The Long Way Home Read online

Fear didn’t make the hole bigger, Beauvoir had learned. But cowardice did.

  Still, Jean-Guy Beauvoir liked Peter Morrow, and was worried that something horrible had happened to the man. But at least no one would kill for these pictures. Except perhaps Peter. He might kill to suppress them.

  But he hadn’t, had he? In fact, far from suppressing them, he’d actually taken pains to make sure they were safe.

  “Why did he keep these?” Jean-Guy asked. “And why give them to Bean?”

  Instead of answering any questions, the paintings had created even more.

  * * *

  Ruth left. Bored and more than a little revolted.

  “They’re revolting,” she’d said, in case anyone had missed how she felt. “I’m off to clean out Rosa’s litter box. Anyone want to help?”

  It was tempting, and shortly after Ruth left, Gabri made his excuses.

  “I think I should dig the hair out of the bathroom drains,” he said as he made for the door.

  Peter’s works seemed to remind people of disgusting chores. If he’d set out into the world to find a way to be useful, this probably wasn’t what he had in mind.

  Armand, Reine-Marie, Clara, Myrna, and Jean-Guy were left standing uncertainly around the paintings.

  “Okay,” said Gamache, walking over to the canvases on the floor. “These are the more recent works. Mailed by Peter in late spring. They’re on canvas, while the earlier works”—he took three long strides over to the pine table—“given to Bean in the winter, are on paper.”

  They looked like some living thing had fallen from a great height. And hit the table.

  They could not be considered a triumph. Or a success. Or a good end.

  But these, Gamache knew, weren’t anywhere close to an end. These were the beginning. They were signposts. Markers.

  The Inuit used to erect stone men as a navigation tool, to mark their path. To point out where they were going and where they’d been. The way forward and the way home. Inuksuit, they were called. Literally, a substitute for a man. When found by Europeans they were initially destroyed. Then they were loathed as heathen. Now they’re recognized as not only markers, but works of art.

  That’s what Peter had done. These might be works of art, but more than that, they were markers, signposts. Pointing out where he’d been and where he was going. The route he was traveling, artistically, emotionally, creatively. These odd paintings were his inuksuit, recording not so much his location, but the progress of his thoughts and feelings.

  These paintings were a substitute for the man. Peter’s insides, out.

  With that insight, Gamache looked more closely at the six paintings. What did they tell him about Peter?

  They at first appeared to be simply splashes of color. The most recent ones, on canvas, seemed to clash even more violently than the early ones.

  “Why paint some on paper and the rest on canvas?” Reine-Marie asked.

  Clara had been wondering that herself. She stared at the groupings. Frankly, they all seemed equally crappy to her. It wasn’t like the three on canvas were clearly better and worth preserving and the paper ones were disposable.

  “I guess there might be a couple of reasons,” she said. “He either didn’t have any canvases when he painted the first three, or he knew they’d be experiments. Not meant to last.”

  “But these were?” Jean-Guy pointed to the works on the floor.

  “Sometimes the magic works…” said Clara, and Gamache gave a small laugh.

  “Peter’s a smart man,” said Reine-Marie. “A successful artist. He must have realized these aren’t great. They’re not even good.”

  Jean-Guy nodded. “Exactly. Why keep them? And not just keep them, but give them to someone else, let someone else see them?”

  “What do you do with the works you don’t like?” Reine-Marie asked Clara.

  “Oh, I keep most.”

  “Even the ones you couldn’t save?” asked Reine-Marie.

  “Even those.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, you just never know. On a slow day, or when I’m stuck for inspiration, I’ll pull them out and look again. Sometimes I even put them on their sides, or upside down. That can give me a different perspective. Jog something loose that I hadn’t seen before. Some small thing that’s worth pursuing. A color combination, a series of strokes, that sort of thing.”

  Beauvoir looked at the paintings on the floor. Only a series of strokes would explain them.

  “You keep the ones that don’t work out,” said Myrna. “But you don’t show them off.”

