TWENTY-TWO
“Now what?” asked Jean-Guy.
He’d naturally turned to Gamache, but the Chief deflected the question over to Clara.
They’d gone around to all the B and Bs in Baie-Saint-Paul. All the country auberges. All the hotels, both shabby and high-end.
No Peter.
To make matters worse, Baie-Saint-Paul was enjoying the height of the summer tourist crush, and it became clear that while they were having trouble finding Peter, they would also have trouble finding a place to stay that night.
Clara looked this way and that, up and down the crowded main street. It was hot and she was frustrated. She’d thought they’d drive into Baie-Saint-Paul and find Peter standing on a street corner. Waiting.
“Can I make a suggestion?” Myrna said, and Clara nodded, grateful for the help. “I think we need to regroup. We have to find someplace to sit down and think.”
She looked around at the crowded terrasses and the happy tourists eating and drinking and laughing. It was all very annoying.
“We’ve thought enough,” said Clara. “That’s all we did for days and days in Three Pines. Now we need to act.”
“Thinking is an action,” said Gamache from a few paces away. “Running around might feel good, but it accomplishes nothing. And at this stage, wasting time is doing damage.”
“He’s right,” Myrna said, and received a filthy look from Clara.
“I have to use the toilet.”
“You said that all the way here,” snapped Clara.
“Well, this time it’s true.”
They turned to look at Jean-Guy, who was shifting from one foot to the other.
Clara surrendered. “Oh, Christ. Okay. Let’s regroup.”
“This way.” Jean-Guy pointed and led them down a slight hill, along a narrow side street, taking them further and further away from the tourist hubbub.
These streets, not much more than alleyways, were lined with row homes and old-fashioned, unfashionable businesses. Hardware stores, family-run drugstores, dépanneurs selling cigarettes and lottery tickets and soft, white POM bakery bread. Every now and then they caught a glimpse of grayish blue between the bright clapboard and fieldstone buildings. The river. So vast, so wide it looked like the ocean. Jean-Guy Beauvoir led them away from the tourist crush, into an area only locals knew.
“Over here.”
They followed Beauvoir to a shabby inn.
“But we’ve already asked here,” said Clara. “Haven’t we?”
She turned around. Beauvoir’s serpentine route had disoriented her.
“Oui,” he said. “But we came in the front way. This is the back.”
“And you expect a different answer depending on which door we go through?” asked Myrna. “I suspect Peter still isn’t here, even if we climb in through the window.”
Which, she thought, they might have to do if they didn’t find a place for the night soon.
“We’re asking a different question.” Beauvoir now looked like his hair was on fire. “Through here.”
He led them through a small archway, and suddenly they were confronted with the thing only hinted at through the cracks between buildings. Like catching glimpses of a huge creature, but just its tail, or nose, or teeth.
But here it was before them, exploding into view as they walked through the archway.
The St. Lawrence River. Magnificent, wild, eternal. Fought over, painted, turned into poetry and music. It stretched into infinity before them.
“Where’re the toilets?” Beauvoir asked a server who came out onto the hidden terrace. Not waiting for an answer, Jean-Guy disappeared inside.
Only one other table was occupied in this small fieldstone courtyard. Two locals drank beer, smoked pungent Gitanes and played backgammon. They looked at the newcomers with vague interest, then went back to their game.
Clara chose a table right up against the wooden railing. On the other side was a sheer drop. And uninterrupted views of the baie of Baie-Saint-Paul.
They ordered iced teas and nachos.
Clara looked down at the place mat in front of her. As in many restaurants and brasseries across Québec, the place mat had a schematic of the village, not to scale, showing its history, as well as spots of interest and businesses. Inns, restaurants, galleries, and boutiques that had paid to be placed on the tourist map.
Peter had been here. Perhaps not to this very terrasse, but to this area.
“I’d forgotten that Cirque du Soleil started in Baie-Saint-Paul,” said Myrna, reading her place mat. “Some places are like that.”
“Like what?” asked Jean-Guy, returning from the toilet.
