone, mailed by some unknown person. Patricia Godin reads it, then either she forwards it to Billy Williams or someone else does. Shortly after that, she dies—”
“But don’t you—” Amelia began.
“Listening,” said Gamache. “Listening.”
“The local police put her death down as suicide,” Beauvoir continued.
There was a clicking sound from Agent Choquet. But no actual words.
Beauvoir stared at her, then noticed that Gamache was looking at the table and fighting unsuccessfully to suppress a grin.
“What?” said Beauvoir.
The clicking was Morse code.
Bullshit. Bullshit.
Gamache gave Amelia a stern warning glance and the clicking stopped. “Nothing. Go on.”
“Billy Williams reads the letter and shows it to Ruth. Both think it’s strange, but nothing more. Just some incident from the past, until Fiona mentions the hidden room.”
Gamache sat forward, as did Amelia, who was clearly tempted to talk but managed to remain silent.
“They broke through the wall this morning,” Beauvoir continued. “And found the painting and other items.”
This was too much for Amelia. “Painting? What?”
“Oui.”
“Sealed in a hidden room?”
Amelia Choquet, tattooed and pierced, a former heroin addict and prostitute, was surprised by very little in life except, perhaps, kindness. But this surprised her.
“The painting was made to look old,” said Beauvoir, “but isn’t. Made to look like a copy of a masterpiece, but isn’t.”
Cloaked in cynicism and armored by indifference, Amelia rarely showed interest, but she could not hide it now. “And sealed up a hundred and sixty years ago?”
“We should show her,” said Jean-Guy.
“You do that, I’m going over to Clara’s. I’ll meet you in Myrna’s loft when I’m done.”
Myrna, downstairs in the bookstore, greeted Amelia like another niece. Since Myrna was a purveyor of books, and the young agent was addicted to them, this made the bookseller her pusher, though actually more like her priestess.
“Find anything?” Beauvoir asked Olivier and Billy, who’d just finished examining the ceiling.
“We think there’s a section that’s been repainted,” said Olivier, “but hard to tell.”
Once in the loft, they stood at the jagged hole in the wall.
“Holy shit,” whispered Amelia. She stared at the painting, her concentration so complete she forgot to click her tongue post. But if she had, it would have been three short. Three long. Three short.
CHAPTER 19
“Bonjour?” Armand called. “You home?”
“In the studio,” came Clara’s singsong reply.
“Can I come in?”
“Of course.” The words were slurred by the brush between her teeth like a bit, but he understood the gist.
Armand stood on the threshold of her studio and watched her work. The large, vaulted room smelled of oil paints and old banana peels, turpentine and an undercurrent of lemon. Not the chemical, headache-inducing scent of lemon cleaner. This smelled of lemonade in summer, and lemon meringue pie at celebrations. It smelled of gin and tonics with a twist on the terrasse on hot afternoons, and honey and lemon tea to soothe a sore throat when sick.
As he watched, Clara applied thick swirls to the canvas. Not with a brush—that remained forgotten in her mouth—but with a palette knife. Great globs went on, apparently at random, with abandon.
Clara Morrow was the real thing. A genuine artist. Not because she was a success—that came and went—but because she was bold and creative. And brave. Audacious. She tried new things, took chances, and evolved.
What was on her easel now was like nothing Gamache had seen her do before. It was abstract, almost aggressive.
She put on one more slash of paint, considered it, then turned to face him.
She was smiling. Her face dabbed with paint, and her expression filled with delight.
“Why so happy?” he asked.
“I was just thinking about Anne Lamarque.” She took the brush from between her teeth, smearing more paint in her hair and on her cheek, and used it to motion at the canvas. “She was punished for many things, including being happy. So I wanted to capture that. The power of it. Happiness as an act of defiance. A revolutionary act.”
He looked at the canvas and saw bold swirls of reds and greens and yellows. And bright blues. All intermingled. They formed no image. And he got no feeling.
He closed his eyes. Paused. When he opened them, he let the painting come to him. To enter through his heart, not his head. With Clara’s painting, like all great works of creation, there was more than met the eye.
And then he saw it. Or, rather, felt it. Without realizing it, he began to smile. The image itself would become clear later, when she’d finished. Or not. Maybe it already was clear. In her smile, and his.
“What can I do for you?” She got up from her stool and waved the brush at the old sofa against the wall of her studio, indicating they should sit. He looked at it, his smile fading.
The sofa always reminded him of the Monty Python sketch when a man, about to be tortured in the Inquisition, was threatened with the “comfy chair.”
Dear God, he thought, not the sofa.
It was an unexpected, certainly unintended, torture, though Clara didn’t seem to see it. The springs had long since let go, so that you either hit the concrete floor or, worse, a spring.