“My name is Cecil Clarke, I’m the head docent here. I understand you’re interested in The Paston Treasure?”
He gestured for them to follow him.
He was in his late sixties or early seventies, Reine-Marie guessed. Of average height. Slender. His head was shaved close, as many balding men do. He had a trim white beard and cheerful blue eyes.
He sounded mid-Atlantic. Neither British nor North American.
They strolled by glass cases displaying a wide and wild variety of animals, including a polar bear.
Amelia paused to stare at the great auk, then ran to catch up to Madame Gamache and the docent.
“So many mysteries,” Clarke said as they walked through the museum. “It’s captivated people for years.”
“A World of Curiosities,” said Reine-Marie.
“Exactly that. So many secrets. What’s your interest in the painting?”
“I’m writing a paper on it,” Reine-Marie explained. “I’m retired now but spent my life as a historian in Québec. I want to branch out into art history.”
“Well, you couldn’t find a more fascinating place to start than”—they turned a corner—“here.”
And there before them was an immense canvas. The Paston Treasure.
Reine-Marie stood in awe and Amelia actually gasped.
The painting was overwhelming, almost shocking in its display of opulence. And yet it was also deeply human, almost innocent. As though it surprised itself.
“Captivating, isn’t it?” Cecil said, clearly enjoying the reaction. “I’ve studied it for years and am still enthralled.”
“It feels as though we can walk right into it,” said Amelia.
He turned and looked at her with interest. “Yes. I often feel I have. In fact, I play a game with myself. I try to imagine which objects I’d bring with me, to add to those already there. What treasures. Trophies.”
“And what would you?” Reine-Marie asked, keeping her voice light.
“Oh, it changes every day.”
“Today?” she asked.
“Probably a favorite piece of music. Maybe a film, definitely a book. If I could get the great auk in, I would.”
Reine-Marie smiled and returned her gaze to the canvas and said, casually, “It does lend itself to that thought. Do you know of anyone who’s actually done it?”
“Walked into the painting?”
She laughed. “No. I mean made a copy but added some modern touches.”
He considered. “There probably are some, but none I’m aware of.”
She brought out her phone and showed him a photo of the one in the attic. “What do you make of this?”
He stared at it, enlarging the image and moving it about on the screen.
“Now this is a curiosity. How fun.” He looked from her phone to the original, and back. “An interesting choice of modern objects. Did you do this?”
She closed her phone and laughed again. “No. I just found this copy. I actually became interested in The Paston Treasure when a friend invited me to an exhibition here a few years ago. I couldn’t make it, but I looked up the work. Were you here for that show?”
“The one three years ago or so? I’d just arrived. I’m Canadian too, from New Brunswick. Retired.”
“Art history?”
“No. Engineering, actually.”
Captain Moel met the Chief Inspector outside the Old Train Station and was glad she’d come down.
“This is where you live?” she asked as she got out of the car. “It looks like something out of a Disney animation. I half expect the butterflies to burst into song.” She had her back to him. “Peaceful.”
“You’d think.”
She turned and saw his face. Grim. Worried.
“Are you okay?”
“Been better.”
The normally well-dressed man was a mess. Hair disheveled, his clothing rumpled and dirty. He hadn’t had time to shower and change after the visit to the SHU.
Hardye Moel was now head of the Sûreté du Québec counseling division, having earned her Ph.D. She’d built up her department from practically nothing.
Chief Inspector Gamache was an early advocate for, and adopter of, the service. He’d sent many of his agents for counseling. And gone himself.
Dr. Moel was his colleague and therapist. Hardye Moel was his friend.
“How can I help?”
He told her what had happened at the SHU. The fact that he’d lost it, and it was only the presence of Jean-Guy Beauvoir that prevented him from hurting, maybe even killing, the warden.
“I don’t think it would have gone that far, Armand.” She studied him. “But you’re not sure? What did the warden do to bring this on?”
Gamache stared at her for a moment, knowing he’d have to tell her everything. But he hesitated.
Hardye waited. Giving him space and time. She saw his eyes drift from her over to the village. To the neighbors walking dogs. Sitting outside on the terrasse of the bistro. Working in gardens. She heard the birds, the lawn mowers, the shouted greetings.
And then his eyes came to rest. She turned to see that he was looking at the three huge spires of pine trees on the village green.
Of course, she thought. Three Pines.
When she turned back, his gaze was once more on her.
And then he told her. Everything.
As he spoke, he saw Captain Moel’s eyes widen, then narrow. As though she was squinting at something horrible approaching.
“Dear God,” she whispered. “John Fleming? He let Fleming go? He’s out?”
“Let’s go inside,” said Armand.
Once in the Incident Room, she stared at the huge canvas.
Dr. Moel had studied the Fleming case in her courses on aberrant behavior. She remembered reading that John Fleming had been a churchgoing man. Obsessed with it. A God-fearing man, he eventually feared God so much he ran straight into the arms of the other.
The Angel of the Morning. The Fallen Angel. God’s favorite. Until …
But Armand was pointing at the painting and saying something else.
“Pardon?”
“The faces, the heads. They’re of his victims. Jesus,” Armand said, wiping his hand over his face. “I should’ve seen it sooner.”
Captain Moel turned away, repulsed. “How could you? No sane person would see it, would believe an inmate at the SHU could be responsible. I read about his case, his trial. There was no mention of you.”
“No. I was there as an observer, assigned by the Crown.”
“Did Fleming recognize you? Is that why he’s doing this?”
It didn’t make sense, this obsession Fleming seemed to have with the Chief Inspector. Why not the arresting cop? The prosecutor? The judge. Why Gamache?
“A few years ago I needed his help in a case. He agreed, but in exchange I had to promise to let him go.”
Moel stared at him, incredulous. “You were willing to do that?”
“I had no choice.”
By then Fleming had been in the SHU for more than a decade. If he wasn’t mad before, he was by then. Though Gamache knew John Fleming had almost certainly come out of the womb a lunatic.
“At the last minute, the last second, I reneged. He’d taken a few steps outside, had a taste of freedom, before I had him taken back in.”
It was close, and Armand almost, almost, had to follow through with that terrible calculation. Release a madman into society to murder again. And again. Or allow plans for a weapon of mass destruction to be sold to the highest bidder.
Even at his most prolific, Fleming could not match that death toll. And Armand was confident he could recapture the lunatic, eventually. Eventually.
But finally, he didn’t have to.
He could still hear the screams, unholy shrieks, like some wraith being burned alive, as Fleming was dragged back into the hellhole.