TWENTY-FIVE
Clara Morrow dragged her hands through her hair and stared at the work on the easel. How had it gone from brilliant to crap so quickly? She picked up her brush again, then put it down. She needed a finer one. Finding it she dabbed it in the green oil paint, gave it just a touch of yellow and approached the painting.
But she couldn’t. She no longer knew what she wanted to do.
Clara’s hair stood out at the sides of her head with streaks of blue and yellow paint in it. She could have made a living as Clara the Clown. Even her face was streaked with color, though her eyes would scare any child who came close.
Haunted, fearful eyes. Less than a week now before Denis Fortin showed up. He’d called that morning and said he’d like to bring some colleagues with him. Colleagues was a word that always excited and intrigued Clara. Painters didn’t have colleagues. Most barely had friends. But now she hated the word. Hated the phone. And hated the thing on the easel that was supposed to lift her from obscurity and make the art world finally take notice.
Clara backed away from the easel, afraid of her work.
‘Look at this.’ Peter’s head appeared at her door. She’d have to consider closing it, she thought. No more interruptions. She never interrupted him when he was working so why did he think it was OK to not only speak to her, but expect her to leave the studio to look at what? A piece of bread with a hole in it that looked like the Queen? Lucy lying with her head under the carpet? A cardinal at their bird feeder?
Anything, as long as it was insignificant, was reason enough for Peter to interrupt her work. But she knew she was being unfair. If she knew one thing it was that Peter, while not necessarily understanding her work, was her biggest supporter.
‘Come on, quick.’ He gestured to her excitedly and disappeared.
Clara took off her pinafore, smearing oil paint on her shirt as she did, and left the studio, trying to ignore the relief she felt as she turned off the light.
‘Look.’ Peter practically dragged her over to the window.
There was Ruth on the village green, talking to someone. Only she was alone. There was nothing odd about that. It actually would have been strange had there been someone willing to listen to her.
‘Wait for it.’ Peter could sense her impatience. ‘Look,’ he said triumphantly.
Ruth said one last thing then turned and walked very slowly back across the green toward her home, carrying a canvas bag of groceries. As she walked two rocks seemed to move with her. Clara looked more closely. They were fuzzy sort of rocks. Birds. Probably the ubiquitous chickadees. Then the one in front flapped its wings and lifted up a little.
‘Ducks,’ said Clara, smiling, the tension disappearing as she watched Ruth and her two ducklings walk in line back to the small home on the other side of the green.
‘I didn’t see her go across to Monsieur Béliveau’s for groceries, but Gabri did. He called and told me to look. Apparently the little guys waited outside the store for her, then followed her to the green.’
‘I wonder what she was saying to them.’
‘Probably teaching them to swear. Can you imagine? Our own little tourist destination, the village with ducks that speak.’
‘And what would they say?’ Clara looked at Peter with amusement.
‘Fuck!’ they both said at once.
‘Only a poet would have a duck that said fuck,’ said Clara, laughing. Then she noticed the S?reté officers leaving the bistro and heading to the old railway station. She was considering going over to say hello, and maybe picking up some information, when she saw Inspector Beauvoir take Chief Inspector Gamache aside. From what Clara could see the younger man was talking and gesturing and the Chief Inspector was listening.
‘Is that what you’re doing?’ Beauvoir tried to keep his voice down. He reached into Gamache’s jacket and took the folded newspaper from where it protruded from his pocket. ‘This isn’t nothing. It’s something, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Gamache admitted.
‘It’s Arnot, isn’t it? It’s always fucking Arnot.’ Beauvoir’s voice was getting louder.
‘You need to trust me with this, Jean Guy. This Arnot thing has been around far too long. Time to stop it.’
‘But you’re not doing anything. He’s brought the fight to you, with this.’ Beauvoir waved the paper.
From their window Peter and Clara saw the newspaper waved like a baton. Clara knew if they were watching so were others. Gamache and Beauvoir could not have chosen a more public place for their argument.
‘You’ve known for months, years, that it wasn’t over,’ continued Beauvoir. ‘But still you stayed silent. You’re no longer consulted on major decisions—’
‘But that’s different. The senior officers aren’t doing that because they agree with Arnot. They’re punishing me for going against their decision. You know that. It’s different.’
‘But it’s not right.’
‘You think not? Do you really think when I arrested Arnot I didn’t expect this to happen?’ Now Beauvoir’s arm stopped flapping and he grew very still. Gamache seemed to envelop him in a sort of bubble. His brown eyes were so intense, his voice so deep and forceful. He held Beauvoir there, riveted. ‘I knew that it would happen. The senior council couldn’t allow me to disobey orders and get away with it. This is their punishment. And it’s right. Just as what I did was right. Don’t confuse the two, Jean Guy. The fact that I’ll never get another promotion, the fact I’m not involved in deciding the direction of the S?reté any more, is not important. I saw that coming.’
Gamache reached out and took the newspaper from Beauvoir and held it gently in his large hands. He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. Nothing in Three Pines moved. It was as though the squirrels and chipmunks and even the birds were straining to hear. And he knew perfectly well the people were.
‘This is different.’ He held the paper up. ‘This is the work of Pierre Arnot and the people still loyal to him. This is revenge, not censure. This isn’t S?reté policy.’
Let’s hope not, thought Beauvoir.