‘Why?’ asked Gamache.
Peter didn’t dare stop, didn’t dare look at him.
Why? Why had he done it? It was so long ago. He could remember sneaking into the stall. Could remember the clean, green metal door, the disinfectant smell that still made him gag. He’d brought his magic marker, and with that marker magic he’d done. He’d made his sister disappear. And he’d changed all their lives for ever with five simple words.
Julia Morrow gives good head.
‘I was angry at Julia, for sucking up to my father.’
‘You were jealous of her. It’s natural. It would pass.’
But somehow the reassurance made it worse. Why hadn’t anyone told him that decades ago? That there was nothing wrong with hating a sibling? That it would pass.
Instead, it stayed. And grew. The guilt had festered and turned rotten and had eaten a hole deep inside him. And finally, now, he could feel himself falling.
‘Did Julia realize what you’d done, Peter? Is that what she was about to tell everyone?’
Peter stopped and looked at the Chief Inspector. ‘Are you suggesting I killed my sister so she wouldn’t tell?’
He tried to sound incredulous.
‘I think you’d do just about anything to keep that secret. If your mother had found out that you were responsible for an act that left your family ridiculed and ruptured, well, God knows what she’d have done. Might have even written you out of her will. In fact, I think that’s a distinct possibility. That mistake thirty years ago could cost you millions.’
‘And you think I care about that? My mother’s been throwing money at me for years and I send it all back, all of it. Even my inheritance from Father. I want none of it.’
‘Why?’ asked Gamache.
‘What do you mean, why? Would you keep accepting money from your parents well into your adulthood? But, no, I forgot. You had no parents.’
Gamache stared at him, and after a moment Peter dropped his eyes.
‘Be careful,’ Gamache whispered. ‘You’re making hurting a habit. Spreading it around won’t lessen your pain, you know. Just the opposite.’
Peter raised his eyes, defiant.
‘My question stands, Peter. This isn’t a pleasant chat between friends. This is a murder investigation and I’ll know everything. Why do you refuse your mother’s offers of money?’
‘Because I’m a grown man and I want to stand on my own. I’ve seen Thomas and Mariana tug their forelocks and bow and scrape for money. Mommy bought Thomas his home and gave Mariana the seed money for her business.’
‘Why shouldn’t she? She has the money. I don’t understand the problem.’
‘Thomas and Mariana are slaves to it, slaves to Mommy. They love luxury and ease. Clara and I live hand to mouth. For years we could barely pay for the heating. But we’re at least free.’
‘Are you? Is it possible you’re as obsessed with money as they are?’ He held up his hand to stop Peter’s angry interruption. ‘If you weren’t you’d accept it now and then. Thomas and Mariana want it. You don’t. But it still runs your life. She still does.’
‘Oh, and you’re one to talk. Look at yourself why don’t you? How pathetic is it to be a cop, to carry a gun when that was the one thing your own father refused to do? Who’s compensating now? Your father was a coward, a famous one, and his son’s famous too. For courage. At least my mother’s alive. Your father’s long dead and still he controls you.’
Gamache smiled, which angered Peter even more. This was his coup de grace, the final thrust he’d kept in abeyance to be brought out and used only if things got desperate.
Now he’d dropped his bomb but Hiroshima remained, untouched, even smiling.
‘I love my father, Peter. Even if he was a coward, he was still a great father, a great man, in my eyes if in no one else’s. Do you know the story?’
‘Mother told us,’ he said sullenly.
‘What did she say?’
‘That Honore Gamache rallied the French Canadians against the Second World War, forcing Canada to hesitate before entering and convincing thousands of young Quebecers not to sign up. He himself joined the Red Cross so he wouldn’t have to fight.’
Gamache nodded. ‘She’s quite right. Did she tell you what happened then?’
‘No, you did. He and your mother were killed in a car accident.’
‘But there were many years in between. Near the end of the war the British Army marched into a place called Bergen-Belsen. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.’
The two men were walking again, down the shady lane, through the sweet summer air.
Peter said nothing.
‘My father was with the Red Cross division assigned to go into newly liberated prisons. No one was prepared for what they saw. In Bergen-Belsen my father saw the full horror of what man was capable of. And he saw his mistake. He met it in the eyes of the men and women who’d waited for help that didn’t come. From a world that knew what was happening and still didn’t hurry. I was eight when he started telling me the stories. He knew as soon as he walked into Bergen-Belsen he’d been wrong. He should never have spoken against this war. He was a man of peace, that was true. But he also had to admit he’d been afraid to fight. And when he stood face to face with the men and women of Bergen-Belsen he knew he’d been a coward. So he came home and apologized.’