  “True,” admitted Clara.

  “Jean-Guy’s right. There’s a reason Peter kept these,” said Gamache. “And a reason he sent them to Bean.”

  He walked over to the smaller images on the worn pine table.

  “Where’s the one you said was a smile?” Gamache asked Myrna. “The lips? I can’t see them.”

  “Oh, that. I’d forgotten,” she said. “It’s over in this group.” She walked him back to the floor show. “You find it.”

  “Dreary woman,” he said, but didn’t protest. After a minute or so Myrna opened her mouth, but the Chief stopped her. “Now, don’t tell me. I’ll get it.”

  “Well, I’m going outside,” said Clara.

  They poured lemonades and went into the garden, but Beauvoir stayed behind with the Chief.

  Gamache bent over each painting, then straightened up and held his hands behind his back. He rocked slightly back and forth, heel to toe. Heel to toe.

  Beauvoir took a few steps back. Then a few more. Then he dragged one of the chairs over from the pine table and got up on it.

  “Nothing from up here.”

  “What’re you doing?” Gamache demanded, striding over to Jean-Guy. “Get off that chair right now.”

  “It’s sturdy. It’ll hold my weight.” But he jumped down anyway.

  He didn’t like the tone in the Chief’s voice.

  “You don’t know that,” said Gamache.

  “And you don’t know it won’t,” said Beauvoir.

  The two stared at each other until a sound made Gamache turn around. Myrna stood at the door, the empty lemonade jug in her hand.

  “Am I interrupting?”

  “Not at all,” the Chief said, and forced a smile. Then he took a deep breath, expelled the air, and turned back to Beauvoir, who was still glaring.

  “I’m sorry, Jean-Guy. Get back up if you want to.”

  “No, I’ve seen what I need to see.”

  Gamache had the feeling he was talking about more than the paintings.

  “There it is,” said Jean-Guy.

  Gamache joined him.

  Jean-Guy had found the smile. The smiles.

  And Gamache realized his mistake. He’d been looking for one big set of lips. A valley that formed a mountain. But Peter had painted a whole bunch of them, tiny smiles, small valleys of mirth that marched across and deep into the painting.

  Gamache grinned.

  It didn’t make the painting good, but it was the first of Peter’s works that had produced any feeling at all in him.

  He turned to look at the table. Even those paintings had created a feeling, though he didn’t think nausea was considered an emotion. But it was at least something. In the gut. Not in the head.

  If this was the start, Armand Gamache was even more anxious to know where the smiles led.

  SEVENTEEN

  Reine-Marie was smiling.

  Gamache had shown her the parade of tiny lips. It had taken her a moment to actually recognize what they were, but he knew the moment it clicked.

  Her own lips curled into a grin. Then into a full-blown smile.

  “How could I have missed it, Armand?” She turned to him, then back to the painting.

  “I missed it too. It was Jean-Guy who found them.”

  “Merci,” she said to her son-in-law, who bowed slightly in acknowledgment. She wondered if he realized that was one of Armand’s manneri
sms.

  While Reine-Marie turned back to the painting, Gamache turned his attention to the other two canvases on the floor. Clara was staring down at them.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  She shook her head, then leaned closer to the paintings. Then stepped back.

  Was there something in those pictures like the lips? An image, an emotion Peter had embedded there, waiting to be discovered, like a country or planet or strange new species.

  If there was, neither Gamache nor Clara could see it.

  Gamache sensed eyes on him and assumed they were Beauvoir’s, but the younger man was busy making sandwiches in the kitchen.

  Reine-Marie was still smiling down at the lip painting. Clara was examining the other two canvases.

  And Myrna was examining him.

  She led him away from the others.

  “Is this too much, Armand?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She gave him a shrewd look and he grinned.

  “You noticed the little exchange with Beauvoir.”

  “I did.” She studied him for a moment. “Clara would understand if you told her you needed to stop.”

  “Stop?” He looked at her with astonishment. “Why would I do that?”

