They ordered fish and chips, and Beauvoir ordered a pizza as well. “And one to go,” he shouted. “You never know,” he told Gamache.
“I honestly don’t think we can get the pizza box into the cabin,” said Gamache, taking his reading glasses off and putting the menu aside. “And I’m a little worried if we eat the pizza we won’t fit in either.”
When the food came, they discovered that the fish was cod.
“Caught today,” said the young server. “And the potatoes are fresh today too.”
He gestured out the window to the huge ship they’d come in on. Clearly “fresh” was a sliding scale.
“You get many people off the ship?” Gamache asked. He cut into the crispy fish.
“Some. Most just want to stretch their legs. Like you.”
“Do many stay?” Jean-Guy took up the line of questioning while Gamache ate.
“Here? No,” the young man laughed. “Some hunters come for a week or so later in the season. Some fishermen. But no one lives here. Except us.”
He didn’t seem upset about that. If anything, he seemed relieved.
“We’re looking for a friend of ours,” said Gamache. It was Beauvoir’s turn to eat, and his turn to talk. “He’d have been on the Loup de Mer a few months ago. Tall, English.”
He showed the waiter the photograph.
“No, sorry,” said the waiter, after studying it and handing it back.
By now the restaurant was filling with people who called the young man Cyril. They ordered scallops and cod cheeks and all sorts of things not on the menu.
“Would you like to try some, b’y?”
One of the older women, stout and dressed like a man, came over and offered her basket of cod cheeks to Beauvoir.
He shook his head.
“Ach, come on. I can see you drooling from across the room.”
That brought laughter from the rest of the crowd, and now a middle-aged man joined her. “Come along, Mother. Don’t be bothering these nice people.”
“Oh, it’s no bother,” said Beauvoir. He’d seen the look of slight hurt in the old woman’s face. “Can I have one?”
He took one of the tiny, deep-fried nuggets from her basket, dipped it in sauce, and ate it.
The room grew quiet.
When he reached for another one, they cheered as though the World Cup was theirs.
The elderly woman pretended to bat Jean-Guy’s hand away.
“Cod cheeks for the table, Cyril,” the man beside her said.
By the time Clara and Marcel arrived an hour later, Myrna and a group of women were dancing in the middle of the room and singing along to the jukebox.
“Man Smart (Woman Smarter),” they sang and danced with their arms waving above their heads, to great cheers.
Jean-Guy was across the diner, chatting with some fishermen.
“Any luck?” Clara asked as she and Marcel slid into the booth beside Gamache.
“No. You?”
Clara shook her head and tried to say something, but the music and laughter drowned her out.
“Let’s go outside,” Gamache shouted into her ear. He held on to Chartrand’s arm, pinning the man in place. “Order the cod cheeks and chips. You won’t regret it.”
And then he and Clara left.
“What is it?” he asked. He’d noticed the urgency with which she’d tried to make herself heard in the restaurant.
“Marcel and I have been walking around the village and out along the shore,” she said. “It gave me time to think.”
“Oui?”
“That pilot shouldn’t have recognized Peter from the old picture.”
They’d walked rapidly through the town, and now stood on a small dock. The rowboat tied there knocked gently against the floats.
Gamache stared at her, remembering the image.
“It was too old, too small,” said Clara, watching as Gamache’s mind raced. “And Peter’s face was almost completely hidden behind the smoke.”
“My God, it was Massey,” said Armand, arriving at the same conclusion as Clara. “The pilot recognized Professor Massey, not Peter.”
He pulled out his cell phone. It was only just registering, clinging to one bar of contact with the outside world. He tapped the screen so rapidly and so expertly Clara was surprised. He always seemed the sort who’d be uncomfortable with computers and tablets and devices.
But watching him, she realized this was a tool as powerful as any gun. It gave him information. And no investigator could survive without that.
He tapped it a few more times, turned, walked quickly toward the village, then stopped.
The lone bar was wavering. Appearing, then disappearing. The thread to the outside world fraying and breaking. Then reappearing.
“Oui, all?,” he spoke loudly. “Is this Vols C?te Nord?”
Clara watched his strained face. The phone was pressed to his ear as though trying to grip that one bar.
“We took a flight this morning, from La Malbaie to Sept-?les—”
The person on the other end was obviously speaking, and Gamache’s eyes narrowed as he concentrated on the voice that faded in and out.
“That’s right. He let us off at Sept-?les. Is the pilot back yet?”
Gamache listened. Clara waited, trying to read his expression.
“When?”
The Long Way Home
Louise Penny's books
- The Face of a Stranger
- The Silent Cry
- The Sins of the Wolf
- The Dark Assassin
- The Whitechapel Conspiracy
- The Sheen of the Silk
- The Twisted Root
- The Lost Symbol
- After the Funeral
- The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
- After the Darkness
- The Best Laid Plans
- The Doomsday Conspiracy
- The Naked Face
- The Other Side of Me
- The Sands of Time
- The Sky Is Falling
- The Stars Shine Down
- The Lying Game #6: Seven Minutes in Heaven
- The First Lie
- All the Things We Didn't Say
- The Good Girls
- The Heiresses
- The Perfectionists
- The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly
- The Lies That Bind
- Ripped From the Pages
- The Book Stops Here
- The New Neighbor
- A Cry in the Night
- The Phoenix Encounter
- The Dead Will Tell: A Kate Burkholder Novel
- The Perfect Victim
- Fear the Worst: A Thriller
- The Naturals, Book 2: Killer Instinct
- The Fixer
- The Good Girl
- Cut to the Bone: A Body Farm Novel
- The Devil's Bones
- The Bone Thief: A Body Farm Novel-5
- The Bone Yard
- The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel
- The Inquisitor's Key
- The Girl in the Woods
- The Dead Room
- The Death Dealer
- The Silenced
- The Hexed (Krewe of Hunters)
- The Night Is Alive
- The Night Is Forever
- The Night Is Watching
- In the Dark
- The Betrayed (Krewe of Hunters)
- The Cursed
- The Dead Play On
- The Forgotten (Krewe of Hunters)
- Under the Gun
- The Paris Architect: A Novel
- The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush
- Always the Vampire
- The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose
- The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree
- The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies
- The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star
- The Doll's House
- The Garden of Darkness
- The Creeping
- The Killing Hour
- Long Lost: A Kate Burkholder Short Story