A Trick of the Light (8 page)

Clara paused and looked down at her hands, fingers entwined.

“Lillian didn’t like it. My stuff was too weird for her. She felt it reflected on her, and said people thought that if she was my muse then my paintings must be about her. And since my paintings and other pieces were so strange, then she must be strange.” Clara hesitated. “She asked me to stop.”

For the first time she saw a reaction from Gamache. His eyes narrowed just a bit. And then his face and demeanor returned to normal. Neutral. Without judgment.

Apparently.

He said nothing. Just listened.

“And I did,” said Clara, her voice low, her head down. Speaking into her lap.

She took a ragged breath and exhaled, feeling her body deflate.

That was how it had felt back then too. As though there was a small tear and she was deflating.

“I told her time and again that some of the works were inspired by her, some were even a tribute to our friendship, but they weren’t her. She said it didn’t matter. If others thought they were that’s all that mattered. If I cared about her, if I was her friend I’d stop making my art so strange. And make it attractive.

“So I did. I destroyed all the other stuff and started making things that people liked.”

Clara rushed ahead, not daring to look at the people listening.

“I actually got better grades too. And I convinced myself it was the right choice. That it would be wrong to trade a career for a friend.”

She looked up then, directly into Chief Inspector Gamache’s eyes. And noted, again, the deep scar by his temple. And the steady, thoughtful gaze.

“It seemed a small sacrifice. Then came the student show. I had a few works in it, but Lillian didn’t. Instead she decided to write a piece for credit in the art criticism course she was taking. She wrote a review for the campus paper. In it she praised a few of the student pieces but savaged my works. Said they were vacuous, empty of all feeling. Safe.”

Clara could still feel the quaking, the rumbling, volcanic fury.

Their friendship had been blown to smithereens. No piece large enough to even examine. Impossible to mend.

But what did rise from the rubble was a deep, deep enmity. A hatred. Mutual, it seemed.

Clara came to a stop, trembling even now. Peter reached out and unfastening her hand from its tight grip, he held it and smoothed it.

The sun continued to beat down and Gamache got up, indicating they should move the chairs into the shade. Clara rose, and flashing a quick smile at Peter she took her hand back. They each picked up their chair and walked to the edge of the river where it was cooler and shady.

“I think we should take a little break,” said Gamache. “Would you like something to drink?”

Clara nodded, unable to speak just yet.

“Bon,”
said Gamache, looking across to his forensics team. “I’m sure they’d like something too. If you can arrange for sandwiches from the bistro,” he said to Beauvoir, “Peter and I will make some drinks.”

Peter led the Chief toward the kitchen door while Beauvoir walked to the bistro and Clara wandered along the riverbank, alone with her thoughts.

“Did you know Lillian?” Gamache asked, once he and Peter were in the kitchen.

“I did.” Peter got out a couple of large pitchers and some glasses while Gamache took the bright pink lemonade from the freezer and slid the frozen concentrate into the pitchers. “We all met at art college.”

“What did you think of her?”

Peter pursed his lips in concentration. “She was very attractive, vivacious I think is the word. A strong personality.”

“Were you attracted to her?”

The two men were side-by-side at the kitchen counter, staring out the window. To the right they could see the homicide team scouring the scene and straight ahead they could see Clara skipping stones into the Rivière Bella Bella.

“There’s something Clara doesn’t know,” said Peter, turning away from looking at his wife, and meeting Gamache’s eyes.

The Chief waited. He could see the struggle in Peter and Gamache let the silence stretch on. Better to wait a few minutes for the full truth than push him and risk getting only half.

Eventually Peter dropped his gaze to the sink and started filling the lemonade containers with water. He mumbled into the running water.

“I beg your pardon?” said Gamache, his voice calm and reasonable.

“I was the one who told Lillian that Clara’s works were silly,” said Peter, raising his head and his voice. Angry now, at himself for doing it and Gamache for making him admit it. “I said Clara’s work was banal, superficial. Lillian’s review was my fault.”

Gamache was surprised. Stunned in fact. When Peter had said there was something Clara didn’t know, the Chief Inspector had assumed an affair. A short-lived student indiscretion between Peter and Lillian.

