A Trick of the Light (12 page)

“And I say they are, and who’s to say who’s right? That’s what drives artists and dealers crazy. It’s so subjective.”

“I think they’re born crazy,” mumbled Castonguay, and Beauvoir had to agree.

“So that explains you being at the
vernissage,
” said Gamache. “Why come to Three Pines?”

Marois hesitated. Trying to decide how much to say, and not even trying to hide his indecision.

Gamache waited. Beauvoir, notebook and pen out, started to doodle. A stick figure and a horse. Or perhaps it was a moose. From the easy chair came the heavy sound of Castonguay breathing.

“I had a client once. Dead now, years ago. Lovely man. A commercial artist, but also a very fine creative artist. His home was full of these marvelous paintings. I discovered him when he was already quite old, though now that I think of it, he was younger than I am now.”

Marois smiled, as did Gamache. He knew that feeling.

“He was one of my first clients and he did quite well. He was thrilled, as was his wife. One day he asked a favor. Could his wife put in a few of her works into his next show. I was polite, but declined. But he was quite uncharacteristically insistent. I didn’t know her well, and didn’t know her art at all. I suspected she was putting pressure on the old man. But I could see how important it was to him, so I relented. Gave her a corner, and a hammer.”

He paused and his eyes flickered.

“I’m not very proud of it now. I should have either treated her with respect, or declined the show totally. But I was young, and had a lot to learn.”

He sighed. “The evening of the
vernissage
was the first time I saw her works. I walked into the room and everyone was crowded into that corner. You can guess what happened.”

“All her paintings sold,” said Gamache.

Marois nodded. “Every one, with people buying others she’d left in her home, sight unseen. There was even a bidding war for several of them. My client was a gifted artist. But she was better. Far better. A stunning find. A genuine Van Gogh’s ear.”

“Pardon?”
asked Gamache. “A what?”

“What did the old man do?” Castonguay interrupted, now paying attention. “He must’ve been furious.”

“No. He was a lovely man. Taught me how to be gracious. And he was. But it was her reaction I’ll never forget.” He was quiet for a moment, clearly seeing the two elderly artists. “She gave up painting. Not only never showed again, she never painted again. She saw the pain it had caused him, though he’d hidden it well. His happiness was more important to her than her own. Than her art.”

Chief Inspector Gamache knew this should have sounded like a love story. Of sacrifice, of selfless choices. But it only sounded like a tragedy to him.

“Is that why you’re here?” Gamache asked the art dealer.

Marois nodded. “I’m afraid.”

“Of what?” Castonguay demanded, losing the thread yet again.

“Did you not see how Clara Morrow looked at her husband yesterday?” asked Marois.

“And how he looked at her,” said Gamache.

The two men locked eyes.

“But Clara isn’t that woman you’re remembering,” said the Chief Inspector.

“True,” admitted François Marois. “But Peter Morrow isn’t my elderly client either.”

“Do you really think Clara might give up painting?” asked Gamache.

“To save her marriage? To save her husband?” asked Marois. “Most wouldn’t, but the woman who created those paintings just might.”

Armand Gamache had never thought that was a possibility, but now he considered it and realized François Marois might be right.

“Still,” he said. “What could you hope to do about it?”

“Well,” said Marois, “not much. But I at least wanted to see where she’d been hiding all these years. I was curious.”

“Is that all?”

“Have you never wanted to visit Giverny to see where Monet painted, or go to Winslow Homer’s studio in Prouts Neck? Or see where Shakespeare and Victor Hugo wrote?”

“You’re quite right,” admitted Gamache. “Madame Gamache and I have visited the homes of many of our favorite artists and writers and poets.”

“Why?”

Gamache paused for a few moments, considering. “Because they seem magical.”

André Castonguay snorted. Beauvoir bristled, embarrassed for the Chief Inspector. It was a ridiculous answer. Perhaps even weak. To admit to a murder suspect he might believe in magic.

But Marois sat still, staring at the Chief Inspector. Finally he nodded, slightly and slowly. It might have even been, Beauvoir thought, a slight tremble.

“C’est ça,”
said Marois at last. “Magic. I hadn’t planned to come, but when I saw her works at the
vernissage
I wanted to see the village that had produced such magic.”