“Hot spots,” said Myrna. “Of creativity. Of creation. Three Pines is one. Charlevoix is obviously another.”
“I see there was a syphilis epidemic in the late seventeen hundreds,” said Jean-Guy, reading the place mat. “Called the Evil of Baie-Saint-Paul. Quite a little hot spot.”
He helped himself to nachos.
“How’d you know this terrasse was here?” Clara asked.
“It’s my superpower.”
“Jean-Guy Beauvoir,” said Gamache. “Boy Wonder.”
“They think we’re the sidekicks,” Beauvoir whispered to Myrna.
“Oh, how I’d love to get you on my couch,” she replied.
“Get in line, sister.”
Myrna laughed.
“I have an uncanny ability to find bathrooms,” he said.
“Seems a limited sort of superpower,” said Myrna.
“Yeah, well, if you really had to go, which power would you rather have? Flight? Invisibility? Or the ability to find a toilet?”
“Invisibility might be useful, but point taken, Kato.”
“I told you, I’m not the sidekick.” He gestured surreptitiously toward Gamache.
“Have you been here before?” Clara asked. “Is that how you knew?”
“Non.” He looked out across the ravine and seemed momentarily caught by the view. Then he returned his eyes to Clara. And in them she saw trees on the shoreline desperate for root. And an endless river.
“It’s not magic, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said. “I could tell there was a drop-off, and when we first came here I suspected no innkeeper would have access to this view and not take advantage of it.”
“You guessed?” asked Myrna.
“Yes.”
But both women knew it wasn’t really a guess. Jean-Guy Beauvoir might behave like a boy wonder, a sidekick. But they of all people knew that was just the fa?ade. He too had an archway, and a secret courtyard. And views he kept hidden.
They sipped their drinks and caught their breath.
“Now what?” Myrna asked.
“We’ve been to the inns and B and Bs,” said Clara, ticking off the hotels on the place mat. “We’ve shown Peter’s picture around. Now we need to take around his paintings.”
She pointed to the rolled-up canvases on the table.
“To innkeepers?” asked Jean-Guy.
“No. The galleries. Baie-Saint-Paul is thick with them.” Again she gestured toward the place mat. “If Peter is here, he probably visited one or more.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Jean-Guy, not bothering to disguise his surprise.
“You two go to the ones on this side of Baie-Saint-Paul.” She drew a circle on the place mat. “And we’ll take the other.” She looked at her watch. It was nearing five. Nearing closing time. “We need to hurry.”
She got up and they all took their place mats.
“Where should we meet?” Myrna asked.
“Here.”
Clara’s finger fell onto a brasserie in the center of town.
La Muse.
Myrna and Clara took two of Peter’s paintings, including the one with the lips. Jean-Guy picked up the one that was left and examined it, not at all sure which way was up.
He looked, briefly, from the painting to the view, and back to the painting.
And shook his head.
How does that become this? he wondered. Perhaps, he thought, as he rolled up the canvas and followed the others back through the archway, he was the boy wonder after all.
There was, in Beauvoir’s opinion, a great deal to wonder about.
* * *
Gamache and Jean-Guy were the first to make it back to La Muse.
Two of the five galleries in their area were already closed by the time they got there, including the Galerie Gagnon.
Gamache adored the works of Clarence Gagnon and was pleased that Clara had given them the territory that included the gallery dedicated to the Québécois artist. But Gamache could only peer through the front window, the paintings tantalizingly close.
Jean-Guy had gone to the back door and pounded, hoping the curator or someone else would still be there, but it was locked up tight.
Now, sitting on the verandah of La Muse, Gamache realized why he felt so relaxed here.
He was, essentially, sitting in a Clarence Gagnon painting, not unlike the one he’d seen on the wall of Peter’s mother’s home. Lucky man, Peter, to have been raised with a Gagnon. Though he’d also been raised with a gorgon. Not so lucky.
Gamache squinted slightly. If he took away the people, it would look almost exactly like the works the old master had painted of Baie-Saint-Paul more than seventy years ago. The brightly colored homes lining the village street. The sweep and swoop of the mansard roofs. The pointy dormers. The tall spires of the churches in the background. It was quaint and comforting and very Québécois.
