TWENTY-THREE
“Where’re we going to stay?” Jean-Guy whispered.
They were heading back to the village of Baie-Saint-Paul, and reality. Leaving behind the cosmic in favor of down-to-earth concerns. Like food and shelter.
“I don’t know,” Gamache whispered back.
“Aren’t you worried?” Beauvoir asked.
“We can sleep in the car if we have to,” said Armand. “Not for the first time.”
“Sure, we can. But do we want to? We can’t do nothing, patron. We have to plan our next move. Clara’s a nice person, but this’s beyond her.”
“I wonder,” murmured Gamache, and turned to look out the window. And through it he saw stars. And the lights of Baie-Saint-Paul.
It was not possible to tell which was which. Which lights were celestial, which were of this earth.
“Where’re we going to stay?” Myrna whispered to Clara.
“I don’t know.”
Myrna nodded, and stared out the windshield at the starry, starry night.
She missed her loft. She missed her bed. She missed her tisane and chocolate chip cookies.
But she knew that Clara missed all those things too. And she also missed Peter. Peter, who’d suddenly felt both very, very close while they’d stood on that cliff, and very, very far away.
Myrna looked over at Clara. She was staring straight ahead, concentrating on the windy road. Trying to keep them on track.
Trying not to go over the edge.
Myrna leaned back in her seat and took a deep breath. And calmed herself by looking at the stars. Or at the lights of the village. She couldn’t quite tell which was which. And it didn’t matter. Both were calming.
As they got closer, the lights of Baie-Saint-Paul grew brighter and the stars dimmed. Then they were back at La Muse bistro. It was now nine in the evening and they were starving. They ordered dinner, and while Myrna stayed at their table, the other three walked up and down the streets, checking at the auberges and B and Bs to see if there were any cancellations.
There were not.
They returned just as their dinners arrived.
Steak frites all around, the steaks char-grilled and thick. The fries thin and seasoned.
Beauvoir, while no fan of sleeping in cars, wasn’t really worried. This was the great benefit of seeing worse. Fewer things worried him now.
“What next?” he asked as he took a forkful of tender steak and melting garlic butter.
“We know for sure Peter was here,” said Clara. “Now we need to know if he’s still here, and if not, where he went.”
By “what next” Jean-Guy had meant “what’s for dessert,” but he was happy to talk about the case. For case this was, in his mind. And, he could see, in the Chief’s as well.
There’d been no mistaking the look in Gamache’s eye as he’d surveyed the cliff. Once their awe had passed, the Chief’s brain had kicked in.
Scanning. Assessing.
Where could a body be? If a person fell? If a person was pushed?
Where would he end up?
When the meal was over and their coffees had arrived, Gamache turned to Clara.
“Would you like to hear what I think?”
She studied him for a moment. “Probably not, judging by your face.”
Gamache gave a curt nod of agreement. “I think we should speak to the local police. Get them involved.”
“In finding out where Peter might be staying?”
“In finding out where Peter might be,” said Gamache, his voice low, but firm. His eyes not leaving Clara.
Her face paled as his meaning sunk in.
“You think he’s dead?”
“I think he came here and painted those pictures. I think he mailed them to Bean. And then disappeared. That was months ago.”
Gamache was quiet for a moment. He looked down at his espresso, the crème caramel brown on top. Then he met her eyes once again.
“The woods are thick here,” he said.
Clara grew very, very still. “You don’t think we’ll ever find him.”
“It was months ago, Clara,” he repeated. “I hope I’m wrong. I hope we find him in a cabin somewhere. His beard bushy and his clothes covered in paint. Surrounded by canvases.” He held her eyes. “I hope.”
Clara looked over to Jean-Guy, who was also watching her. His face both boyish and grim.
Then to Myrna. Optimistic, hopeful, buoyant Myrna. She looked sad.
“You agree,” said Clara. She could see it in Myrna’s face.
“You must’ve known it was a possibility, Clara. You admitted you might not like what you find.”
