“Look closer. Though it might not be there in the version you found.”
“May I borrow your glasses?” he asked Dr. Louissaint, who, while surprised, handed them over. He looked again, then pulled back sharply. It was as though he’d been plunged into the folds of the plump white rose.
And then he saw it. Lifting off the loupe and handing it back to the conservator, he said into the phone, “It’s a ladybug.”
“Right. An exquisitely rendered one, at least in the original.” She paused, then said, almost to herself, “Interesting that your artist chose to copy such a tiny detail.” Then her voice returned to lecture mode. “In England, the bug was, at the time, known as a symbol of the Virgin Mary. But in Norfolk, where it was painted, that bug is called something else. A bishop-that-burneth.”
“Why?”
“Well, what were bishops burning at the time?”
“Witches.”
“Right. It’s possible there’s something in the painting—maybe the ladybug, maybe something else—that made it dangerous for the artist to be associated with it. It might be something lost to our modern eyes. There’re other oddities about the original, like why it was painted. Is it meant as a statement of wealth and prestige? Or perhaps a memento mori.”
“A remembrance after death?”
“Yes. Something that would immortalize the Pastons. But that’s another mystery. We don’t know if it was the father, William, who commissioned the work, or the son, Robert. This might interest you, Armand. Robert was an alchemist.”
Thérèse was rattling off other secrets, other mysteries, contained in the painting and, so far, unreleased. Like who the figures were. The humans but also those carved into the chair and the head of the cello.
“It seems the painting, or painter, was trying to say something. I wonder if those lines and symbols are in the original, but we just never noticed. I’ll have a look.”
And that brought Armand back to the main purpose of his call. “Is Jérôme there?”
“I’ll get him. Jérôme? Où es-tu?”
Thérèse’s husband had been an emergency room physician, but his hobby and passion were codes. He’d solved at least one for Gamache in the past and was on the team of volunteers trying to crack Dickens’s Tavistock letter and other literary works written, for reasons that might never be known, in coded markings.
While waiting, Gamache sent them pictures of the painting and the elephant. Overviews, but mostly close-ups of the markings and other details, including the bug. The bishop-that-burneth.
When Jérôme Brunel got on the phone, Armand explained.
“Oui, Armand, I’m looking at what you sent. Fascinating. Let me get back to you. Can I consult my group?”
“Other decoders? Not yet. Thérèse knows, of course, but otherwise, please keep this to yourself.”
“Tell Armand there are no markings on the original,” Thérèse shouted in the background.
“I heard,” he said.
Jérôme laughed. “So did all of Vancouver.”
After he’d hung up, Armand put on a pot of coffee. As the room filled with the welcome aroma of the rich, strong drink, he stood at the window, one hand clasping the other behind his back.
It was a beautiful, bright morning, sun gleaming off the moisture from the rain the day before. It would soon evaporate, but for now, it gave an otherworldly look to a village that already appeared out of time and place.
He saw Harriet leave the B&B and wondered if she’d been home last night. And wondered what Myrna would say to her niece.
Then he saw Fiona leave their home. As he watched, he realized that over the years of visiting her in prison, of trying to soften the judicial blow he’d helped land, he’d come to think of her as a sort of niece. Not, of course, with the depth of love he felt for his real nieces, but a member of the extended family nevertheless.
And now, after Amelia’s report the night before and other evidence, he was forced to confront something else.
Matthew 10:36.
It was something his first mentor, his first chief in homicide, had told him.
“Oh, one other thing, Armand.” He’d stopped the young agent as he was leaving a meeting with the other officers. This was shortly after he’d joined homicide. Shortly after the shootings at the Polytechnique that were to haunt him for the rest of his life.
“Matthew 10:36.”
Agent Gamache had stood at the door waiting for more. But that was it. He was dismissed. A week or so passed before Armand, in a quiet moment, remembered and looked up the reference in the family Bible.
A man’s foes shall be they of his own household.
Agent Gamache hadn’t believed it. Had dismissed it as the sad perception of a highly effective officer who’d grown cynical with age.
But Matthew 10:36 had proven true. If the definition of “household” included the wider extended family of colleagues within the force. That was what his first boss had been trying to tell him. To warn him.
Almost too late, Gamache, by then the head of homicide himself, had seen it.
Armand watched as Fiona began walking. The bistro, he sent out the plea. Go there. Or the bookstore. Or the bakery.
Anywhere but—
She walked straight to the B&B. To join her brother.
—there.
Now he had to face the possibility that Jean-Guy was right, and his foes were literally within his own household.
And yet, his mind said, why shouldn’t she spend time with her brother? Was it so wrong?
Was he doing to Sam Arsenault what had been done to Anne Lamarque and so many others? Judging and condemning without evidence. He believed the boy, the young man, was mentally ill. And yet, there was no proof beyond two winks and the subtle movement of one finger. And a lingering chill in his core. Was that enough to condemn? Surely not.
Could he have been wrong about him? About her? Did he, as Jean-Guy believed, have it backward? That yes, there was a psychopath in that family, but it wasn’t the boy.
Once again, he remembered the conversation Amelia had described. It had been Fiona who’d asked about the grandchildren. Not Sam.
A cold resolve settled into his core.
Earlier that morning, in the car over to the Stone house with the search warrant, he’d told Jean-Guy about sending Amelia away, and what she’d said to him in Clara’s garden. What Sam and Fiona had asked her the night before. About the family. About the grandchildren.
Beauvoir was silent, then finally said, “They could just be interested.”
“For God’s sake, Jean-Guy, you know it’s more than that. Sam Arsenault’s clever. He’s doing this to get back at me, and God knows how far he’ll go.”
“What I know, patron, is that you’re obsessed with him. You’ve had it in for him from the first moment you met. I don’t know what that’s about, but it’s blinding you to the real threat.”
“You mean Fiona. I arrested her. Hardly the act of a blind man.”
“And you vouched for her, got her parole. Invited her into your home.” Beauvoir took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “I’m sorry. I’m just worried if there really is trouble, we’ll be looking in the wrong direction. You remember that day when we first met them? When you told them their mother was dead?”
“Of course.”
“One of them cried. One of them did not. Which one is most likely to be a psychopath?”
That gave Armand pause. Though he also knew one of the great skills of a psychopath was the ability to feign appropriate emotions.
“Let me talk to Sam,” said Beauvoir. “See what I can find out.”