The Long Way Home Page 10

  Then he brightened. “I’m an idiot. I just heard that one of our professors had to drop out because of illness. He taught painting and composition to first-year students. You’d be perfect for it. I know you should be teaching a much more advanced class”—he held up his hand as though to ward off Clara’s objections—“but believe me, by the time they get to third year they’re insufferable. But the new students? That’s exciting. And they’d adore you. Interested?”

  Clara had a sudden image of standing in a large studio, like this. Her own studio at the college. Her own sofa, her own fridge stocked with contraband beer. Guiding eager young men and women. Emerging artists.

  She’d make sure that what was done to her wasn’t done to them. She’d encourage them. Defend them. No Salon des Refusés for them. No mocking, no marginalizing. No pretending to encourage creativity, when all the college really wanted was conformity.

  They’d come to her studio on Fridays and drink beer and talk nonsense. They’d throw around ideas, philosophies, predictions, bold and half-baked plans. It would be her own salon. A Salon des Acceptés.

  And she would be the gleaming center. The world-renowned artist, nurturing them.

  She would have arrived.

  “Think about it,” Professor Massey said.

  “I will,” said Clara. “Thank you.”

  * * *

  Dr. Vincent Gilbert lived in the heart of the forest. Away from human conflict, but also away from human contact. It was a compromise he was more than happy to make. As was the rest of humanity.

  Gamache and Gilbert had met many times over the years and, against all odds, isolation and a life dedicated just to himself had not improved Dr. Gilbert’s people skills.

  “What do you want?” Gilbert asked, looking out from under a straw hat he might have stolen from Beauvoir’s horse on an earlier visit.

  He was in the vegetable garden and looked, to Gamache, more and more like a biblical prophet, or a madman. Gilbert wore a once white, now gray, nightshirt down to mid-calf, and plastic sandals he could hose off. Which was a good thing, because he was up to his ankles in compost.

  “Can’t a neighbor come to visit?” asked Gamache, after securing his mount to a tree.

  “What do you want?” Dr. Gilbert repeated, straightening up and walking toward them.

  “Drop the act, Vincent,” said Gamache with a laugh. “I know you’re happy to see me.”

  “Did you bring me anything?”

  Gamache gestured toward Beauvoir, whose eyes widened.

  “You know I’m a vegetarian,” said Gilbert. “Anything else?”

  Gamache reached into his saddlebags and pulled out a brown paper bag and the map.

  “Welcome, stranger,” said Gilbert. He grabbed the paper bag, opened it, and inhaled the aroma of the croissants.

  Tossing one precious pastry into the woods, without explanation, he took the rest into his log cabin, followed by Gamache and Beauvoir.

  * * *

  The train lurched forward but was soon traveling swiftly and smoothly toward Montréal.

  “What was that about Francis Bacon?” Myrna asked. The steward had taken their lunch order. “I’m presuming he meant the twentieth-century painter and not the sixteenth-century philosopher.”

  Clara nodded but said nothing.

  “What did Professor Massey mean?” Myrna pressed. It had clearly meant something.

  Clara looked out the window, at the rear end of Toronto. For a moment Myrna wondered if she’d heard the question. But then Clara spoke. To the overflowing garbage bins. To the washing on the line. To the graffiti. Not actual art, but the artist’s name over and over. Declaring himself. Spray-painted in huge, bold, black letters. Over and over.

  “Bacon often painted in threes.” Clara’s words created a fine fog on the window. “Triptychs. I think the one Professor Massey had in mind was George Dyer.”

  That meant nothing to Myrna, but it clearly meant a great deal to Clara.

  “Go on.”

  “I think Professor Massey was trying to warn me.” Clara turned away from the window and looked at her friend.

  “Tell me,” said Myrna, though it was clear Clara would have rather done just about anything else than put these thoughts into words.

  “George Dyer and Bacon were lovers,” said Clara. “They went to Paris for a huge show of Bacon’s paintings. It was the first great triumph of his career. While Bacon was being celebrated—”

  Clara stopped, and Myrna felt the blood rush from her own face.

  “Tell me,” she repeated softly.

