“Excellent,” said Dominique, getting up. “Good question. Why don’t we ask?”
“Who?”
“The guests still here in Three Pines.”
Clara thought for a moment. “Worth a try.”
“Waste of time,” said Ruth. “I still think you did it.”
“Watch it, old woman,” said Clara. “You’re next.”
*
The forensics team met Chief Inspector Gamache and Inspector Beauvoir at Lillian Dyson’s apartment in Montréal. While they took prints and collected specimens, Gamache and Beauvoir looked around.
It was a modest apartment on the top floor of a triplex. None of the buildings were tall in the Plateau Mont Royal district so while petite, Lillian’s apartment was bright.
Beauvoir walked briskly into the main room and got to work but Gamache paused. To get a feel for the place. It smelled stale. Of oil paint and unopened windows. The furniture was old without being vintage. The kind you found in the Sally Ann, or on the side of the road.
The floors were parquet with dull area rugs. Unlike some artists who cared about the aesthetics of their home, Lillian Dyson appeared indifferent to what was within these walls. What she was not indifferent to was what was on the walls.
Paintings. Luminous, dazzling paintings. Not bright or splashy, but dazzling in their images. Had she collected them? Perhaps from an artist friend in New York?
He leaned in to read the signature.
Lillian Dyson.
Chief Inspector Gamache stepped back and stared, astonished. The dead woman had painted these. He moved from painting to painting, reading the signatures and the dates, just to be sure. But he knew there was no doubt. The style was so strong, so singular.
They were all created by Lillian Dyson, and all within the last seven months.
These were like nothing he’d ever seen before.
Her paintings were lush and bold. Cityscapes, Montréal, made to look and feel like a forest. The buildings were tall and wonky, like strong trees growing this way and that. Adjusting to nature, rather than the other way around. She managed to make the buildings into living things, as though they’d been planted and watered and nurtured, and had sprung from the concrete. Attractive, the way all vital things were attractive.
It was not a relaxing world she painted. But neither was it threatening.
He liked them. A lot.
“More in here, Chief,” called Beauvoir, when he noticed Gamache staring at the paintings. “Looks like she turned her bedroom into a studio.”
Chief Inspector Gamache walked by the forensics team, lifting fingerprints and taking samples, and joined Beauvoir in the small bedroom. A single bed, made up nicely, was shoved against the wall and there was a chest of drawers, but the rest of the modest room was taken up with brushes soaking in tins, canvases leaning against the walls. The floor was covered in a tarpaulin and the room smelled of oil and cleaner.
Gamache walked over to the canvas sitting on the easel.
It was unfinished. It showed a church, in bright red, almost as though it was on fire. But it wasn’t. It simply glowed. And beside it swirled roads like rivers and people like reeds. No other artist he knew was painting in this style. It was as though Lillian Dyson had invented a whole new art movement, like the Cubists or the Impressionists, like the post-modernists and Abstract Expressionists.
And now there was this.
Armand Gamache could barely look away. Lillian was painting Montréal as though it was a work of nature, not man. With all the force, the power, the energy and beauty of nature. And the savagery too.
It seemed clear she’d been experimenting with this style, growing into it. The earliest works, from seven months ago, showed some promise but were tentative. And then, sometime around Christmas, there seemed to have been a breakthrough and the flowing, audacious style took hold.
“Chief, look at this.”
Inspector Beauvoir was standing next to the nightstand. There was a large blue book on it. The Chief Inspector brought a pen from his pocket and opened the book to the bookmark.
There was a sentence highlighted in yellow and underlined. Almost violently.
“The alcoholic is like a tornado,” read Chief Inspector Gamache, “roaring his way through the lives of others. Hearts are broken. Sweet relationships are dead.”
He let the book fall closed. On its royal blue cover in bold white print was Alcoholics Anonymous.
“I guess we know who belonged to AA,” said Beauvoir.
“I guess so,” said Gamache. “I think we need to ask these people some questions.”
After everything had been gone over by the forensics team the Chief Inspector handed Beauvoir one of the booklets from the drawer. It was dog-eared, dirty, well used. Inspector Beauvoir flipped through it then read the front.
Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting List.
Inside a meeting for Sunday night was circled. Beauvoir could guess what they’d be doing at eight that night.
*
The four women paired up, figuring they’d be safer in twos.
“You obviously haven’t watched many horror films,” said Dominique. “Women are always in pairs. One to die horribly and the other to shriek.”
“Dibs on the shrieking,” said Ruth.
“I’m afraid, dear one, that you’re the horror,” said Clara.
“Well, that’s a relief. Are you coming?” Ruth asked Dominique, who stared back with mock-loathing at Myrna and Clara.
Myrna watched them go then turned to Clara.
“How’s Peter?”
“Peter? Why’d you ask?”
“I was just wondering.”
Clara studied her friend. “You never just wonder. What is it?”
“You didn’t exactly look happy when you arrived. You said the two of you toasted your vernissage. Is that all that happened?”
Clara remembered Peter standing in their kitchen, drinking sour champagne. Toasting her solo show with rancid wine, and a smile.
But she wasn’t yet ready to talk about it. Besides, Clara thought as she looked at her friend, she was afraid of what Myrna might say.
“It’s just a difficult time for Peter,” she said instead. “I think we all know that.”
And she watched Myrna’s gaze intensify, then relent.
“He’s doing his best,” said Myrna.
It was, thought Clara, a diplomatic answer.
Across the village green they could see Gabri and Olivier sitting on the porch of their B and B, sipping beer. Relaxing before the late afternoon rush at the bistro.
“Mutt and Jeff.” Gabri waved the two women over.
“Bert and Ernie,” said Myrna as she and Clara climbed the steps onto the verandah.
“Your artist friends are still here,” said Olivier, rising and kissing the women on both cheeks.
“Staying on for a few more days, apparently.” Gabri was none too pleased. His idea of a perfect B and B was an empty B and B. “Gamache’s people said the others could leave, so they did. I think they found it boring. Apparently only one murder isn’t enough to hold their attention.”
Myrna and Clara left them to monitor the village, and walked into the B and B.