“When did you know it was over?” he asked.
“The marriage?” Clara considered. “Probably a while before I actually faced it. It sorta grows in the gut. But I wasn’t sure. It seemed impossible that what I was feeling from Peter was real. And it was a confusing time, so much was happening. And Peter had always been so supportive.”
“When you were failing,” said Myrna quietly.
They were standing in the kitchen now. There were no paintings on the walls, but the windows acted as works of art, framing the view of Three Pines out the front, and the garden out the back.
Clara looked like she was going to take exception to what Myrna said, but then didn’t. Instead she nodded.
“Funny, I’m so used to defending Peter, I do it even now. But you’re right. He never understood my art. He tolerated it. What he couldn’t tolerate was my success.”
“That must’ve hurt,” said Beauvoir.
“It was shattering, inconceivable.”
“No, I meant it must have hurt him,” said Beauvoir.
Clara looked at him. “I guess.”
She looked at Beauvoir and knew he knew how that felt. To turn against people you’d loved. To see allies as threats and friends as enemies. To be eaten alive. From within.
“Did you talk to him about it?” asked Gamache.
“I tried, but he always denied it. Told me I was insecure, too sensitive. And I believed him.” She shook her head. “But then it became so obvious even I couldn’t deny it.”
“And when was that?” Gamache asked.
“I think you know. You were there. It was last year, when I had the solo show at the Musée d’art contemporain in Montréal.”
The pinnacle of her career. What every artist dreamed of happening. And on the surface, Peter had been pleased for his wife, accompanying her to the
vernissage.
A smile on his handsome face. And a stone in his heart.
That’s what the end so often looked like, Gamache knew. Not the smile, not even the stone, but the crevice in between.
“Let’s get some fresh air,” said Myrna, opening the back door into the garden. She joined them a few minutes later with a platter of sandwiches and a pitcher of iced tea.
They sat in the shade of a grove of maples, their four Adirondack chairs like the points of a compass, Gamache realized.
The Chief leaned forward and chose a sandwich, then slid back in his chair.
“You asked Peter to leave shortly after your solo show opened last year,” he said, chasing the bite with a sip of iced tea.
“After an argument that lasted all day and night,” Clara said. “I was exhausted and finally fell asleep at about three in the morning. When I woke up Peter wasn’t in bed anymore.”
“He’d left?” asked Beauvoir. He’d already finished most of his baguette, filled with paté and chutney. The iced tea perspired on the arm of his chair.
“No. He was against the wall of our bedroom, his knees up to his chin. Staring. I thought he’d had a breakdown.”
“Had he?” asked Myrna.
“I guess, of sorts. Maybe more a breakthrough. He said it came to him in the middle of the night that he’d never been jealous of my art.”
Myrna snorted into her glass, sending tea onto her nose.
“I know,” said Clara. “I didn’t believe him either. And then we fought some more.” She sounded weary to the bone as she described it.
Gamache had been listening closely. “If he wasn’t jealous of your art, then what did he say was the problem?”
“Me, I was the problem,” said Clara. “He was jealous of me. Not that I painted friendship and love and hope, but that I felt them.”
“And he didn’t,” said Myrna. Clara nodded.
“He realized in the night that he’d been pretending all his life and that deep down there was nothing. Just a hole. Which was why his paintings had no substance.”
“Because he had no substance,” said Gamache.
Their little circle fell silent. Bees buzzed in and out of the roses and tall foxglove. Flies tried to drag crispy baguette shards off the empty plates. The Rivière Bella Bella bubbled by.
And they considered a man who had a hole where his core should have been.
“Is that why he left?” asked Myrna, finally.
“He left because I told him to. But…”
They waited.
Clara looked across the garden so that they could only see her in profile.
“I expected him back.” She smiled suddenly and looked at them. “I thought he’d miss me. I thought he’d be lonely and lost without me. And he’d realize what he had, with me. I thought he’d come home.”
“What did you say to him exactly?” asked Beauvoir. “The morning he left?”
His notebook had replaced the empty plate on the arm of the chair.
“I told him he had to go, but that he should come back in a year and we could see where we were each at.”
“Did you say a year exactly?”
Clara nodded.