“I thought I might find Peter happy on his own,” she said. “I thought I might even find him with another woman.” She looked around the table, at their faces. “But I always thought I’d find him. Alive.”
She was challenging them now. Daring them to argue with her.
When none did, she got up. “And I still do.”
Clara walked out of La Muse.
“Should we go after her?” Jean-Guy asked.
“No, give her time,” said Myrna.
Beauvoir watched as Clara walked up the road, her head down, like a torpedo. Tourists stepped out of her way just in time. And then she disappeared from view.
Beauvoir got up and wandered around the brasserie. There were paintings on the walls, with price tags slightly askew. From years of dusting. They were pretty landscapes, but in Charlevoix a painting needed to be more than that to sell.
If he hadn’t looked into the windows of the Galerie Gagnon, Jean-Guy might have thought these were quite good. But he had looked. And now he knew the difference. Part of him regretted that. He might now like better things, but he also liked fewer.
“Look who I found.”
Beauvoir heard Clara’s voice across the brasserie, heard the triumph, and turned quickly.
The man who’d spoken to them earlier at La Muse was standing beside her.
Beauvoir felt his heart, which had taken a great leap, simmer down. And he realized he’d actually thought she meant she’d found Peter.
“Madame Morrow called and told me of your plight,” the man said. And then he introduced himself. “Marcel Chartrand.” He shook their hands. “I run the Galerie Gagnon. I’ve come to take you home.”
* * *
By the time they got settled in Chartrand’s apartment above the Galerie Gagnon, it was approaching midnight.
He proved to be a gracious and accommodating host. Not everyone, Gamache knew, would welcome a call at eleven at night from a stranger asking for a place to stay. For herself and three friends.
But Marcel Chartrand had opened his home to them and was now pouring nightcaps as they relaxed in the living room.
He was either a saint, thought Gamache as he watched Chartrand chatting with Clara, or a man with his own agenda. Gamache had not forgotten the predatory look on Chartrand’s face when he’d first spotted them in La Muse.
First spotted Clara.
“This isn’t my main house,” said Chartrand. He’d brought out a plate of cookies, and after pouring cognacs for Clara and Myrna he offered a glass to Jean-Guy. When the younger man waved him aside, Chartrand moved on to Gamache. “I have a maison a few minutes away, toward Les éboulements.”
“Overlooking the St. Lawrence?” Gamache asked, also declining the drink.
“Oui, Chef,” said Chartrand, and poured himself a finger in the bottom of a bulbous glass.
It was not lost on either Gamache or Beauvoir that their host had just let slip that he knew precisely who his guests were. Or, at least, one of them.
“We were just there,” said Gamache. “Astonishing view of the river.”
“Yes. Breathtaking.”
Marcel Chartrand subsided into an armchair and crossed his legs. In repose he retained a bit of a smile. Not, Gamache thought, a smirk. While some faces relaxed into a slight look of censure, this man looked content.
His face, from a distance, was handsome, urbane. But close up his skin was scored with small lines. A weathered face. From time spent in the elements. Skiing or snowshoeing or chopping wood. Or standing on a precipice, looking at the great river. It was an honest face.
But was he an honest man? Gamache reserved judgment.
It was possible Chartrand was older than he first appeared. And yet there was an unmistakable vitality about the man.
Gamache wandered the room. The walls were thick fieldstone. Cool in summer and warm in winter. The windows were small and recessed and original to this old Québécois home. Chartrand clearly respected the past and the habitant who’d built this place by hand hundreds of years ago. It was made in a hurry, but with great care, to protect himself and his family from the elements. From the approaching winter. From the monster who marched down the great river, picking up ice and snow and bitter cold. Gaining in strength and power. So few early settlers survived. But whoever had built this home had. And the home was still offering shelter to those in need.
Behind him, Chartrand was offering Clara and Myrna another glass of cognac. Myrna declined, but Clara took a half shot.
“Perhaps to take to bed, with a cookie,” said Clara.
“There’s that pioneering spirit,” said Myrna.
