TWENTY-SEVEN
“You lied to us at every turn, then dismissed it as simply habit.” Gamache continued to stare at Suzanne. “That doesn’t sound like real change to me. It sounds like situational ethics. Change, as long as it’s convenient. And a lot about what’s happened in the last few days has been extremely inconvenient. But some was very convenient. For instance, your sponsee coming to Clara’s party.”
“I didn’t know Lillian was even here,” said Suzanne. “I told you that.”
“True. But then you told us a lot of things. For instance, that you didn’t know who the famous line He’s a natural, producing art like it’s a bodily function was about. It was you.”
“You?” said Clara, turning to the lively woman beside her.
“That review was the last shove,” said Gamache. “After that you went into free-fall. And landed in AA, where you may or may not have changed. But you weren’t the only one of your group to lie.”
Gamache shifted his gaze to the man sitting beside Suzanne on the sofa. “You also lied, sir.”
Chief Justice Pineault looked amazed. “I lied? How?”
“It was, to be sure, more a sin of omission, but it was still a lie. You know André Castonguay, don’t you?”
“I can’t say.”
“Well, let me save you the trouble. Monsieur Castonguay had to stop drinking if he had any hope of keeping the Kelley Foods contract. As he himself said, they’re a notoriously sober company. And he was becoming notoriously inebriated. So he tried AA.”
“If you say,” said Thierry.
“When you arrived in Three Pines yesterday you spent an hour in Myrna’s bookstore. It’s a lovely store, but an hour seemed excessive. And then, when we sat outside you insisted on a table by the wall and sat with your back to the village.”
“It was a courtesy, Chief Inspector, to take the worst seat for myself.”
“It was also a convenience. You were hiding from someone. But then, at the end of our talk you got up and happily walked over to the B and B with Suzanne.”
Thierry Pineault and Suzanne exchanged looks.
“You were no longer hiding. I looked around and tried to figure out what had changed. And only one thing had. André Castonguay had left. He was making his drunken way back to the inn and spa.”
Chief Justice Pineault was giving nothing away. He stared, stone-faced, at Gamache.
“I made a small mistake tonight,” admitted Gamache. “When we arrived you and Castonguay were talking in the corner. You appeared to be arguing and I assumed it was about Clara’s art.”
He looked, and they followed his gaze, into the corner where the study of the hands was hanging.
“Désolé,” he said to Clara, who smiled.
“People argue about my art all the time. No harm done.”
But Gamache didn’t believe that. Harm had been done. A great deal of it.
“I was wrong, though,” the Chief continued. “You weren’t arguing about whether Clara’s art was any good, you were arguing about AA.”
“We weren’t arguing,” said Pineault. He took a deep breath. “We were discussing. It’s no use arguing with a drunk. And no use trying to sell someone on AA.”
“Besides,” said Gamache, “he’d already tried it.”
The two men stared at each other and finally Pineault nodded.
“He came in about a year ago, desperate to get sober,” Pineault admitted. “It didn’t work.”
“You knew him there,” said Gamache. “And I suspect you more than knew him.”
Again Pineault nodded. “He was my sponsee. I tried to help, but he couldn’t stop drinking.”
“When did he stop going to AA?” Gamache asked.
Pineault thought. “About three months ago. I tried calling him but he never returned my calls. Eventually I stopped, figuring he’d come back when he’d bottomed.”
“When you saw him here yesterday, drunk, you immediately appreciated the problem,” said Gamache.
“What problem?” asked Suzanne.
“When André joined our group he met a lot of people,” said Pineault. “Including Lillian. And she, of course, met him. And knew who he was right away. She told him about her art, and even showed him her portfolio. He told me about it, and I advised him not to pursue it. That men needed to stick with men, and besides, this wasn’t a networking opportunity.”
“Was talking about her art against the rules?” asked Gamache.
“There aren’t any rules,” said Thierry. “It’s just not a great idea. It’s hard enough getting sober without mixing in business.”
“But Lillian did,” said Gamache.
“I didn’t know about this,” said Suzanne. “If she’d told me I’d have told her to stop. Probably why she never told me.”
“Then André quit AA,” said Gamache, and Pineault nodded. “But there was a problem.”
“As you said, André had one big client,” said Thierry. “Kelley Foods. He lived in terror someone was going to tell them about his drinking.”