  “Dyer killed himself in their hotel room.”

  The words were barely audible. But Myrna heard them. And Clara heard them. Put out into the world.

  The women stared at each other.

  “It’s what you were trying to warn me about,” Clara said, her voice still barely above a whisper. “When you told me about Samarra.”

  Myrna couldn’t answer. She couldn’t bear to add to the dread in Clara’s face. In her whole body.

  “You think Peter has done the same thing,” said Clara.

  But still Clara’s eyes pleaded with Myrna. To tell her she was wrong. To reassure her that Peter was just off painting. He’d lost track of the time. The date.

  Myrna said nothing. It might have been kindness. Or cowardice. But Myrna remained silent, and allowed Clara her delusion.

  That Peter would come home. Might even be waiting for them, when they got back. With beer. A couple of steaks. An explanation. And profuse apologies.

  Myrna looked out the window. The tenements were still whizzing by, apparently endless. But the graffiti artist’s name had disappeared.

  A fine hotel room in Paris, she thought. Samarra. Or some corner of Québec. However he got there, Myrna was afraid Peter Morrow had reached the end of the road. And there he’d met Death.

  And she knew that Clara feared the same thing.

  * * *

  Vincent Gilbert’s log cabin hadn’t changed much since the last time Beauvoir had visited. It was still a single room, with a large bed at one end, and a kitchen at the other. The rough pine floor was strewn with fine Oriental carpets, and on either side of the fieldstone fireplace were shelves crammed with books. Two comfortable armchairs with footstools sat facing each other across the hearth.

  Before Vincent Gilbert had moved in, this rustic cabin had been the scene of a terrible crime. A murder so unnatural it had shocked the nation. Some places held on to such malevolence, as though the pain and shock and horror had fused to the structure.

  But this little home had always felt strangely innocent. And very peaceful.

  Dr. Gilbert poured them glasses of spring water and made sandwiches with tomatoes still warm from his garden.

  Gamache spread the map of Paris on the table, smoothing it with his large hand.

  “So, what do you want, Armand?” Dr. Gilbert asked for the third time.

  “When you went to Paris, after you left your wife, where did you go?”

  “I’ve told you that before. Weren’t you paying attention?”

  “I was, mon ami,” said Gamache soothingly. “But I’d like to see again.”

  Gilbert’s eyes filled with suspicion. “Don’t waste my time, Armand. I have better things to do than repeat myself. There’s manure to spread.”

  Some considered Vincent Gilbert a saint. Some, like Beauvoir, considered him an asshole. The residents of Three Pines had compromised and called him the “asshole saint.”

  “But that doesn’t mean he isn’t still a saint,” Gamache had said. “Most saints were assholes. In fact, if he wasn’t one that would disqualify him completely.”

  The Chief had walked away with a smile, knowing he’d completely messed with Beauvoir’s mind.

  “Asshole,” Beauvoir had hissed.

  “I heard that,” said Gamache, not turning back.

  And now Jean-Guy looked at the two men. Gilbert elderly, imperious, thin and weathered, with s
harp eyes and a temperament quick to take offense. And Gamache, twenty years younger, larger, calmer.

  Jean-Guy Beauvoir had seen great kindness in Gilbert, and ruthlessness in Gamache. Neither man, Beauvoir was pretty sure, was a saint.

  “Show me on the map exactly where you stayed in Paris,” said Gamache, paying absolutely no attention to Gilbert’s little tantrum.

  “Fine,” the doctor huffed. “It was here.” His fingernail, black-rimmed with earth, fell on the map.

  They bent over to examine the spot, like scientists over a litmus test. Then Gamache straightened up.

  “Did you ever talk about your time in Paris with Peter Morrow?” he asked.

  “Not specifically, no,” said Gilbert. “But he might’ve heard me talking about it. Why?”

  “Because he’s missing.”

  “I thought Clara sent him away.”

  “She did, but they made a date to meet up exactly a year later. That was a few weeks ago. He never showed.”

  Vincent Gilbert was obviously surprised.

  “He loved Clara. I miss a lot in life,” said Gilbert. “But I have a nose for love.”

