The Long Way Home

A brave man, thought Clara.

“I received a message from the S?reté in Paris this morning,” said Gamache. “They visited LaPorte and spoke with their Chef des bénévoles. He confirmed that Peter had volunteered there last year, but had left after a couple of months.”

“Why go all the way to Paris, to volunteer at LaPorte, then leave so soon?” asked Clara.

“Peter went to LaPorte because it had worked for Vincent Gilbert,” said Myrna. “Vincent arrived at LaPorte a selfish, callow, vile asshole. And he emerged an asshole saint.”

“Progress,” said Gamache. “Of a kind. I think it was like Oz and Peter was the Tin Man, looking for a heart. He thought he could find it there, doing a good deed for the less fortunate. And that would in turn make him a better painter.”

“No heart, no art,” said Myrna. “He must’ve thought that if it worked for such a ridiculous creature as Vincent Gilbert, surely it would work for him. But Peter’s reasons were selfish, and more than a little condescending. That might’ve changed, had he toughed it out, but he took off. Looking for another quick fix.”

“Sometimes the magic works,” said Clara, and looked at them expectantly. “You don’t know where that comes from?”

Gamache and Myrna shook their heads.

“It’s from my favorite scene in a movie,” she said. “Little Big Man. Chief Dan George is old and frail and he decides his time has come. He and Dustin Hoffman build a bed on stilts and Chief Dan George climbs up, lies down, and folds his arms over his chest.”

Clara mimicked the action, closing her eyes and turning her face to the cloudy skies.

“Dustin Hoffman is devastated,” she said. “He loves the Chief. He keeps vigil all night and in the morning, just as the sun rises, he goes over to the deathbed and Chief Dan George’s face is still and quiet. He’s at peace.”

Clara opened her eyes and looked at her audience, still and quiet.

“And then Chief Dan George opens his eyes and sits up. He looks at Dustin Hoffman and says, ‘Sometimes the magic works. Sometimes it doesn’t.’”

After a stunned silence, Myrna and Armand started laughing.

“That’s what Peter’s travels remind me of,” said Clara.

“Keeps coming up, doesn’t it? This idea of magic,” said Myrna. “We wondered last night if Peter might’ve gone back to the college hoping to recapture the magic of his youth. And now we’re talking about it again, at LaPorte.”

“I think we’re talking about it because we believe in it, not because Peter does.”

“And yet something happened to him,” said Gamache, getting up. “Judging by your description of his new paintings. Something changed him. Not in Paris perhaps, but somewhere, something happened to change his painting so completely.”

“Where’re you going?”

“To call Scotland.”

He left them in the back garden and walked slowly home, thinking about Peter and Paris. And Peter’s flight across Europe. Because that’s how it appeared to Gamache. After pursuing many people over many decades, he recognized the difference between fleeing and seeking.

This seemed like flight to Gamache. Paris to Florence to Venice to Scotland.

That was a lot of travel for a stationary man.

Why did people flee? Gamache asked himself as he nodded to neighbors and raised his hand to return a wave. They fled because they were in danger.

Had Peter left LaPorte so quickly for reasons that had more to do with saving his body than his soul?

As he walked home across the village green, Gamache worried that Peter hadn’t run fast enough or far enough. Or maybe he’d run smack into Samarra.





SIXTEEN


“Eh?”

“I asked if there were any artist colonies in your area, sir.”

“Wur yur, colonnades air?”

“Eh?”

Gamache stood in his study, phone gripped to his ear, as though pressing it harder to his head might make the conversation easier to understand.

It did not.

He’d bypassed the Chief Constable of Police Scotland. He’d bypassed the assistants and the directors. He knew from experience that as well informed and well meaning as those senior officers might be, the people who really knew the community were the ones who protected it every day.

So he’d called through to the Dumfries detachment directly and introduced himself. That had taken a few minutes, until the person at the other end was satisfied he was neither a victim of crime, nor a criminal.

It seemed when speaking English, his accent, combined with the Scottish ear, was producing a sort of white noise of nonsense.

In Dumfries, Constable Stuart tried to be patient. He looked out the window of the police station, at the whitewashed buildings. At the gray stone buildings. At the redbrick Victorian buildings. At the tall clock tower at the far end of the market square. At the people rushing by, the cold rain driving them toward the pubs and shops.