A Trick of the Light (26 page)

And yet everyone who looked at Clara’s painting felt what those women felt.

Joy.

Looking at the Graces Peter had known at that moment that he was screwed.

And he knew something else. Something people looking at Clara’s extraordinary creations might not consciously realize, but feel. In their bones, in their marrow.

Without a single crucifix, or host, or bible. Without benefit of clergy, or church. Clara’s paintings radiated a subtle, private faith. In a single bright dot in an eye. In old hands holding old hands. For dear life.

Clara painted dear life.

While the rest of the cynical art world was painting the worst, Clara painted the best.

She’d been marginalized, mocked, ostracized for it for years. By the artistic establishment and, privately, by Peter.

Peter painted things. Very well. He even claimed to paint God, and some dealers believed it. Made a good story. But he’d never met God so how could he paint Him?

Clara not only met Him, she knew Him. And she painted what she knew.

“You’re right. I’ve always envied you,” he said, looking at her directly. There was no fear now. He was beyond that. “From the first moment I saw you I envied you. And it’s never left. I tried, but it’s always there. It’s even grown with time. Oh, Clara. I love you and I hate myself for doing all this to you.”

She was silent. Not helping. But not hurting either. He was on his own.

“But it’s not your art I’ve envied. I thought it was, and that’s why I ignored it. Pretended to not understand. But I understood perfectly well what you were doing in your studio. What you were struggling to capture. And I could see you getting closer and closer over the years. And it killed me. Oh, God, Clara. Why couldn’t I just be happy for you?”

She was silent.

“And then, when I saw
The Three Graces
I knew you were there. And then that portrait. Ruth. Oh, God.” His shoulders slumped. “Who else but you would paint Ruth as the Virgin Mary? So full of scorn and bitterness and disappointment.”

He opened his arms, then dropped them and exhaled.

“And then that dot. The tiny bit of white in her eyes. Eyes filled with hatred. Except for that dot. Seeing something coming.”

Peter looked at Clara, so far away across the bed.

“It’s not your art I envy. It never was.”

“You’re lying, Peter,” whispered Clara.

“No, no, I’m not,” said Peter, his voice rising in desperation.

“You criticized
The Three Graces.
You mocked the one of Ruth,” yelled Clara. “You wanted me to screw them up, to destroy them.”

“Yes, but it wasn’t the paintings,” Peter shouted back.

“Bullshit.”

“It wasn’t. It was—”

“Well?” yelled Clara. “Well? What was it? Let me guess. It was your mother’s fault? Your father’s? Was it that you had too much money or not enough? That your teachers hurt you, and your grandfather drank? What excuse are you dreaming up now?”

“No, you don’t understand.”

“Of course I do, Peter. I understand you too well. As long as I was schlepping along in your shadow we were fine.”

“No.” Peter was out of bed now, backing up until he was against the wall. “You have to believe me.”

“Not anymore I don’t. You don’t love me. Love doesn’t do this.”

“Clara, no.”

And then the dizzying, disorienting, terrible plummet finally ended. And Peter hit the ground.

“It was your faith,” he shouted, and slumped to the floor. “It was your beliefs. Your hope,” he choked out, his voice a croak amid gasps. “It was far worse than your art. I wanted to be able to paint like you, but only because it would mean I’d see the world as you do. Oh, God, Clara. All I’ve ever envied you was your faith.”

He threw his arms around his legs and drew them violently to his chest, making himself as tiny as he could. A small globe. And he rocked himself.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

On the bed Clara stared. Silenced now not by rage, but by amazement.

*   *   *

Jean Guy Beauvoir picked up an armful of dirty laundry and threw it into a corner.

“There,” he smiled, “make yourself at home.”

“Merci,”
said Gamache, sitting down. His knees immediately and alarmingly bounced up almost around his shoulders.

“Watch out for the sofa,” Beauvoir called from the kitchen. “I think the springs are gone.”

“That is possible,” said Gamache, trying to get comfortable. He wondered if this was what a Turkish prison felt like. While Beauvoir poured them each a drink, the Chief looked around the furnished efficiency apartment right in Montréal’s downtown core.

