The Long Way Home

She’d completed the couplet.

As they left for home, Reine-Marie mulled over what she’d heard. About Professor Norman. His passion, and his folly. The tenth muse. The missing muse.

That the deity who kills for pleasure will also heal.

Was the tenth muse that deity? Like the other muses, did it inspire? Did it heal?

But did this one also kill, for pleasure?





TWENTY-SIX


Marcel Chartrand placed the rolled-up canvases on the wooden table.

They were in his office at the back of the gallery, away from prying eyes.

The gallery itself was open, and tourists and artists and enthusiasts had streamed in all day. Not to buy, but to pay homage.

It was easy to spot those from away, and those from Québec. The tourists from other provinces or countries stood before the Clarence Gagnon oil paintings and smiled, appreciating the works of art.

Those from Québec looked about to burst into tears. An unsuspected yearning uncovered, discovered. For a simpler time and a simpler life. Before Internet, and climate change, and terrorism. When neighbors worked together, and separation was not a topic or an issue or wise.

Yet the Gagnon paintings weren’t idealized images of country life. They showed hardship. But they also showed such beauty, such peace, that the paintings, and the people looking at them, ached.

Gamache stood at the door between the office and the gallery and watched the patrons react to the paintings.

“Armand?”

Clara called him back in. He closed the door behind him and joined the others at the table.

Over lunch they’d discussed what to do next. They’d spent the morning driving to the cabin Peter had rented. Far from being a charming little Québécois chalet, this was a nondescript, cheap one-room hovel, one step up from a slum.

The landlady remembered Peter.

“Tall. Anglo. Paid cash,” she said, and looked around with distaste at the room, under no illusions about its quality. “Rents by the month. You interested?”

She eyed Clara, the most likely prospect.

“Did he have any visitors?” Clara asked.

The landlady looked at her as though it was a ridiculous question, which it was, but one that had to be asked. As was the next— “Did he ask you about a man named Norman?”

Same response.

“Do you know a man named Norman?”

“Look, you want the place or not?”

Not.

The landlady locked up.

“Did he say why he was here?” Clara tried one more time as they stood outside the door.

“Oh, sure, we had long discussions over fondue and white wine.”

She looked at Clara with distaste. “I don’t know why he was here. I don’t care. He paid cash.”

“Did he tell you where he was going, when he left?” Clara persevered in the face of obvious defeat.

“I didn’t ask, he didn’t tell.”

And that was that.

Then they went back to the brasserie, to cleanse their palates with burgers.

“What next?” Clara asked.

“Reine-Marie should be at your college in Toronto,” Gamache said, looking at his watch. “She’ll let us know what she finds out.”

“And until then?” Myrna asked.

“There is one thing we can do, I suppose,” said Clara, shooting a glance at Gamache. “We could show Peter’s paintings to Marcel.”

Clara turned to Myrna and laid a hand on the rolled-up canvas.

“What do they tell you?”

Myrna noticed the protective action. “I take it you don’t want my opinion as an art critic.”

“Since you happen to think I’m a genius, I think your expertise in that area is unquestioned. But no, it’s the other I want.”

Myrna studied her friend for a moment. “They tell me that Peter was deeply troubled.”

“Do you think he’d lost his mind?” Clara asked.

“I think,” said Myrna slowly, “that Peter could afford to lose some of his mind. It wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.”

Myrna smiled then. Just a little.

“Right,” said Clara, getting up and grabbing the scrolled paintings. “Let’s go.”

She marched away like a Crimean war general leading a futile charge.

She headed up the hill to the Galerie Gagnon, leaving the others, and the bill, behind.

“She has flair, I’ll give her that,” said Jean-Guy, hurriedly taking a last huge bite of his hamburger. Gamache, paying, knew that “flair” was not one of Beauvoir’s compliments.

And now they stood over the table as Marcel Chartrand unrolled the canvases.

The one on top was of the lips.

Gamache studied the curator as Chartrand studied the painting. But study, Gamache realized, was the wrong word. Chartrand was absorbing it. Trying not to think about the painting, but to experience it. In fact, the other man’s eyes were almost closed.

Chartrand tilted his head a little this way. Then that.

And then a slight smile formed. His trained eye had seen the painted lips.