*
At the Incident Room they separated, Beauvoir to follow up the now promising leads and Gamache to head in to Montréal.
“I’ll be back by dinner,” he said, slipping behind the wheel of his Volvo. “I need to speak with Superintendent Brunel about Lillian Dyson’s art. About what it might be worth.”
“Good idea.”
Beauvoir, like Gamache, had seen the art on the victim’s walls. They just looked like weird, distorted images of Montréal streets. Familiar, recognizable, but where the streets and buildings in real life were angular, the ones in the paintings were rounded, flowing.
They made Beauvoir slightly nauseous. He wondered what Superintendent Brunel would make of them.
So did Chief Inspector Gamache.
It was late afternoon by the time he arrived in Montréal and made his way through rush hour traffic to Thérèse Brunel’s Outremont apartment.
He’d called ahead, making sure the Brunels were home, and as he climbed the stairs Jér?me opened the door. He was an almost perfect square, and was certainly a perfect host.
“Armand.” He extended his hand and grasped the Chief Inspector’s. “Thérèse is in the kitchen, preparing a little tray. Why don’t we sit on the balcony. What can I get you to drink?”
“Just a Perrier, si te pla?t, Jér?me,” said Gamache, following his host through the familiar living room, past the piles of open reference books and Jér?me’s puzzles and ciphers. They walked onto the front balcony, which looked across the street and onto a leafy, green park. It was hard to believe that just around the corner was avenue Laurier, filled with bistros and brasseries and boutiques.
He and Reine-Marie lived just a few streets over and had been to this home many times, for dinner or for cocktails. And the Brunels had been to their home many times as well.
While this wasn’t exactly a social call the Brunels managed to make everything feel comfortable. If it was necessary to talk about crime, about murder, why not do it over drinks and cheese and spiced sausage and olives?
Armand Gamache’s feelings exactly.
“Merci, Jér?me,” said Thérèse Brunel, handing the tray of food to her husband and accepting a white wine.
They stood on the balcony in the afternoon sun, looking out over the park.
“Lovely time of year, isn’t it?” said Thérèse. “So fresh.”
Then she turned her attention to the man beside her. And he to her.
Armand Gamache saw a woman he’d known for more than ten years. Had trained, in fact. Had taught at the academy. She’d stood out from the rest of the cadets, not only for her obvious intelligence but because she was old enough to be their mother. She was, in fact, a full decade older than Gamache himself.
She’d joined the S?reté after a distinguished career as the chief curator at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Montréal. A celebrated art historian and advocate, she’d been consulted by the S?reté on the appearance of a mysterious painting. Not the disappearance, mind, but the sudden appearance of one.
In that instance, in that crime, she’d discovered a love of puzzles. After helping on a few cases she’d realized it was what she really wanted to do, was meant to do.
So she’d taken herself off to a quite astonished recruiting officer and signed up.
That had been twelve years ago. And now she was one of the senior officers in the S?reté, outstripping her teacher and mentor. But only, they both knew, because he’d chosen, and been given, a different path.
“How can I help, Armand?” she asked, indicating one of their balcony chairs with an elegant, slender hand.
“Shall I leave you?” Jér?me asked, struggling out of his seat.
“No, no,” Gamache waved him down, “please stay if you’d like.”
Jér?me always liked. A retired emergency room doctor, he’d loved puzzles all his life and was more than amused that his wife, always gently poking fun at his endless ciphers, was now neck deep in puzzles herself. Of a more serious nature, to be sure.
Chief Inspector Gamache put his Perrier down and brought the dossier out of his satchel. “I’d like you to look at these and tell me what you think.”
Superintendent Brunel spread the photographs on the wrought iron table, using their glasses and food platter to pin them down against the slight breeze.
The men waited quietly as she studied them. She took her time. Cars drove by. Across the way, in the park, children kicked around a soccer ball and played on the swings.
Armand Gamache sipped his sparkling water, stirring the bubbly wedge of lime with his finger, and watched as she examined the paintings from Lillian Dyson’s apartment. Thérèse looked stern, a seasoned investigator handed an element in a murder case. Her eyes darted here and there, scanning the paintings. And then they slowed and rested first on one image then another. She moved the paintings about on the table, tilting her coiffured head to the side.