  “Why did you snap at Beauvoir just now?”

  “He was standing on a chair. An old pine chair. It could’ve broken.”

  “‘It’ could’ve broken?”

  “Oh, come on.” Gamache laughed. “Don’t you think you’re reading more into this than it deserves? I was momentarily angry with Jean-Guy and showed it. Point final. No big deal. Drop it.”

  His voice, on the last two words, had hardened. And his eyes contained a warning. Do not cross this line.

  “Life is made up of ‘no big deals,’” said Myrna, crossing the line. “You know that. Isn’t that what you say about murders? They’re rarely provoked by one huge event, but by a series of tiny, almost invisible, events. No big deals, that combine to create a catastrophe.”

  “What’s your point?” His eyes hadn’t wavered.

  “You know my point. I’d be a fool to ignore what just happened. And so would you. It was, on the surface, a small thing. He got up on a chair, you chastised him. He got off. And if I didn’t know you, didn’t know what had happened, I would’ve thought nothing of it. But I do know you. And I know Jean-Guy. And I know that ‘broken’ means more to you, and him, than to most people.”

  They stared at each other, Gamache not relenting. Not accepting that Myrna could be right.

  “It’s just a chair,” he said, his voice low but not soft.

  Myrna nodded. “But it’s not just a man. It’s Jean-Guy.”

  “If the chair had broken he wouldn’t have been hurt,” said Gamache. “He was a foot and a half off the ground.”

  “I know that. You know that,” said Myrna. “But it’s no longer a matter of knowing, is it? If life was purely rational there’d be fewer wars, or poverty, or crime. Or murders. Fewer things would be broken. Your reaction wasn’t rational, Armand.”

  Gamache was silent.

  She looked at him closely. “Is this too much?”

  “Too much? Do you have any idea what I’ve seen? And done?”

  “I have an idea,” she said.

  “I don’t think you have.” He stared at her and a wave of images washed over Myrna. Of mangled bodies. Of glassy eyes. Of harrowing scenes. Of the very worst one person can do to another.

  And it had been his job to follow the bloody trail. Into the cave. To face whatever was in there.

  And then to do it again. And again.

  The miracle wasn’t that the killer was caught, but that the man before her had kept his own humanity throughout it all. Even after he himself had been dragged into the cave. And so deeply hurt.

  And now he was offering to get up and help once again.

  And she was offering to give him a pass. But he wasn’t taking it.

  “I’m not that fragile, you know,” said Gamache. “Besides, this is simply a missing person, not a murder. Easy.”

  He tried to sound relaxed and managed to sound simply weary.

  “Are you so sure?” she asked.

  “That it’s not a murder?” he asked. “Or that it’s easy?”

  “Both.”

  “No,” he admitted. “And you’re right about one thing. I’d rather stay here in Three Pines. Sleep in, enjoy a lemonade at the bistro, or garden—”

  He held up his hand to stop her from commenting on his so-called gardening.

  “I’d love to only do what Reine-Marie and I want.”

  As he spoke, Myrna could feel the depth of his longing.

  “Sometimes there’s no choice,” he said softly.

  “There is a choice, Armand. There’s always a choice.”

  “Are you so sure?”

  “Are you saying that you can’t refuse to help Clara?”

  “I’m saying that sometimes refusing does more damage.”

  He let that sit there between them.

  “Why did you help me, months ago?” he asked. “You knew the danger. You knew to help could bring terrible consequences to you, to the village. In fact, it almost certainly would. But still you did it.”

  “You know why.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my life and this village would lose all meaning, if we turned our backs.”

  He smiled. “C’est ça. The same for me now. What’s the use of healing, if the life that’s saved is callow and selfish and ruled by fear? There’s a difference between being in sanctuary and being in hiding.”

  “So you have to leave sanctuary in order to have it?” she asked.

  “You did,” he said.

  She watched him walk back across the kitchen. The limp barely noticeable anymore. The tremble in his right hand all but gone.