The only personal touches seemed to be the stack of laundry now in the corner, and a stuffed animal, a lion, just visible on the unmade bed. It looked odd, infantile even. He’d not have taken Jean Guy for a man with a stuffed toy.

They’d strolled the three blocks from the coffee shop to his apartment, comparing notes in the clear, cool night air.

“Did you believe her?” Beauvoir had asked.

“When Suzanne said she couldn’t remember Lillian’s secrets?” Gamache considered. The trees lining the downtown street were in leaf, just turning from bright, young green to a deeper more mature color. “Did you?”

“Not for a minute.”

“Neither did I,” said the Chief. “But the question is, did she lie to us intentionally, to hide something, or did she just need time to gather her thoughts?”

“I think it was intentional.”

“You always do.”

That was true. Inspector Beauvoir always thought the worst. It was safer that way.

Suzanne had explained that she had a number of sponsees, that each told her everything about their lives.

“It’s step five in the AA program,” she’d said, then quoted. “
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
I’m the ‘other human being.’”

She laughed again and made a face.

“You don’t enjoy it?” Gamache asked, interpreting the grimace.

“At first I did, with my first few sponsees. I was honestly kinda curious to find out what sort of shenanigans they’d gotten up to in their drinking careers and if they were at all like mine. It was exciting to have someone trust me like that. Hadn’t happened much when I was drinking, I’ll tell ya. You’d have had to be nuts to trust me then. But it actually gets boring after a while. Everyone thinks their secrets are so horrible, but they’re all pretty much the same.”

“Like what?” asked the Chief Inspector.

“Oh, affairs. Being a closeted gay. Stealing. Thinking horrible thoughts. Getting drunk and missing big family events. Letting down loved ones. Hurting loved ones. Sometimes it’s abuse. I’m not saying what they did was right. It’s clearly not. That’s why we buried it for so long. But it’s not unique. They’re not alone. You know the toughest part of step five?”

“‘Admitted to ourselves’?” asked Gamache.

Beauvoir was amazed the Chief had remembered the wording. It seemed just a big whine to him. A bunch of alcoholics feeling sorry for themselves and looking for instant forgiveness.

Beauvoir believed in forgiveness, but only after punishment.

Suzanne smiled. “That’s it. You’d think it’d be easy to admit these things to ourselves. After all, we were there when it happened. But of course, we couldn’t admit what we’d done was so bad. We’d spent years justifying and denying our behavior.”

Gamache had nodded, thinking.

“Are the secrets often as bad as Brian’s?”

“You mean killing a child? Sometimes.”

“Have any of your sponsees killed someone?”

“I’ve had some sponsees admit to killing,” she finally said. “Never intentionally. Never murder. But some accident. Mostly drunk driving.”

“Including Lillian?” Gamache asked quietly.

“I can’t remember.”

“I don’t believe you.” Gamache’s voice was so low it was hard to hear. Or perhaps it was the words Suzanne found so difficult to hear. “No one listens to a confession like that and forgets.”

“Believe what you want, Chief Inspector.”

Gamache nodded and gave her his card. “I’ll be staying in Montréal tonight but we’ll be back in Three Pines after that. We’ll be there until we find out who killed Lillian Dyson. Call me when you’ve remembered.”

“Three Pines?” Suzanne asked, taking the card.

“The village where Lillian was killed.”

He rose, and Beauvoir rose with him.

“You said your lives depend on the truth,” he said. “I’d hate for you to forget that now.”

Fifteen minutes later they were in Beauvoir’s new apartment. While Jean Guy opened and closed cupboards and mumbled, Gamache hauled himself out of the torturous sofa and strolled around the living room, looking out the window to the pizza place across the way advertising the Super Slice, then he turned back into the room, looking at the gray walls and Ikea furniture. His gaze drifted over to the phone and the pad of paper.

“You’re not just eating at the pizza place, then,” said Gamache.

“What d’you mean?” Beauvoir called from the kitchen.

“Restaurant Milos,” Gamache read from the pad of paper by the phone. “Very chic.”

Beauvoir looked into the room, his eyes directly on the desk and the pad, then up to the Chief.

“I was thinking of taking you and Madame Gamache there.”

For a moment, the way the bare light in the room caught his face, Beauvoir looked like Brian. Not the defiant, swaggering young man at the beginning of his share. But the bowed boy. Humbled. Perplexed. Flawed. Human.

