It was the principal of the art college.
“I got worried after our conversation, Monsieur Gamache,” he said. “So I asked the health and safety person to check out some spots in the college for asbestos. She won’t have the definitive results for a few days, but it looks like we’re clear, with one exception. There’s a suspicious spot in Professor Massey’s studio.”
“What does it mean?” Myrna asked.
“I think it’s pretty clear what it means,” said Clara. They’d used the last of their change to get scalding hot chocolates out of the vending machine, and now they took a table by one of the water-slashed windows.
The bow of the Loup de Mer was rising and falling, rising and falling. Every now and then it rose higher, higher, paused there, then crashed down. A gale was building, coming straight at them. And they were heading straight for it.
They held on to their hot chocolates, but still some slopped over the sides. Clara spared a thought for Marcel Chartrand, downstairs, in the bowels.
“It means we know who Norman sent his asbestos-infected paintings to,” said Clara.
“Professor Massey,” said Beauvoir.
“But why?” asked Myrna. “Massey got him fired. Why would he trust him with his works?”
“He wasn’t trying to trust him, he was trying to kill him,” said Gamache.
He turned, by habit, to Jean-Guy Beauvoir.
This was familiar territory now, to both men. How often had they sat just like this, facing each other across arborite tables, at hacked wooden tables, at desks and in muddy fields, in cars, and planes, and trains. In the bright sunshine, and in winter blizzards.
The two of them.
Trying not to see their way clear, but to see their way into a dark heart. Trying to solve the first, the oldest, crime. Cain’s crime. Murder.
Beauvoir thought about it. “But if No Man infected his paintings and sent them off to Massey, wasn’t there a chance Massey would sell them on? Find buyers?”
That had been troubling Gamache too. Once out of No Man’s hands anything could happen to the canvases. He had no way of knowing if they’d kill Massey, or a student, or some poor anonymous art collector.
Maybe No Man didn’t really care who else he killed, as long as Professor Massey was one of them. Or maybe …
“Maybe they weren’t very good,” said Gamache. “Maybe he deliberately sent paintings he knew Massey wouldn’t show to anyone else.”
“It still doesn’t make sense,” said Myrna. “Professor Massey hated Sébastien Norman. He got Norman the job, and then Norman took complete advantage of the situation to lecture on his own pet theory of the tenth muse. Then he held the show for the rejected artwork. Professor Norman did everything but burn down the college. Why would Massey help him?”
“Would you?”
The question came from Beauvoir, and it was directed at Gamache.
“Clara and Myrna here both thought Professor Massey reminded them of you, patron. I’ve seen you do some pretty weird things for people everyone else had given up on. Including me. Do you think Massey might still try to help Norman?”
Gamache considered that. “He might. Maybe he didn’t hate Norman,” Gamache said to Myrna, “but felt sorry for him. Maybe he even felt responsible. For putting both Norman and the school in that position.”
Myrna looked at Armand. And Armand looked at Myrna.
“Yes,” she said, remembering their private therapy sessions. “It’s possible.”
“I think Massey was the agent that Luc Vachon was sending the canvases to,” said Gamache.
“Asbestos-infected canvases,” said Beauvoir. “Massey might not have hated Norman, but Norman hated Massey. For getting him fired.”
“How many embittered employees go into their workplaces with a gun?” said Myrna. “The paintings were Norman’s gun.”
“But where did he get the asbestos? And where’re the paintings now?” asked Clara. “Where did Professor Massey put them? We didn’t see any on the walls.”
“They might be in a storage room,” said Gamache. “Maybe that was the hot spot they found. I’ll call the principal back.”
“Fortunately it looks like No Man’s plan didn’t work,” said Myrna, as Gamache placed the call.
“What do you mean?” asked Beauvoir.
“I keep forgetting that you didn’t see Professor Massey. A more healthy eighty-five-year-old would be hard to find. If those paintings began arriving decades ago, and the asbestos had done its job, he’d be either dead or dying.”
“What was it Julie called it?” said Clara. “A twist of fate.”
“Sometimes the magic works…” said Beauvoir. “But why would Massey suddenly go to Tabaquen now?”
Gamache hung up, having left a message on the principal’s voice mail with both his and Beauvoir’s numbers.
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