The floors were original. Wide pine planks, made of trees that stood tall on this very site, and that now lay down. They were darkened by generations of smoky fires. Two sofas faced each other across the fireplace and an armchair faced the fire, a footstool in front of it, with books piled on a side table. Lamps softly lit the room.
But it was the walls that intrigued Gamache. He walked around them. Sometimes leaning closer, drawn into the original Krieghoff. The Lemieux. The Gagnon. And there, between two windows, was a tiny oil painting on wood.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Chartrand had come up behind Gamache. The Chief had sensed him there, but hadn’t taken his eyes off the painting. It was of a forest and a spit of rocks jutting into a lake. And a single tree clinging to the rocky outcropping, its branches sculpted by the relentless wind.
It was stunning in both its beauty and its desolation.
“Is this a Thomson?” Gamache asked.
“It is.”
“From Algonquin Park?”
The rugged landscape was unmistakable.
“Oui.”
“Mon dieu,” said Gamache on an exhale, aware that he was breathing on the same painting as the man who’d created it.
The two men stared at the tiny rectangle.
“When was it done?” Gamache asked.
“1917. The year he died,” said Chartrand.
“In the war?” asked Jean-Guy, who’d wandered over to join them.
“No,” said the gallery owner. “In an accident.”
Now Gamache straightened up and looked at Chartrand. “Do you believe that?”
“I want to. It would be horrible to think otherwise.”
Jean-Guy looked from Chartrand to Gamache. “There’s a question?”
“A small one,” said Gamache, walking back to the sofa, as though not wanting the painting to overhear their conversation.
“What question?”
“Tom Thomson painted mostly landscapes,” Chartrand explained. “His favorite subject was Algonquin Park, in Ontario. He seemed to like his solitude. He’d canoe and camp by himself, then trek out with the most wonderful paintings.”
He gestured toward the small one on his wall.
“Was he famous?” asked Beauvoir.
“No,” said Chartrand. “Not at the time. Not many knew him. Other painters, but not the public. Not yet.”
“It took his death for him to come to their attention,” said Gamache.
“Lucky for whoever had his paintings,” said Beauvoir.
“Lucky for his gallery owner,” Chartrand agreed.
“So what’s the mystery? How’d he die?”
“The official cause was drowning,” said Gamache. “But there was some question. Rumors persist even now that he was either murdered or killed himself.”
“Why would he do that?” Beauvoir asked.
They were sitting down, Gamache and Beauvoir on a sofa, Chartrand on his chair facing the empty fireplace.
“The theory is that Thomson was despondent because he wasn’t getting any recognition for his work,” said Chartrand.
“And the murder theory?” asked Beauvoir.
“Perhaps another artist, jealous of his talents,” said Chartrand.
“Or someone who owned a lot of his works,” said Gamache, looking directly at their host.
“Like his gallery owner?” Chartrand smiled in what appeared to be genuine amusement. “We are greedy, feral people. We love to screw both the artist and our clients. We’d do anything to acquire what we want. But perhaps not murder.”
Though Beauvoir and Gamache knew that was not true.
“Who’re you talking about?”
Clara and Myrna had been across the room admiring a Jean Paul Lemieux, but now Clara sat on the sofa opposite Gamache.
“Tom Thomson.” Chartrand waved toward the small painting, like a window on the wall that looked into another time, another world. But one not so unlike Charlevoix.
“Désolé,” said Gamache quietly, not taking his eyes off Clara. “That was insensitive.”
“Désolé?” asked Chartrand. He looked from one to the other, perplexed by the sudden intensity of emotion. “Why would it be upsetting?”
“My own husband is missing. That’s why we’re here.” Clara turned to Gamache. “Didn’t you ask him about Peter when you went to the gallery?”
“It was closed,” said Gamache. “I thought you discussed it when you called him up.”
“Why would I? I thought you’d already asked him and he didn’t know Peter.”
“Peter?” asked Chartrand, looking from one to the other.
“My husband. Peter Morrow.”
“Your husband’s Peter Morrow?” said Chartrand.
“You knew him?” Gamache asked.
“Bien s?r,” said Chartrand.