  Gamache joined Clara and Reine-Marie.

  “Anything?”

  But he could tell by their expressions they’d found nothing else in the paintings.

  “Doesn’t mean there isn’t something there…” Clara’s voice trailed off.

  The odd thing was, Gamache realized as he stared at the other two canvases on the floor, that while there was no overt image that evoked a feeling, he actually did feel something as he looked at them.

  They were, as far as he could tell, simply tangles of clashing paint.

  Why had Peter sent these as well as the joyous lip painting? What did Peter see in them that escaped Gamache? And escaped Clara? Escaped them all?

  What was escaping from these paintings, undetected?

  “Jean-Guy?” Gamache called, and the younger man put down the bread knife and joined him.

  “Oui?”

  “Can you help me?”

  Gamache picked one of the canvases off the floor.

  “Clara, can we put this up on the wall?”

  Jean-Guy held one corner, Gamache the other, while Clara nailed it into place. Then they nailed the others. Three crimes against art, nailed to the wall.

  Once again, they all stepped back to better consider the paintings.

  Then they stepped back again. Considered. Stepped. Considered. Like a very, very slow retreat. Or a dirge.

  They stopped when their backs hit the far wall. Distance and perspective had not improved the paintings.

  “Well, I’m hungry.”

  Beauvoir walked over to the kitchen island and picked up the platter of sandwiches he’d made. Myrna got the pitcher of lemonade she’d refilled, and together they made for the garden door, drawing the others to them. Away from the paintings and into the warm summer day.

  * * *

  Flies rested on Clara’s ham sandwich. She didn’t bat them away. They could have it.

  She wasn’t hungry. Her stomach was upset. Not nauseous exactly. Nothing she’d eaten. More like something she’d seen.

  Those paintings were upsetting her. As her friends ate and talked, she thought about the pictures.

  Wh
en she’d first seen them, in Bean’s bedroom, she’d been amused. Especially by the lips. But seeing them in her own home had made her queasy. It was a sort of seasickness. The horizon was no longer steady. Some shift, some upheaval, had occurred.

  Was she jealous? Was that possible? Was she worried that these paintings by Peter really did signal an important departure for him as an artist? While laughable right now, might they actually lead to genius? And at the pointy end of that thought, another thought perched. A genius greater than hers?

  After feeling quietly smug about Peter and his petty jealousy, was she no better? Worse, in fact? Jealous and hypocritical and judgmental. Oh, my.

  But there was more. Somewhere else her thoughts were leading. Something else was running for cover.

  Her friends were in an animated discussion about the paintings and why Peter had mailed them to Bean.

  “I asked that an hour ago,” Jean-Guy protested. “And no one listened. Myrna asks it now and suddenly it’s a brilliant question?”

  “The cruel fate of the avant-garde, mon beau,” said Reine-Marie, then turned back to Myrna.

  “So what do you think?”

  As they discussed it, Clara held her lemonade, the glass slippery with condensation, and examined her feelings.

  “Clara?”

  “Huh?”

  She looked at Myrna, who was smiling at her in obvious amusement.

  “Where’d you go?” Myrna asked.

  “Oh, just enjoying the garden. Wondering if I should put up more sweet pea on that trellis.”

  Myrna now looked at Clara with less amusement. Like most people, Myrna Landers did not like being lied to. But unlike most people, she was willing to call them on it.

  “What were you really thinking?”

  Clara took a deep, deep breath. “I was thinking about Peter’s paintings and how they made me feel.”

  “And how was that?” Reine-Marie asked.

  Clara looked at the faces watching her.

  “Unsettled,” she said. “I think the paintings frightened me a little.”

  “Why?” asked Gamache.

  “Because I think I know why he mailed them to Bean.”

  They leaned toward her.

  “Why?” Beauvoir asked.

  “What makes Bean different from most other people?” Clara asked.

  “Well, we don’t know if he’s a girl—” said Reine-Marie.