“I’m sorry to keep going over this,” said Beauvoir, “but this is crucial. Did you set a date? You did say a year exactly?”
“Exactly.”
“And when was he supposed to come back?”
She told him and Beauvoir did a quick calculation.
“In your opinion, did Peter take that in?” Gamache asked. “His world was collapsing around him. Is it possible he was nodding and appearing to understand, but he was really in shock?”
Clara thought about that. “I suppose it’s possible, but we talked about having dinner together. We actually planned it. It wasn’t a passing comment.”
She fell silent. Remembering sitting in that very chair. The steaks ready. The salad made. The wine chilled.
The croissants in the paper bag on the kitchen counter.
Waiting.
“Where was he headed that day he left?” asked Gamache. “To Montréal? To his family?”
“I think that’s unlikely, don’t you?” said Clara, and Gamache, who’d met Peter’s family, had to agree. If Peter Morrow had a hole where his soul should be, his family had put it there.
“When he didn’t show up, did you get in touch with them?” asked Gamache.
“Not yet,” said Clara. “I’ve been saving that little treat.”
“Do you have any idea what Peter would’ve been doing in the past year?” Beauvoir asked.
“Painting probably. What else?”
Gamache nodded. What else? Without Clara, there was only one thing left in Peter Morrow’s life, and that was art.
“Where would he have gone?” Gamache asked.
“I wish I knew.”
“Was there some place Peter always dreamed of visiting?” he asked.
“Because of the kind of paintings he did, the location wasn’t important,” said Clara. “He could do them anywhere.” She paused for a moment, thinking. “
I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country
.”
She turned to Gamache. “When I said that this morning, I wasn’t thinking of you, you know. I know you’re a brave man. I was thinking of Peter. I’ve prayed every day that he grows up. And becomes a brave man.”
Armand Gamache leaned back in his chair, the wooden slats warm against his shirt, and thought about that. And wondered where Peter had gone. And what he’d found.
And whether he’d had to be brave.
SEVEN
The ugliest man alive opened the door and gave Gamache a grotesque smile.
“Armand.” He held out his hand and Gamache took it.
“Monsieur Finney,” said the Chief.
Bowed by arthritis, the elderly man’s body was twisted and humped.
With effort, Gamache held Finney’s eyes, or at least one of them. And even that was no mean feat. Finney’s protruding eyes rolled in all directions, as though in perpetual disapproval. The only thing stopping them from rolling together was his bulbous purple nose, a venous Maginot Line, with vast trenches on either side from which a war on life was being waged and lost.
“
Comment allez-vous?
” asked Gamache, losing his hold on the wild eye.
“I’m doing well,
merci
. You?” Monsieur Finney asked. His eyes spun swiftly over the large man who towered over him. Scanning him. “You’re looking well.”
But before Gamache could answer, a pleasant singsong voice came down the hallway.
“Bert, who is it?”
“It’s Peter’s friend. Armand Gamache.” Monsieur Finney stepped back to allow Armand into the Montréal home belonging to Peter Morrow’s mother and stepfather.
“Oh, how nice.”
Bert Finney turned to their guest. “Irene will be happy to see you.”
He smiled, the sort of grin that wide-eyed children imagined beneath their beds at night.
But the real nightmare was yet to come.
When Gamache had been so gravely injured, he’d received among thousands of cards a beautiful one signed by Irene and Bert Finney. Grateful for the card, the Chief Inspector nevertheless understood that courtesy should not be mistaken for genuine kindness. One was nurture, a polite upbringing. The other was nature.
One of these two was courteous. The other kind. And Gamache had a pretty good idea which was which.
He followed Finney down the hall and into a light-filled living room. The furniture was a mix of British antiques and fine Québec pine. The Chief, a great admirer of both the early Québécois and the furniture they made, tried not to stare.
A comfortable sofa was slipcovered in a cheerful but muted pattern, and on the walls he saw works by some of the most prominent Canadian artists. Jean Paul Lemieux, A. Y. Jackson, Clarence Gagnon.
But not a single Peter Morrow. Nor was there a work by Clara.
“
Bonjour.
”
The Chief walked across the room to the chair by the window and the elderly woman who sat there. Irene Finney. Peter’s mother.