  “Like a truffle pig,” said Beauvoir, then regretted it when he saw the asshole saint’s reaction.

  Then, unexpectedly, Gilbert smiled. “Exactly. I can smell it. Love has an aroma all its own, you know.”

  Beauvoir looked at Gilbert, amazed by what he’d just heard.

  Maybe, he thought, this man was—

  “Smells like compost,” said Gilbert.

  —an asshole after all.

  TWELVE

  Armand Gamache swayed on his horse/moose and thought about their visit to Vincent Gilbert. And Paris.

  His Paris. Gilbert’s Paris. Peter’s Paris. And as he thought, the cool forest receded and the gnarled old tree trunks metamorphosed. They shifted and reformed until they were no longer impenetrable woods but a grand Parisian boulevard. Gamache was riding down the middle of a wide street, lined with magnificent buildings. Some Haussmann, some art nouveau, some beaux arts. He rode past parks and small cafés and great monuments.

  He turned his horse/moose down boulevard du Montparnasse. Past the red awnings, past Parisians reading at round marble-topped tables. Past La Coupole, La Rotonde, Le Select—cafés where Hemingway and Man Ray lived and drank. Where centuries of writers and artists debated and inspired each other. And some never left. Off to his left Gamache could just see the Cimetière du Montparnasse, where Baudelaire lay and Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir would spend eternity under a single slab, in the company of The Kiss, the glorious sculpture by Brancusi.

  And in the near distance, beyond the cemetery, the hideous Tour Montparnasse rose as a kind of warning against the modern belief that it was possible to improve on perfection.

  Gamache and Beauvoir clopped past the past. Beyond the long-dead artists and writers. Beyond Montparnasse. To the neighborhood Peter Morrow had chosen to stay. So close to such an explosion of creativity.

  But a world away.

  They turned onto rue de Vaugirard. And the charm slowly, slowly dissipated. The City of Light faded and became just another city. At times lovely. Lively. But not the Paris of Manet and Picasso and Rodin.

  Finally they arrived at their destination.

  Gamache pulled softly on the reins and felt a slight shudder as Beauvoir’s horse head-butted his mount.

  Both Beauvoir and his horse had fallen into a stupor. But now they woke up.

  “Why did we stop?” Beauvoir and his horse looked around.

  Gamache was staring at a tree as though expecting the trunk to swing open and admit them.

  * * *

  Oomph. Clara landed in one of the Adirondack chairs in her garden and slid to the back, until she hit the pillow. On one wide armrest was the gin and tonic she’d been dreaming of since getting in Myrna’s sweltering car for the drive home from Montréal. On the other armrest was a bowl of chips.

  She was happy to be home.

  “You first,” she said, feeling her body relax into the pillow.

  Reine-Marie, Armand, Jean-Guy, and Myrna were in her back garden, exchanging information.

  “I think I know where Peter went when he left here,” said Gamache.

  “We already know,” said Clara. She gestured toward the map Gamache was spreading on the table. “Paris.”

  “Yes. Paris, Florence, Venice,” said the Chief, looking at Clara over his reading glasses. “It all seemed to make sense, except for one obvious question.”

  “Dumfries,” said Reine-Marie.

  Her husband nodded. “Why go to Dumfries? I got distracted by that big question, by the forest, and failed to look more closely at one very odd tree. A detail.”

  “Why go all the way to Paris and stay in the 15th arrondissement?” asked Clara, sitting up in her chair again.

  “Oui. Exactly.” His deep brown eyes glowed. It was unmistakable. Not that he was enjoying this, but that he was good at it. He was like a miner, carrying a torch. Illuminating dark passages. Digging deep, often dangerously deep. To get at what was buried there.

  Reine-Marie recognized that gleam. And heard, again, the beating of the moth’s wings.

  It was all she could do not to stand up. To look at her watch. To suggest to Armand that they had to go. Had to leave. Had to get back to their cheerful home. Where they belonged. Where they could garden, and read, sip lemonade and play bridge. And if they died, it would be in bed.

  Reine-Marie shifted in her seat and cleared her throat.

  Armand looked at her.

