The Long Way Home

“Dead? How do you know?”


“I don’t know, for sure. But you were right—if he came here to confess, he’d have no reason to kill Professor Norman. And he allowed you to see him, so he didn’t try to hide his presence. No, I think Professor Massey might have regretted what he did. What seems acceptable, even reasonable, in youth can look very different in old age. I think he came here to confess to Norman, perhaps even ask for forgiveness. And then he was going to turn himself in. But Luc Vachon couldn’t allow that.”

“Holy shit,” Peter said, and sat down. Then he looked around again.

“But why isn’t Professor Massey here too? Why not kill them together?”

“We’ll have to wait until Jean-Guy arrests Vachon, but I think Vachon needed a scapegoat. I suspect his plan was to make it look like a murder-suicide. So that we’d think Massey killed Professor Norman and then killed himself. It wouldn’t be hard for Vachon to knock him out and hold him underwater.”

One more soul for the St. Lawrence, thought Gamache, and knew if that was the case they would almost certainly never find Professor Massey.

But they would find Vachon. If not here, then somewhere. Eventually. They would track him down and try him.

“Why would Vachon do it?” asked Peter.

“I’ve just explained,” said Gamache. “Though I might be wrong.”

“No, I mean why would he agree to help Professor Massey in the first place?”

“Why would anyone?” asked Gamache. “Money, almost certainly. Enough to start his own bar. To keep it running. To paint and travel. And all he had to do was deliver art supplies once or twice a year. And take the finished paintings back to Toronto.”

“And he could pretend he didn’t even know they were infected,” said Peter. “What did Massey do with the finished paintings?”

“He must have destroyed them,” said Gamache. “All except one. Myrna and Reine-Marie saw it, in Massey’s studio. Massey claimed it for his own, and they didn’t question it, but they did say it was far, far better than the rest.”

“Why’d he keep it?” Peter asked.

“I’ve been wondering that myself,” said Gamache. “Why would Massey keep one of Norman’s small masterpieces? As a trophy? Killers sometimes do.”

“I think it might be simpler than that,” said Peter. “For all his faults, Professor Massey loved art. Knew art. I think that painting by Professor Norman must’ve been so great even he couldn’t destroy it.”

Peter sighed, a deep exhale. And Gamache knew what he was thinking about. The masterpiece in his own life. The one he’d destroyed. Not Clara’s painting, but her love.

*

“I’ve come too far, and waited too long.” Clara got to her feet. “I’m going.”

Myrna stood in front of her in the diner, blocking her route out.

Clara stared at her.

“I have to know,” Clara whispered, so that only Myrna could hear. “Please. Let me go.”

Myrna stepped toward Clara, who stood her ground.

And then she stepped aside.

And let her go.

*

“Clara waited for you,” said Gamache quietly. “That night of your anniversary.”

Peter opened his mouth but the words were stuck at the lump in his throat.

“I wrote,” he said at last. “To say I wasn’t going to make it, but that I’d be home as soon as I could. I gave it to that young pilot.”

“She never got the letter.”

“Oh, my God. That shithead must’ve lost it. She must think I don’t care. Oh no. Oh, Christ. She must hate me.”

Peter stood up and started for the door. “I have to go. I have to get home. I have to speak to her, to tell her. The plane’ll be here soon. I have to be on it.”

Gamache put out his hand and gripped Peter’s arm.

Peter tried to jerk free. “Let me go. I have to go.”

“She’s here,” said Gamache. “She came to find you.”





FORTY


“Clara’s here?” Peter demanded. “Where?”

“She’s with Myrna at the diner,” said Gamache.

“I’m going,” he said.

“No, you need to stay here until Beauvoir returns and we know where we stand. I’m sorry, Peter, but the priority has to be to arrest Vachon for murder. Time enough to see Clara after that.”

Gamache walked to the door and stepped onto the porch, scanning the horizon in case Beauvoir was returning with Vachon. But there was no one, and nothing, there.

He turned back to the cabin and saw Peter approach the bed. Then Peter reached out and did what he knew he shouldn’t. He broke the rules, and brushed Norman’s hand with one finger. The lightest of strokes.

Gamache gave him that private moment. He stepped off the rickety porch and looked around, turning full circle in the bright sunshine.

There was no movement. There was no sound.

Nothing.

How bleak it must have been for No Man.

For Peter.

When the only sound was the hacking, rattling cough of a dying man.

When the only activity was shopping, cooking, cleaning. Bathing a dying man.