“Him or his art?” asked Myrna.
“Him, the man. He spent many hours in the gallery.”
Clara was stunned into silence, momentarily. And then questions jumbled together in her brain, and created a logjam. None able to escape. But finally, one popped out.
“When was this?”
Chartrand thought. “In April, I guess. Maybe a little later.”
“Did he stay with you?” asked Clara.
“Non. He rented a cabin down the road.”
“Is he still there?” She stood up as though about to leave.
Chartrand shook his head. “No. He left. I haven’t seen him in months. I’m sorry.”
“Where did he go?” Clara asked.
Chartrand faced her. “I don’t know.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” Gamache asked.
Chartrand thought about that. “It’s now early August. He left before the summer. In late spring, I think.”
“Are you sure he left?” Jean-Guy asked. “Did he tell you he was leaving?”
Chartrand looked like a punch-drunk boxer, staggering from questioner to questioner. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember.”
“Why can’t you remember?” asked Clara, her voice rising.
Chartrand appeared flustered, confused. “It didn’t seem important,” he tried to explain. “He wasn’t a close friend or anything. He was here one day, and not here the next.”
He looked from Clara to Gamache and back again.
“Is that why you invited us here?” Jean-Guy asked. “Because Peter had told you about her?”
He gestured toward Clara.
“I told you, I didn’t know he was her husband. I invited you here because it was late, the hotels are full and you needed a place to stay.”
“And because you recognized us,” said Gamache, not letting Chartrand get away with it. He might be a very, very good man. But he was also a not completely honest one.
“True. I know of you, Chief Inspector. We all do. From the news. And I knew Clara, from articles about her in the art magazines. I approached you in La Muse because…”
“Yes?”
“Because I thought you might make interesting conversation. That’s all.”
Gamache took in, yet again, the single, solitary chair. Which now seemed to envelop, consume, Marcel Chartrand. And Gamache wondered if it was that simple.
Did this man just want company? Someone he could talk to, and listen to?
Was it the art of conversation Marcel Chartrand finally yearned for? Would he trade these silent masterpieces for a single good friend?
Chartrand turned back to Clara.
“Peter never mentioned he had a wife. He lived the life of a religieux here. A monk.” Chartrand smiled reassuringly. “He’d visit me, but more for the company of my paintings than me. He’d take a meal at one of the diners in town. Rarely anything as fancy as La Muse. He spoke to almost no one. And then he’d go back to his cabin.”
“To paint,” said Clara.
“Perhaps.”
“Did he show you what he was working on?” Gamache asked.
Chartrand shook his head. “And I never asked to see it. I’m approached often enough, I don’t need to seek it out. Except on rare occasions.”
He turned back to Clara. “What you said at La Muse earlier today, about Gagnon stripping the skin off the land and painting the muscle, the veins, was exactly right. Far from being ugly or gruesome, what he painted was the wonder of the place. The heart and soul of the place. He painted what so few really see. He must’ve had a very powerful muse to let him get so deep.”
“Who was Gagnon’s muse?” Gamache asked.
“Oh, I didn’t mean a person.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“Nature. I think like Tom Thomson, Clarence Gagnon’s muse was Nature herself. Doesn’t get more powerful than that.” He turned back to Clara. “What Gagnon did for landscapes, you do for people. Their face, their skin, their veneer is there for the outside world. But you also paint their interiors. It’s a rare gift, madame. I hope I haven’t embarrassed you.”
It was clear he had.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I promised myself I wouldn’t mention your work. You must get it all the time. Forgive me. And you have more pressing concerns. How can I help?”
He turned from Clara to Gamache.
“Did you know Peter’s earlier works?” Gamache asked.
“I knew he was an artist and a successful one. I can’t say I remember seeing any particular painting.”
Chartrand’s voice had changed. Still gracious, there was now a distance. He was talking business.
“Did you talk to him about his work?” Clara asked.
“No. He never asked for my opinion and I never volunteered.”
But they had only his word for that, thought Gamache. And the Chief already knew Chartrand was not always completely honest.