He hadn’t expected this.

“I’d been to the student exhibit and seen Clara’s works,” said Peter. “I was standing beside Lillian and a bunch of others and they were snickering. Then they saw me and asked what I thought. Clara and I had begun dating and I think I could see even then that she was the real deal. Not pretending to be an artist, but a genuine one. She had a creative soul. Still does.”

Peter stopped. He didn’t often speak of souls. But when he thought of Clara that was what came to mind. A soul.

“I don’t know what came over me. It’s like sometimes when it’s very quiet I feel like screaming. And sometimes when I’m holding something delicate I feel like dropping it. I don’t know why.”

He looked at the large, quiet man beside him. But Gamache continued to be silent. Listening.

Peter took a few short breaths. “I think too I wanted to impress them, and it’s easier to be clever when you criticize. So I said some not very nice things about Clara’s show and they ended up in Lillian’s review.”

“Clara knows none of this?”

Peter shook his head. “She and Lillian barely spoke after that and she and I grew closer and closer. I even managed to forget that it happened, or that it mattered. In fact, I convinced myself I’d done Clara a favor. In breaking up with Lillian it freed Clara to do her own art. Try all the things she wanted. Really experiment. And look where it got her. A solo show at the Musée.”

“Are you taking credit for that?”

“I supported her all these years,” said Peter, a defensive note creeping into his voice. “Where would she be without that?”

“Without you?” asked Gamache, turning now to look the angry man straight in the face. “I have no idea. Have you?”

Peter made fists of his hands.

“What became of Lillian after art college?” the Chief asked.

“She wasn’t much of an artist, but she was, as it turned out, a very good critic. She got a job at one of the weekly papers in Montréal and worked her way up until finally she was doing reviews in
La Presse.
”

Gamache raised his brows again. “
La Presse
? I read the reviews in there. I don’t remember a Lillian Dyson by-line. Did she have a
nom de plume
?”

“No,” said Peter. “She worked there years ago, decades ago now, when we were all starting out. This would’ve been twenty years ago or more.”

“And then what?”

“We didn’t keep in touch,” said Peter. “Only ever saw her at some
vernissages
and even then Clara and I avoided her. Were cordial when there was no option, but we preferred not to be around her.”

“But do you know what happened to her? You say she stopped working at
La Presse
twenty years ago. What did she do?”

“I heard she’d moved to New York. I think she realized the climate wasn’t right for her here.”

“Too cold?”

Peter smiled. “No. More a foul odor. By climate I mean the artistic climate. As a critic she hadn’t made many friends.”

“I suppose that’s the price of being a critic.”

“I suppose.”

But Peter sounded unconvinced.

“What is it?” the Chief pressed.

“There’re lots of critics, most are respected by the community. They’re fair, constructive. Very few are mean-spirited.”

“And Lillian Dyson?”

“She was mean-spirited. Her reviews could be clear, thoughtful, constructive and even glowing. But every now and then she’d let loose a real stinker. It was amusing at first, but grew less and less fun when it became clear her targets were random. And the attacks vicious. Like the one on Clara. Unfair.”

He seemed, Gamache noticed, to have already floated right past his own role in it.

“Did she ever review one of your shows?”

Peter nodded. “But she liked it.” His cheeks reddened. “I’ve always suspected she wrote a glowing review just to piss off Clara. Hoping to drive a wedge between us. She assumed since she was so petty and jealous Clara would be too.”

“She wasn’t?”

“Clara? Don’t get me wrong, she can be maddening. Annoying, impatient, sometimes insecure. But she’s only ever happy for other people. Happy for me.”

“And are you happy for her?”

“Of course I am. She deserves all the success she gets.”

It was a lie. Not that she deserved her success. Gamache knew that to be true. As did Peter. But both men also knew he was far from happy about it.

Gamache had asked not because he didn’t know the answer, but because he wanted to see if Peter would lie to him.

He had. And if he’d lie about that, what else had he lied about?