Peter kept walking, the smug smile plastered on his face. Carefully kept there to conceal his shock. No one had told him this. His mother, in relating the story, hadn’t told them Honore Gamache had changed his mind.
‘My father got up in churches, synagogues, in public meetings, on the steps of the Assemblee Nationale, and he apologized. He spent years raising money and co-ordinating efforts to help refugees rebuild their lives. He sponsored a woman he’d met in Bergen-Belsen to come to Canada and live with us. Zora was her name. She became my grandmother, and raised me after my parents died. She taught me that life goes on, and that I had a choice. To lament what I no longer had or be grateful for what remained. I was fortunate to have a role model that I couldn’t squirm my way around. After all, how do you argue with the survivor of a death camp?’
Gamache actually chuckled, and Peter wondered at this man who’d lived every nightmare and was happy while Peter had every privilege and wasn’t.
They walked out of the tunnel of maple trees and into the light, dimmed by cloud. Both men stopped. Some fiddle music reached them.
‘I don’t want to miss Reine-Marie,’ said Gamache.
They started making their way back.
‘You were right. I knew my father would see what I’d written in the men’s room. I knew he’d never use the first stall so I wrote it in the second. Not only did Father see it, but his friends did too.’
Their pace slowed almost to a stop.
‘There was a terrible fight and Julia left. She loved Father, as you probably know, and couldn’t forgive him for not loving her back. Of course, he did. That was the problem. He loved her so much he saw this as a betrayal. Not of the family, but of him. His little girl.’
Now they stopped. Gamache didn’t speak. Eventually Peter continued.
‘I did it on purpose. So that he’d hate her. I didn’t want the competition. I wanted him all to myself. And she’d made fun of me. I was younger than her, but not by much. It was an awkward age. Eighteen. All gangly and unco-ordinated.’
‘With pimples.’
Peter looked at Gamache with astonishment.
‘How’d you know? Did Thomas tell you?’
Gamache shook his head. ‘Peter’s perpetually purple pimple popped.’
Peter inhaled sharply. Even after all these years he still felt the blade between his bones.
‘Where’d you hear that?’
‘Julia,’ said Gamache, watching Peter closely. ‘One night after dinner I was in the garden and heard someone repeating something over and over. Peter’s perpetually purple—’
‘I get it,’ Peter cut him off. ‘Do you know what it was?’
‘Your sister explained it was a game you’d played as kids, but I didn’t really connect it until this morning when your mother said you used to play word games with your father. Alliteration.’
Peter nodded.
‘It was his way to try to make us feel like a family, I suppose, but it had the opposite effect. We became competitive. We thought the prize for winning was his love. It was excruciating. On top of that I had a terrible case of acne. I’d asked Julia if she knew of any creams I could use. She gave me some, but then later that night we played the game. The perpetually purple pimple. I said “popped” and thought I’d won. But then Julia said Peter’s. Peter’s perpetually purple pimple popped. Father roared and roared and hugged her. Made a big deal of it. She won.’
Gamache could see it. Young, awkward artistic Peter. Betrayed by his sister, laughed at by his father.
‘So you plotted your revenge,’ said Gamache.
‘I wrote the graffiti. God, I can’t believe what I did, all because of a stupid game. Something that just came out of Julia’s mouth. She probably didn’t even mean it. It was nothing. Nothing.’
‘It almost always is,’ said Gamache. ‘So small no one else even sees it. So small you don’t see it coming, until it smashes into you.’
Peter sighed.
They stood at the top of rue du Moulin. A group of fiddlers was playing away, softly, melodically, at first. Beside the stage Ruth waved her gnarled cane unexpectedly gracefully to the music. On the stage rows of dancers were lined up, kids in front, women in the middle, strapping men at the back. The music picked up steam and tempo and the dancers’ feet fell with more and more insistence until after a minute or so the fiddlers were sawing away near maniacally, their arms flashing up and down, the music joyous and free, and the dancers’ feet hit the floor in unison, stomping and tapping. But this was no display of traditional Irish dancing, where the upper torso is stiff and the arms like dead branches at their sides. These dancers, under the cane of Ruth Zardo, were more like dervishes, dancing and whirling and whooping and laughing, but always in rhythm. Their stomping feet shook the stage, the sound waves travelling through the earth, through the bodies of everyone in the village, up du Moulin, and into their chests.