They talked for a few more minutes, about their movements. Who they saw, who they spoke to. But like everyone else, it was unremarkable.

Chief Inspector Gamache and Inspector Beauvoir left the two men sitting in the bright living room of the inn and spa and went looking for the other guests. Within an hour they’d interviewed them all.

None knew the dead woman. None saw anything suspicious or helpful.

As they walked back down the hill into Three Pines, Gamache thought of their interviews and what François Marois had said.

But there was more to Three Pines than magic. Something monstrous had roamed the village green, had eaten the food and danced among them. Something dark had joined the party that night.

And produced not magic but murder.

SIX

Out the window of her bookstore Myrna could see Armand Gamache and Jean Guy Beauvoir walking down the dirt road into the village.

Then she turned back to her shop, with its wooden shelves filled with new and used books, the wide plank pine floors. Sitting on the sofa beside the window and facing the woodstove was Clara.

She’d arrived a few minutes earlier clutching her haul of newspapers to her breasts, like an immigrant at Ellis Island clinging to something ragged and precious.

Myrna wondered if what Clara held was really that important.

She was under no illusion. Myrna knew exactly what was in those papers. The judgment of others. The views of the outside world. What they saw when they saw Clara’s art.

And Myrna knew even more. She knew what those beer-sodden pages said.

She too had gotten up early that morning, dragged her weary ass out of bed, trudged to the bathroom. Showered, brushed her teeth, put on fresh clothes. And in the light of the new day she’d gotten into her car and driven to Knowlton.

For the papers. She could have simply downloaded them from the various websites, but if Clara wanted to read them as newspapers, then so did Myrna.

She didn’t care how the world saw Clara’s art. Myrna knew it was genius.

But she cared about Clara.

And now her friend sat like a lump on the sofa while she sat in the armchair facing her.

“Beer?” Myrna offered, pointing to the stack of newspapers.

“No thank you,” smiled Clara. “I have my own.” She pointed to her sodden chest.

“You must be every man’s dream,” laughed Myrna. “Finally, a woman made entirely of beer and croissants.”

“A wet dream, certainly,” agreed Clara, smiling.

“Have you had a chance to read them?”

Myrna didn’t need to point again to the reeking papers, they both knew what she meant.

“No. Something keeps getting in the way.”

“Something?” asked Myrna.

“Some fucking body,” said Clara, then tried to rein herself in. “God, Myrna, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I should be upset, devastated that this has happened. I should feel horrible for poor Lillian, but you know what I keep thinking? The only thing I keep thinking?”

“That she ruined your big day.” It was a statement. And it was true. She had. Lillian herself, it must be admitted, had not had a great day either. But that discussion would come later.

Clara stared at Myrna, searching for censure.

“What’s wrong with me?”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” said Myrna, leaning toward her friend. “I’d feel the same way. Everyone would. We just may not admit it.” She smiled. “If it had been me lying back there—” But Myrna got no further. Clara burst in.

“Don’t even think such a thing.”

Clara actually looked frightened, as though saying a thing made it more likely to happen, as though whatever God she believed in worked like that. But Myrna knew neither Clara’s God nor hers was so chaotic and petty they needed or heeded such ridiculous suggestions.

“If it was me,” Myrna continued, “you’d care.”

“Oh, God, I’d never recover.”

“These papers wouldn’t matter,” said Myrna.

“Not at all. Never.”

“If it was Gabri or Peter or Ruth—”

Both women paused. It might have been a step too far.

“—anyway,” Myrna continued. “If it was even a complete stranger you’d have cared.”

Clara nodded.

“But Lillian wasn’t a stranger.”

“I wish she had been,” admitted Clara, quietly. “I wish I’d never met her.”

“What was she?” Myrna asked. She’d heard the broad strokes, but now she wanted to hear the details.

And Clara told her everything. About the young Lillian, about the teenage Lillian. About the woman in her twenties. As she got further into the story Clara’s voice dropped and dragged, lugging the words along.

And then she stopped, and Myrna was silent for a moment, staring at her friend.

“She sounds like an emotional vampire,” said Myrna, at last.

“A what?”

“I ran into quite a few in my practice. People who sucked others dry. We all know them. We’re in their company and come away drained, for no apparent reason.”