*   *   *

Gamache, Beauvoir and the Morrows sat down to lunch in the garden. The forensics team, on the other side of the tall perennial beds, were drinking lemonade and eating an assortment of sandwiches from the bistro, but Olivier had prepared something special for Beauvoir to take back for the four of them. And so the Inspector had returned with a chilled cucumber soup with mint and melon, a sliced tomato and basil salad drizzled with balsamic, and cold poached salmon.

It was an idyllic setting disturbed every now and then by a homicide investigator walking by, or appearing in a nearby flower bed.

Gamache had placed Peter and Clara with their backs to the activity. Only he and Beauvoir could see, but he realized it was a conceit. The Morrows knew perfectly well that the gentle scene they looked upon, the river, the late spring flowers, the quiet forest, wasn’t the whole picture.

And if they’d forgotten, the conversation would remind them.

“When was the last time you heard from Lillian?” Gamache asked, as he took a forkful of pink salmon and added a dab of mayonnaise. His voice was soft, his eyes thoughtful. His face kind.

But Clara wasn’t fooled. Gamache might be courteous, might be kind, but he made a living looking for killers. And you don’t do that by being just nice.

“Years ago,” said Clara.

She took a sip of the cold, refreshing soup. She wondered if she really should be quite this hungry. And, oddly, when the body had been an anonymous woman Clara had lost her appetite. Now that it was Lillian she was ravenous.

She took a hunk of baguette, twisted off a piece and smeared it with butter.

“Was it intentional, do you think?” she asked.

“Was what intentional?” Beauvoir asked. He picked at his food, not really hungry. Before lunch he’d gone into the bathroom and taken a painkiller. He didn’t want the Chief to see him taking it. Didn’t want him to know that he was still in pain, so many months after the shootings.

Now, sitting in the cool shade, he could feel the pain ease and the tension begin to slide away.

“What do you think?” asked Gamache.

“I can’t believe it was a coincidence that Lillian was killed here,” said Clara.

She twisted in her chair and saw movement through the deep green leaves. Agents, trying to piece together what happened.

Lillian had come here. On the night of the party. And been murdered.

That much was beyond dispute.

Beauvoir watched Clara turn in her seat. He agreed with her. It was strange.

The only thing that seemed to fit was that Clara herself had killed the woman. It was her home, her party, and her former friend. She had motive and opportunity. But Beauvoir didn’t know how many little pills he’d have to take to believe Clara was a killer. He knew most people were capable of murder. And, unlike Gamache who believed goodness existed, Beauvoir knew that was a temporary state. As long as the sun shone and there was poached salmon on the plate, people could be good.

But take that away, and see what happens. Take the food, the chairs, the flowers, the home. Take the friends, the supportive spouse, the income away, and see what happens.

The Chief believed if you sift through evil, at the very bottom you’ll find good. He believed that evil has its limits. Beauvoir didn’t. He believed that if you sift through good, you’ll find evil. Without borders, without brakes, without limit.

And every day it frightened him that Gamache couldn’t see that. That he was blind to it. Because out of blind spots terrible things appeared.

Someone had killed a woman not twenty feet from where they sat, having their genteel picnic. It was intentional, it was done with bare hands. And it was almost certainly no coincidence Lillian Dyson died here. In Clara Morrow’s perfect garden.

“Can we get a list of guests at your
vernissage
and the barbeque afterward?” Gamache asked.

“Well, we can tell you who we invited, but you’ll have to get the complete list from the Musée,” said Peter. “As for the party here in Three Pines last night…”

He looked at Clara, who grinned.

“We have no idea who came,” she admitted. “The whole village was invited and most of the countryside. People were told to just come and go as they pleased.”

“But you said some people from the Montréal opening came down,” said Gamache.

“True,” said Clara. “I can tell you who we invited. I’ll make a list.”

“Not everyone at the
vernissage
was invited down?” asked Gamache. He and Reine-Marie had been, as had Beauvoir. They hadn’t been able to make it, but he’d assumed it was an open invitation. Clearly it wasn’t.

“No. A
vernissage
is for working, networking, schmoozing,” said Clara. “We wanted this party to be more relaxed. A celebration.”