Her eyes never softened, but her expression did, as she began to lose herself in the paintings and the puzzle.
Armand hadn’t told her anything about them. About who’d done them, about what he wanted to know. He’d given her no information, except that they were from a murder investigation.
He wanted her to form her own opinion, unsullied by his questions or comments.
The Chief Inspector had taught her at the academy that a crime scene wasn’t simply on the ground. It was in people’s heads. Their memories and perceptions. Their feelings. And you don’t want to contaminate those with leading questions.
Finally she leaned away from the table and looked up, first as always at Jér?me, then to Gamache.
“Well, Superintendent?”
“Well, Chief Inspector, I can tell you I’ve never seen these works or this artist before. The style is singular. Like nothing else out there. Deceptively simple. Not primitive, but not self-conscious either. They’re beautiful.”
“Would they be valuable?”
“Now there’s a question.” She considered the images again. “Beautiful isn’t in fashion. Edgy, dark, stark, cynical, that’s what galleries and curators want. They seem to think they’re more complex, more challenging, but I can tell you, they’re not. Light is every bit as challenging as dark. We can discover a great deal about ourselves by looking at beauty.”
“And what do these,” Gamache indicated the paintings on the table, “tell you?”
“About myself?” she asked with a smile.
“If you’d like, but I was thinking more about the artist.”
“Who is he, Armand?”
He hesitated. “I’ll tell you in a moment, but I’d like to hear what you think.”
“Whoever painted these is a wonderful artist. Not, I think, a young artist. There’s too much nuance. As I said, they’re deceptively simple, but if you look closely they’re made up of grace notes. Like here.” She pointed to where a road swept around a building, like a river around a rock. “That slight play of light. And over here, in the distance, where sky and building and road all meet and become difficult to distinguish.”
Thérèse looked at the paintings, almost wistfully. “They’re magnificent. I’d like to meet the artist.” She looked into Gamache’s eyes and held them for a moment longer than necessary. “But I suspect I won’t. He’s dead, isn’t he? He’s the victim?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Besides the fact you’re the head of homicide?” She smiled and beside her Jér?me gave a harrumph of amusement. “Because for you to bring these to me the artist would have to be either a suspect or the victim, and whoever painted these would not kill.”
“Why not?”
“Artists tend to paint what they know. A painting is a feeling. The best artists reveal themselves in their works,” said Superintendent Brunel, glancing again at the art. “Whoever painted this was content. Not, perhaps, perfect, but a content man.”
“Or woman,” said the Chief Inspector. “And you’re right, she’s dead.”
He told them about Lillian Dyson, her life and her death.
“Do you know who killed her?” Jér?me asked.
“I’m getting closer,” said Gamache, gathering up the photographs. “What can you tell me about Fran?ois Marois and André Castonguay?”
Thérèse raised a finely shaped brow. “The art dealers? Are they involved?”
“Along with Denis Fortin, yes.”
“Well,” said Thérèse, sipping her white wine. “Castonguay has his own gallery, but most of his income comes from the Kelley contract. He landed it decades ago and has managed to hold on to it.”
“You make it sound tenuous.”
“I’m actually amazed he still has it. He’s lost a lot of his influence in recent years, with new, more contemporary galleries opening.”
“Like Fortin’s?”
“Exactly like Fortin. Very aggressive. Fortin’s taken a real run at the gentlemen’s club. Can’t say I blame him. They shut him out so he had no choice but to pound down the doors.”
“Denis Fortin doesn’t seem content with pounding down just the doors,” said Gamache, taking a thin slice of cured Italian sausage and a black olive. “I get the impression he wants everything to come crashing down around Castonguay’s ears. Fortin wants it all, and means to get it.”
“Van Gogh’s ear,” said Thérèse, and smiled as Gamache paused before putting the sliced sausage in his mouth. “Not the cold cut, Armand. You’re safe. Though I can’t vouch for the olives.”
She gave him a wicked look.