Clara nodded. She did know a few, though no one in Three Pines. Not even Ruth. She only drained their liquor cabinet. But Clara, oddly, always felt refreshed, invigorated after a visit with the demented old poet.

But there were others who just sucked the life right out of her.

Lillian was one.

“But it wasn’t always like that,” said Clara, trying to be fair. “She was a friend once.”

“That’s often the way too,” nodded Myrna. “The frog in the frying pan.”

Clara wasn’t at all sure how to respond to that. Were they still talking about Lillian, or had they somehow veered into some French cooking show?

“Do you mean the emotional vampire in the frying pan?” asked Clara, uttering a sentence she was pretty sure had never been said by another human. Or at least, she hoped not.

Myrna laughed and sitting back in her armchair she raised her legs onto the hassock.

“No, little one. Lillian’s the emotional vampire. You’re the frog.”

“Sounds like a rejected Grimm’s fairy tale. ‘The Frog and the Emotional Vampire.’”

Both women paused for a moment, imagining the illustrations.

Myrna came back to her senses first.

“The frog in the frying pan is a psychological term, a phenomenon,” she said. “If you stick a frog into a sizzling hot frying pan what’ll it do?”

“Jump out?” suggested Clara.

“Jump out. But if you put one into a pan at room temperature then slowly raise the heat, what happens?”

Clara thought about it. “It’ll jump out when it gets too hot?”

Myrna shook her head. “No.” She took her feet off the hassock and leaned forward again, her eyes intense. “The frog just sits there. It gets hotter and hotter but it never moves. It adjusts and adjusts. Never leaves.”

“Never?” asked Clara, quietly.

“Never. It stays there until it dies.”

Clara look a long, slow, deep breath, then exhaled.

“I saw it with my clients who’d been abused either physically or emotionally. The relationship never starts with a fist to the face, or an insult. If it did there’d be no second date. It always starts gently. Kindly. The other person draws you in. To trust them. To need them. And then they slowly turn. Little by little, increasing the heat. Until you’re trapped.”

“But Lillian wasn’t a lover, or a husband. She was just a friend.”

“Friends can be abusive. Friendships can turn, become foul,” said Myrna. “She fed on your gratitude. Fed on your insecurities, on your love for her. But you did something she never expected.”

Clara waited.

“You stood up for yourself. For your art. You left. And she hated you for it.”

“But then why’d she come here?” asked Clara. “I haven’t seen her in more than twenty years. Why’d she come back? What did she want?”

Myrna shook her head. Didn’t say what she suspected. That there was really only one reason for Lillian to return.

To ruin Clara’s big day.

And she had. Only not, almost certainly, in the way Lillian had planned.

Which, of course, begged the question: Who had planned this?

“Can I say something to you?” Myrna asked.

Clara made a face. “I hate it when people ask that. It means something awful’s coming. What is it?”

“Hope takes its place among the modern masters.”

“I was wrong,” said Clara, perplexed and relieved. “It’s just nonsense. Is this a new game? Can I play? Wallpaper chair is often cows. Or,” Clara looked at Myrna with suspicion, “have you been smoking your caftan again? I know they say hemp isn’t really dope, but I still wonder.”

“Clara Morrow’s art makes rejoicing cool again.”

“Ah, a conversation of non sequiturs,” said Clara. “It’s like talking to Ruth, only not as many fucking swear words.”

Myrna smiled. “Do you know what I was just quoting?”

“Those were quotes?” asked Clara.

Myrna nodded and looked over at the damp and smelly newspapers. Clara’s eyes followed her, then widened. Myrna rose and went upstairs, finding her own copies of the papers. Clean and dry. Clara reached out but her hands were trembling too hard and Myrna had to find the sections.

The portrait of Ruth, as the Virgin Mary, glared from the front page of the
New York Times
art section. Above it was a single word, “Arisen.” And below it the headline
HOPE TAKES ITS PLACE AMONG THE MODERN MASTERS.

Clara dropped the section and grabbed for the London
Times
art review. On the front page was a photo of a Maoist accountant at Clara’s
vernissage.
And below it the quote, “Clara Morrow Makes Rejoicing Cool Again.”