“But he couldn’t keep it secret for long,” said Myrna. “If his time here is anything to go by, he was drunk more than he was sober.”
“True,” said Thierry. “It was just a matter of time before André lost everything.”
“As soon as you saw him here you realized what might have happened,” said Gamache. “You listen to trials all the time, often murder trials. You put things together.”
Pineault seemed to be considering what to say next. Everyone naturally leaned forward, toward the Chief Justice. Drawn to the silence, and the promise of a story.
“I was afraid that Lillian had come to the party to confront him. That she’d met him in Clara’s garden and threatened to tell the Kelley people about his drinking unless André represented her,” said Pineault. “You saw him tonight. There’s no control left, of his drinking or his anger.”
When Pineault was silent for a few moments Gamache gently prodded.
“Go on.”
Still they waited. Their eyes wide, their breathing shallow.
“I was afraid Lillian had pushed him over the edge. Threatening blackmail.”
Pineault stopped again, and again, after an excruciating pause, Gamache prodded.
“Go on.”
“I was afraid he killed her. In a blackout probably. Probably couldn’t even remember doing it.”
Gamache wondered if a jury, or a judge, would believe that. And whether it would matter. He also wondered if anyone else had caught what he had.
The Chief Inspector waited.
“But,” said Clara, perplexed. “Didn’t Monsieur Castonguay just accuse you of stealing Lillian from him?”
She turned to Fran?ois Marois. The elderly art dealer was silent. Clara’s brows were drawn together in concentration. As she tried to figure it out. Her gaze shifted to Gamache.
“Have you seen Lillian’s art?”
He nodded.
“Was it that good? Worth fighting over?”
He nodded again.
Clara looked surprised, but accepted Gamache’s judgment. “So she wouldn’t have had to blackmail Castonguay. In fact, it sounds like Castonguay was desperate to sign Lillian. There’d be no need for her to confront him. He was sold, he wanted her art. Unless,” said Clara, making the connections, “that’s what pushed him over the edge.”
She looked at Gamache, but his face told her nothing. He was listening, attentive, but nothing more.
“Castonguay knew he’d lose Kelley,” said Clara, walking carefully through the facts. “Once he quit AA that was inevitable. His only hope was to find something to replace Kelley Foods. An artist. But not just anyone. They had to be brilliant. They’d save his gallery. His career. But it had to be someone no one else knew about. His own find.”
Around her there was silence. Even the rain had stopped, perhaps to better listen.
“Lillian and her art would save him,” Clara continued. “But Lillian did something Castonguay never expected. She did what she always did. She looked after herself. She spoke to Castonguay, but she also approached Monsieur Marois, the more powerful dealer.” Clara turned to Marois. “And you took her on.”
Fran?ois Marois’s face had slid from a benign, kindly smile to a sneer.
“Lillian Dyson was a grown woman. She wasn’t indentured to André,” said Marois. “She was free to choose whoever she wanted.”
“Castonguay saw her at the party here,” Clara continued, trying not to be intimidated by Marois’s glare. “He probably wanted a quiet word with her. He must have led her into our garden for privacy.”
They all imagined the scene. The fiddlers, the dancing and laughing.
Castonguay spots Lillian just arriving, coming down du Moulin from where she’d parked the car. He’s had a few drinks and hurries to intercept her. Anxious to pin down their deal before she gets a chance to speak to others at the party. All the dealers and curators and gallery owners.
He steers her into the nearest garden.
“He probably didn’t even realize it was ours,” said Clara. Still watching Gamache. And still he revealed nothing. Just listened.
They breathed silence. It felt as though the world had stopped, the world had shrunk. To this instant, and this place. And these words.
“Then Lillian told him that she’d signed with Fran?ois Marois.”
Clara stopped, seeing in her mind the stricken gallery owner. Well into his sixties, and ruined. A broken, drunken man. Given the final blow. And what does he do?
“She was his last hope,” said Clara softly. “And now it’s gone.”
“He’ll plead to diminished capacity or manslaughter,” said Chief Justice Pineault. “He must have been drunk at the time.”
“At the time of what?” asked Gamache.
“At the time he killed Lillian,” said Thierry.
“Oh, André Castonguay didn’t kill her. One of you did.”