TWENTY-TWO
‘Who do you think killed CC?’ Myrna asked, licking her fork and taking a sip of rich dark coffee. The combination of freshly ground and brewed coffee and chocolate fudge cake made Myrna almost light-headed.
‘I think I first have to figure out who she was,’ admitted Gamache. ‘I think the murderer is hiding in her past.’ He told them then about CC and her fantasy world. Like a storyteller of old, Gamache spoke, his voice deep and calm. The friends formed a circle, their faces glowing amber in the light from the fireplace. They ate their cake and sipped their coffee, their eyes growing wider and wider as the depth of the mystery and deceit became clear.
‘So she wasn’t who she pretended to be,’ said Clara when he’d finished. She hoped triumph wasn’t evident in her voice. CC was nuts after all.
‘But why choose them as parents?’ Myrna jerked her head toward the TV.
‘Don’t know. Do you have any theories?’
Everyone thought.
‘It’s not unusual for children to believe they were adopted,’ said Myrna. ‘Even happy children go through that stage.’
‘That’s true,’ said Clara. ‘I remember believing my real mother was the Queen of England and she’d farmed me out to the colonies to be raised a commoner. Every time the doorbell rang I’d think it was her, come to get me.’
Clara still remembered the fantasy of Queen Elizabeth standing on the stoop of her modest home in the Notre Dame de Grace quartier of Montreal, the neighbors craning to get a load of the Queen in her crown and long purple robes. And handbag. Clara knew what the Queen kept in that handbag. A picture of her, and a plane ticket to bring her home.
‘But,’ said Peter, ‘you grew out of it.’
‘True,’ said Clara, lying just a little, ‘though it was replaced by other fantasies.’
‘Oh, please. Heterosexual fantasies have no place at the dinner table,’ said Gabri.
But Clara’s adult dream world had nothing to do with sex.
‘And that’s the trouble,’ said Gamache. ‘I agree as children we all created worlds of our own. Cowboys and Indians, space explorers, princes and princesses.’
‘Shall I tell you mine?’ Gabri offered.
‘Please, dear Lord, let the house explode now,’ said Ruth.
‘I used to dream I was straight.’
The simple and devastating sentence sat in the middle of their circle.
‘I used to dream I was popular,’ said Ruth into the silence. ‘And pretty.’
‘I used to dream I was white,’ said Myrna. ‘And thin.’
Peter remained mute. He couldn’t remember any fantasies he’d had as a child. Coping with reality had taken up too much of his mind.
‘And you?’ Ruth asked Gamache.
‘I used to dream I’d saved my parents,’ he said, remembering the little boy looking out the living-room window, leaning over the back of the sofa, resting his cheek on the nubbly fabric. Sometimes, when the winter wind blew, he could still feel it rough against his cheek. Whenever his parents went out for dinner he’d wait, looking into the night for the headlights. And every night they came home. Except one.
‘We all have our fantasies,’ said Myrna. ‘Was CC any different?’
‘There is one difference,’ said Gamache. ‘Do you still want to be white and thin?’
Myrna laughed heartily. ‘No way. Would never occur to me now.’
‘Or straight?’ he asked Gabri.
‘Olivier would kill me.’
‘Eventually, for better or worse, our childhood fantasies disappear or are replaced by others. But not CC. That’s the difference. She seemed to believe them, even to the extent of choosing the name de Poitiers. We don’t even know what her real name was.’
‘I wonder who her parents were?’ said Gabri. ‘She was in her late forties, right? So they’d probably be in their seventies at least. Like you.’ Gabri turned to Ruth, who waited a moment then spoke.
‘Long dead and buried in another town,
my mother hasn’t finished with me yet.’
‘From a poem?’ Gamache asked when Ruth had finished. It sounded familiar.
‘You think?’ said Ruth with a snarl.
‘When my death us do part
Then shall forgiven and forgiving meet again,
Or will it be, as always was, too late?’