Her silken white hair was done in a loose bun, so that it framed her face. Her eyes were of the clearest blue. Her skin was pink and tender and scored with wrinkles. She wore a loose dress on her plump body and a kindly expression on her face.
“Monsieur Gamache.” Her voice was welcoming. She held up one hand and he took it, bowing slightly over it.
“Fully recovered, I see,” she said. “You’ve gained weight.”
“Good food and exercise,” said Gamache.
“Well, good food anyway,” she said.
Gamache smiled. “We’re living in Three Pines now.”
“Ahh, well, that explains it.”
The Chief stopped himself from asking what it explained. That was the first step into the cave. And he had no desire to enter this woman’s lair any further than he already had.
“What can I get you?” asked Monsieur Finney. “A coffee? A lemonade perhaps?”
“Nothing, thank you. I’m afraid this isn’t a social call. I’ve come…”
He paused. He could hardly say “on business” since this was no longer his business, nor was it really his personal affair. The elderly couple looked at him. Or Madame Finney looked while her husband pointed his nose in Gamache’s direction.
The Chief could see the beginning of concern on Monsieur Finney’s face, so he plunged ahead.
“I’ve come to ask you a couple of questions.”
The relief on Finney’s misshapen face was obvious, while Madame Finney remained placid, polite.
“So there’s no bad news?” Finney asked.
Armand Gamache had become used to this reaction after decades with the Sûreté du Québec. He was the knock on the door at midnight, he was the wobbly old man on the bicycle, the grim-faced doctor. He was a good man with bad news. When the head of homicide came calling, it was almost never a happy occasion. And it seemed this specter had followed him into retirement.
“I’m just wondering if you’ve heard from Peter lately.”
“Why are you asking us?” asked Peter’s mother. “You’re his neighbor.”
The voice remained warm, pleasant. But the eyes sharpened. He could almost hear the scrape against the stone.
Gamache considered what she’d just said. She obviously didn’t know that Peter hadn’t been in Three Pines for more than a year. Nor did they know that Peter and Clara were separated. Neither Clara nor Peter would thank him for spilling their private life all over his family.
“He’s away on a trip, probably painting,” said Gamache. That much might be true. “But he didn’t say where he was going. I just need to get in touch with him.”
“Why don’t you ask Claire?” asked Madame Finney.
“Clara,” her husband corrected. “And she probably went with him.”
“But he didn’t say they went away,” she pointed out. “He said, ‘he.’”
Irene Finney turned her soft face to Gamache. And she smiled.
No fact escaped this woman, and the truth interested her not at all. She’d have made, Gamache thought, a great inquisitor. Except that she wasn’t at all inquisitive. She had no curiosity, simply a sharp mind and an instinct for the soft spot.
And despite Gamache’s care, she’d found it. And now she drilled down.
“He’s finally left her, hasn’t he? Now she wants Peter back and you’re the hound who’s supposed to find him and take him back to that village.”
She made Three Pines sound like a peasant slum and the act of returning Peter a crime against humanity. And she’d called Gamache a dog. Fortunately, Armand Gamache had a great deal of time for hounds, and had been called worse.
He held those gentle eyes and met her smile. He neither flinched nor looked away.
“Does Peter have a favorite place to paint? Or someplace he spoke of when he was growing up that he always wanted to visit?”
“You don’t really think I’m going to help you find him, just to take him back there?” she asked. Her tone remained personable. A slight note of disapproval, but that was all. “Peter could have been one of the great painters of his generation, you know. Had he lived in New York or Paris or even here in Montréal. Where he could grow as an artist, get to know other painters, network with gallery owners and patrons. An artist needs stimulation, support. She knew that, and she took him as far from culture as she could. She buried him and his talent.”
All this Madame Finney patiently explained to Gamache. Simply stating facts that should have been obvious, had the large man in front of her not been slightly dim, and dull, and also buried in Three Pines.
“If Peter’s finally escaped,” she said, “I won’t help you find him.”
Gamache nodded and broke eye contact to look at her walls. There he found immediate comfort in the images of rural Québec. The craggy, sinuous, rugged landscapes he knew so well.