All that was missing was a workhorse pulling a cart in the background, or kids playing. Or snow. So many of Gagnon’s works featured snow. And yet the images were far from frigid.
He called Reine-Marie and brought her up to speed on the search.
“And the other three galleries?” she’d asked.
“Two were really more framing places, but we asked anyway and they didn’t know Peter and showed no interest in the painting. The other carried works by contemporary local artists. Some really wonderful pieces.”
“But no Peter Morrow?”
“No. The owner hadn’t even heard of him.”
“Did you show him Peter’s canvas?” Reine-Marie asked.
“Yes. He was…” Gamache searched for the word.
“Repulsed?”
Armand laughed. “Polite. He was polite.”
He heard Reine-Marie groan.
“It is worse, isn’t it?” he said.
“Have you found a place to stay yet?”
“No. Jean-Guy’s gone off to see if there’ve been any cancellations. I’ll let you know.”
“And do you have a plan B?” she asked.
“As a matter of fact, I do. There’s a very nice park bench across the way,” he said.
“Vagrancy. My mother said it would come to this. I’m sitting on our porch with a gin and tonic and some old cheese.”
“And me,” came a familiar voice.
“You’re the ‘some old cheese,’” said Reine-Marie, and Gamache heard Ruth’s grinding laugh. “She’s been telling me all about her misspent youth. Did you know she was—”
And they got cut off.
Gamache stared at his phone and smiled. He suspected Reine-Marie had hung up on purpose, to tease him. A minute later he received an email saying she loved him and to hurry home.
“Nothing, patron,” said Beauvoir, taking his seat beside the Chief.
Nothing. Their search of Baie-Saint-Paul had yielded no Peter, no sign of Peter and no bed for the night. This might not, Gamache thought, have been his very best idea.
Jean-Guy nudged him and pointed down the winding street. Clara and Myrna were walking quickly toward them. Clara was waving the rolled-up canvases and both men could see both women were pleased.
Something. Finally something. Beauvoir was so relieved he forgot to be annoyed that Clara and Myrna were the ones who’d found something.
They joined the men on the terrasse of La Muse and Clara wasted no time. She unrolled one of Peter’s paintings, while Myrna unfolded a map of Charlevoix.
“There.” Clara’s finger, like a bolt of lightning, hit the map. “This is where Peter painted that.”
They looked from the map to the lip painting, then back again.
“One of the galleries told you?” Gamache asked.
As he looked up from the map, he noticed a man across the terrasse staring at them. The man quickly looked away as soon as Gamache met his eyes.
The former Chief Inspector was used to that, after all the times he’d been on the news. Still, Gamache had the impression the man wasn’t so much staring at him as past him, to Clara.
“No, the galleries were mostly closed,” Clara was saying. “Myrna and I were on our way here when I suddenly thought about someone else to ask.”
“Who?” asked Beauvoir.
Gamache listened, but kept the man in his peripheral vision. He was again staring in their direction.
“Those two old guys playing backgammon,” said Myrna. “They looked like they’d been here forever—”
“And they have been.” Clara picked up the story. “Their families have been here for generations. As far back as anyone can remember. They even knew Clarence Gagnon. Split his wood for him when they were kids.” She was silent for a moment. “Imagine meeting Gagnon? He painted villages and landscapes, but unlike anything that was being done at the time. It was like Gagnon stripped the skin off the world and painted the muscle and sinew and veins of a place. I make it sound grotesque, but you know what I mean.”
“I know.”
But it wasn’t one of her companions who’d spoken. It was the man across the terrasse.
As Clara was talking, Gamache had noticed the man get up, drop some money on his table and then walk in their direction.
Gamache could see that Jean-Guy had also noticed. And was watching. Wary. Ready.
“Excusez-moi.” The man was now standing beside their table. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”
He was casually dressed, but Gamache recognized the good cut of his shirt and trousers. Fifty years old, Gamache guessed, perhaps slightly younger.
The man looked at each of them, politely. His eyes paused on Gamache and there was a flicker of interest. But then his gaze came to rest on Clara.