And then it stopped. And there was silence. Until the laughter started, and the applause, to fill the void.
Peter and Gamache walked down and arrived just in time for the final clog dancing demonstration. It was a class of eight year olds. And Reine-Marie. The fiddlers played a slow Irish waltz while the dancers stumbled. One little boy edged his way to the front of the stage and did his own steps. Ruth thumped her cane at him, but he seemed immune to direction.
At the end Gamache gave them a standing ovation, joined by Clara, Gabri and finally Peter.
‘Well, what did you think?’ asked Reine-Marie, joining everyone at a picnic table. ‘Be honest now.’
‘Brilliant.’ Gamache gave her a hug.
‘Brought tears to my eyes,’ said Gabri.
‘It would have been better except Number Five there kept hogging the stage,’ whispered Reine-Marie, leaning over, pointing at a beaming little boy.
‘Shall I kick him?’ asked Gamache.
‘Better wait till no one’s looking,’ advised his wife.
The child sat at the next picnic table and immediately spilled a Coke in one direction and knocked over the salt shaker in the other. His mother made Number Five take a pinch of salt and toss it over his shoulder. Gamache watched with interest. Peter brought over a platter of hamburgers, slices of barbecued lamb and a pyramid of corn on the cob while Olivier put down a tray of beers and bright pink lemonades.
‘For God’s sake, qu’est-ce que tu fais? There’re ants everywhere, and just wait. Wasps’ll come and sting you.’
Mom grabbed the boy’s arm and yanked Number Five to another table, leaving the mess for someone else to clean up.
‘Everyone comes back for this week,’ said Olivier, taking a long sip of cold beer and surveying the gathering. ‘They arrive just before Saint-Jean-Baptiste and stay until after Canada Day.’
‘How’d you celebrate Saint-Jean-Baptiste last weekend?’ Gamache asked.
‘Fiddlers, clogging and a barbecue,’ said Gabri.
‘Is Number Five a visitor? I’ve never seen him before,’ said Reine-Marie.
‘Who?’ asked Olivier and when Reine-Marie nodded to her clogging mate he laughed. ‘Oh, him. He’s from Winnipeg. You call him Number Five? We call him Shithead.’
‘For simplicity,’ said Gabri. ‘Like Cher or Madonna.’
‘Or Gabri,’ said Reine-Marie. ‘Do you know, I’ve never actually heard the name Gabri before. Is it short for Gabriel?’
‘It is.’
‘But don’t most Gabriels get called Gaby for short?’
‘I’m not most Gabriels,’ said Gabri.
‘I’m sorry, mon beau.’ Reine-Marie reached out to comfort the huge hurt man. ‘I would never suggest you are. I’ve always liked the named Gabriel. The archangel.’
This went some way to smoothing Gabri’s feathers. For a startled instant Reine-Marie could actually imagine full, powerful grey wings settling into place on Gabri’s back.
‘We have a son named Daniel, you know. And a daughter Annie. We chose names that would work in both English and French. Gabriel does too.’
‘C’est vrai,’ said Gabri. ‘Gabriel I like but in school everyone called me Gaby. I hated that. So I made up my own name. Gabri. Voila.’
‘Hard to believe they called you Gaby,’ said Olivier, smiling.
‘I know,’ said Gabri, not appreciating the sarcasm. But a moment later he caught Reine-Marie’s eye with an amused look, confirming he wasn’t nearly as oblivious or self-absorbed as he pretended.
They all watched as Shithead took a lick of his Coaticook ice cream, spilled more salt and again shot the Coke can across the table. It skidded over the salt, hit a bump and fell over. He started crying. Mom, after soothing him, took a pinch of spilled salt and tossed it over his shoulder. For luck. Gamache thought the only luck Number Five would have would be if his mother made him clean up after himself instead of moving each time he made a mess.
Gamache looked over at the first picnic table. Sure enough, ants and wasps swarmed over the sweet puddles of Coke.
‘Hamburger, Armand?’ Reine-Marie held out the burger, then lowered it. She recognized the look on her husband’s face. He’d seen something. She looked over but saw only an empty picnic table and a few wasps.