  “Go on,” she said. He held her gaze and when she smiled, he nodded and turned back to Clara.

  “Why the 15th?” he said. “This afternoon Vincent Gilbert gave us the answer.”

  “You visited the asshole saint?” asked Myrna. It was said without rancor or judgment. They’d gotten so used to calling him that they’d almost forgotten his real name and occupation. Even Vincent Gilbert answered to that name, though he occasionally corrected them by saying, “It’s Dr. Asshole Saint to you.”

  He’d begun as a successful and celebrated physician. He’d ended up a recluse in a one-room log cabin. A lot had happened in between, but it all began with a visit to Paris’s 15th arrondissement.

  “I think Gilbert and Peter were drawn to the same place,” said Gamache. “Here.”

  He pointed to the dirty fingerprint on the map. It sat over the spot like a cloud.

  They all leaned in, except Jean-Guy.

  He knew what Gamache was pointing at.

  LaPorte. The Door.

  As the others moved toward the map, Jean-Guy sat in the garden and closed his eyes and breathed in the fresh evening air. And missed Annie. She’d returned to her job in Montréal that morning. He’d been prepared to return with her, but as they lay in bed, Annie had suggested he stay.

  “Find Peter,” she’d said. “You want to, and Dad needs your help.”

  “I don’t think he does.”

  She’d smiled, and traced his arm, from shoulder to elbow, with her finger.

  For most of his adult life, Jean-Guy Beauvoir had dated bodies. He’d married Enid for her breasts, her legs, her delicate face. Her ability to make his friends weak at the knees.

  But when his own body had been battered and bruised and the life almost taken from it, only then did Jean-Guy discover how very attractive a heart and mind could be.

  A coy smile could capture him, but it was finally a hearty laugh that had freed him.

  No knees would buckle for Annie Gamache. No eyes would follow her substantial body. No wolf calls for her pretty plain face. But she was by far the most attractive woman in any room.

  Late into his thirties, with a broken body and a shattered spirit, Jean-Guy Beauvoir had been seduced by happiness.

  “I want to go back with you,” he said, and meant.

  “And I want you to,” she said, and meant. “But someone needs to find Peter Morrow, and you owe Clara. Dad owes her. You need to
help.”

  That was why she was happy. He now knew that happiness and kindness went together. There was not one without the other. For Jean-Guy it was a struggle. For Annie it seemed natural.

  They curled toward each other and he held her fingers, intertwined in his, in the space between their naked bodies.

  “You’re on partial leave,” said Annie. “Will Isabelle agree?”

  Beauvoir was still unused to asking a Sûreté agent who was once his subordinate for permission. But he called Chief Inspector Lacoste first thing in the morning and she’d agreed. He could stay and help find Peter Morrow.

  Isabelle Lacoste also owed Clara.

  Annie had left. And now, at the edge of the day, Jean-Guy Beauvoir sat in the garden listening to the conversation and allowed himself a moment to drift from his head to his heart. He unconsciously held out his right hand, palm up, as though waiting for Annie’s hand.

  “LaPorte?” asked Clara, straightening up after bending close to the map. “The Door? The place Frère Albert created?”

  “Oui,” said Gamache. “I might be wrong, but that’s what I think.”

  Like most people who admitted the possibility of being wrong, they knew he knew he probably wasn’t. But Clara was far from convinced. And Myrna didn’t seem any closer.

  “Why would Peter go to LaPorte?” Myrna asked, sitting back down. She was disappointed. It was hardly a breakthrough.

  “Why did Vincent Gilbert?” asked Jean-Guy, joining the conversation.

  Myrna thought about that. “He’d had a successful career,” she said, remembering her conversations with the asshole saint. “But then his marriage fell apart.”

  Gamache nodded. “Go on.”

  Myrna thought some more.

  “It wasn’t just the end of his marriage that did it,” she said, thinking out loud. “Lots of people get separated or divorced without having to hare off to a commune in France.”

  Myrna lapsed into silence and thought about the missing piece. What would prompt a successful middle-aged man to give up his career and live in a community created by a humble priest, to serve children and adults with Down’s syndrome?