“I heard you speak of Clarence Gagnon and wanted to introduce myself. I too am a fan of Gagnon’s works. May I join you?”
He was slightly shorter than Gamache, and slender. He wore glasses and behind those glasses were intelligent blue eyes.
Clara got up and smiled at him.
“I’m afraid we have to leave.”
“If there’s anything I can do during your stay in Baie-Saint-Paul, please let me know.”
He handed her a card.
“It would be a pleasure to talk. To compare thoughts on art,” he said, and with unexpected dignity, he bowed slightly and said, “Au revoir.”
Gamache watched him leave. And he watched Clara place his card in her pocket.
“Coming?” Myrna grabbed the paintings and the map from the table.
Within minutes they were driving out of Baie-Saint-Paul, heading east. But not along the well-traveled highway 138. Instead, Clara turned the car slightly south. Toward the river. And then along a much narrower, less-traveled road.
Highway 362 hugged the cliffs and followed the St. Lawrence. And just before the village of Les éboulements, she pulled over.
She knew it was obscenely stupid, but she half expected to see Peter silhouetted against the early evening sky. Standing at his easel. Painting.
And waiting. For her. As she’d waited for him weeks ago in their garden.
There was no Peter, but there was something else.
They got out of the car and Myrna reached over for Peter’s canvases, then stopped. She, Clara, Armand, and Jean-Guy took a few steps forward.
There was no need to consult the paintings. They were here. This was where Peter had stood.
The St. Lawrence stretched before them, even more magnificent than in the village. Here the grandeur, the wild splendor of the place was both obvious and impossible.
The four friends stood side by side on the bluff.
It was here, on this very spot, that a meteor had hurtled to earth. Had hit the earth. Three hundred million years ago. It had struck with such force it killed everything beneath it, and for miles and miles around. It struck with such violence that even now the impact site could be seen from space.
Earth, thrown up in waves, had petrified there, forming smooth mountains and a deep crater.
Nothing lived. All life was extinguished. The earth laid to waste. For thousands of years. Hundreds of thousands of years. Millions of years.
Barren. Empty. Nothing.
And then. And then. First water, then plants, then fish. Then trees started to grow, in the rich soil. Bugs, flies, bats, birds, bear, moose, deer.
What had been a wasteland became a cauldron, a crucible of life. So rich, so diverse, it created an ecosystem unique in the world.
Porpoises, seals, blue whales.
Men. Women. Children.
All drawn here. All made their home here. In the crater.
This was Charlevoix.
This was where the four friends stood, in search of a fifth. Below them the river wound into and over and past the wound in the earth. Where all life ended. And began, again.
A terrible impact had created one of the most magical, most remarkable places on earth.
That’s what Peter had tried to capture. This catastrophe. This miracle.
Armand Gamache turned, slowly, full circle. Like Clara, he half expected to see Peter Morrow watching them.
Peter had traveled from Scotland to here. From cosmic speculation to cosmic fact. A purely rational man was chasing the magical. Had tried to paint it.
As Gamache looked over the cliff to the St. Lawrence, the setting sun caught the waves of the great river, turning their foaming crests bright red. Turning them into frowns, then smiles. Then frowns. That morphed again into brilliant, giddy red smiles. A river of eternal emotion.
Gamache stood, captivated. He sensed more than saw Clara and Myrna and Jean-Guy beside him, also staring. Astonished.
They watched until the sun had set and all that was left was a dark river and a pink glow in the sky.
Peter had been here. He’d committed this sight to canvas, as best he could. Trying to record wonder. Awe. Not just beauty, but glory.
And he’d mailed it off. Away from here. Why?
And where was he now? Had he moved on, heading deeper into his own wound? Still searching?
Or— Gamache stared into the crater. Had Peter never left? Was he with them now, lying in the woods at the bottom of the cliff? Becoming part of the landscape? His silence profound because it was now unending?
Beside him, Clara stared at the river Peter had painted, and let the emotions roll over her. Her own, and his. She felt Peter very keenly.
Not his presence but his absence.