Guarded.

“To thank you for all your support,” said Beauvoir. “This separation from Enid, and the other stuff. It’s been a difficult few months.”

Chief Inspector Gamache looked at the younger man, astonished. Milos was one of the finest seafood restaurants in Canada. And certainly one of the most expensive. It was a favorite of his and Reine-Marie’s, though they only went on very special occasions.

“Merci,”
he said at last. “But you know we’d be just as happy with pizza.”

Jean Guy smiled and taking the pad from the desk he slid it into a drawer. “So no Milos. But I will spring for the Super Slice, and no arguments.”

“Madame Gamache will be pleased,” laughed Gamache.

Beauvoir walked into the kitchen and returned with their drinks. A micro-brewery beer for the Chief and water for himself.

“No beer?” asked the Chief, raising his glass.

“All this talk of booze turned me off it. Water’s fine.”

They sat again, Gamache this time choosing one of the hard chairs around the small glass dining table. He took a sip.

“Does it work, do you think?” Beauvoir asked.

It took a moment for the Chief to figure out what his Inspector was talking about.

“AA?”

Beauvoir nodded. “Seems pretty self-indulgent to me. And why would spilling their secrets stop them from drinking? Wouldn’t it be better to just forget instead of dredging all that stuff up? And none of these people are trained. That Suzanne’s a mess. You can’t tell me she’s much help to anyone.”

The Chief stared at his haggard deputy. “I think AA works because no one, no matter how well-meaning, understands what an experience is like except someone who’s been through the same thing,” Gamache said, quietly. He was careful not to lean forward, not to get into his Inspector’s space. “Like the factory. The raid. No one knows what it was like except those of us who were there. The therapists help, a lot. But it’s not the same as talking to one of us.” Gamache looked at Beauvoir. Who seemed to be collapsing into himself. “Do you often think about what happened in the factory?”

Now it was Beauvoir’s turn to pause. “Sometimes.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“What good would it do? I’ve already told the investigators, the therapists. You and I’ve been over it. I think it’s time to stop talking about it and just get on with it, don’t you?”

Gamache cocked his head to one side and examined Jean Guy. “No, I don’t. I think we need to keep talking until it’s all out, until there’s no unfinished business.”

“What happened in the factory’s over,” snapped Beauvoir, then restrained himself. “I’m sorry. I just think it’s self-indulgent. I just want to get on with my life. The only unfinished business, the only thing still bothering me, if you really want to know, is who leaked the video of the raid. How’d it get onto the Internet?”

“The internal investigation said it was a hacker.”

“I know. I read the report. But you don’t really believe it, do you?”

“I have no choice,” said Gamache. “And neither do you.”

There was no mistaking the warning in the Chief’s voice. A warning Beauvoir chose not to hear, or to heed.

“It wasn’t a hacker,” he said. “No one even knows those tapes exist except other Sûreté officers. A hacker didn’t pirate that recording.”

“That’s enough, Jean Guy.” They’d been down this road before. The video of the raid on the factory had been uploaded onto the Internet, where it had gone viral. Millions around the world had watched the edited video.

Seen what had happened.

To them. And to others. Millions had watched as though it was a TV show. Entertainment.

The Sûreté, after months of investigation, had concluded it was a hacker.

“Why didn’t they find the guy?” Beauvoir persisted. “We have an entire department that only investigates cyber crime. And they couldn’t find an asshole who, by their own report, just got lucky?”

“Let it be, Jean Guy,” said Gamache, sternly.

“We have to find the truth, sir,” said Beauvoir, leaning forward.

“We know the truth,” said Gamache. “What we have to do is learn to live with it.”

“You’re not going to look further? You’re just going to accept it?”

“I am. And so are you. Promise me, Jean Guy. This is someone else’s problem. Not ours.”

The two men stared at each other for a moment until Beauvoir gave one curt nod.

“Bon,”
said Gamache, emptying his glass and walking with it into the kitchen. “Time to go. We need to be back in Three Pines early.”

Armand Gamache said good night and walked slowly through the night streets. It was chilly and he was glad for his coat. He’d planned to wave down a cab, but found himself walking all the way up Ste-Urbain to avenue Laurier.