The Long Way Home Read online

  It meant that smell was smoke and the sound was an engine failing.

  Armand and Jean-Guy told them about their day. On hearing about the visit to Peter’s mother, Clara took a deep, deep breath.

  Across from her, Myrna listened, absorbing the information, in case Clara missed some vital pieces.

  “When Peter left here he went to Montréal for a few days, then flew to Paris,” said Jean-Guy. “Then he moved on to Florence, then Venice.”

  Clara nodded to show she was following him. So far, so good.

  “From Venice, Peter flew to Scotland,” said Beauvoir.

  Clara stopped nodding. “Scotland?”

  “Why would Peter go to Scotland?” Myrna asked.

  “We hoped you could tell us,” Gamache said to Clara.

  “Scotland,” Clara repeated softly to herself and stared into the fire. Then she shook her head. “Where in Scotland?”

  “It’s easier to see on a map. Let me show you.” Gamache rocked out of the deep sofa and returned a minute later with an atlas. He splayed it open on the coffee table and found the page.

  “He flew into Glasgow.”

  Armand pointed.

  They leaned in.

  “From there Peter took a bus.” He traced a line from Glasgow south. South. Along a winding road. Past towns named Bellshill, Lesmahagow, Moffat.

  And then he stopped.

  Clara leaned closer to the map.

  “Dumfries?” she asked.

  Her brows were drawn together, trying to either read the word or make sense of it, or both. Finally she sat back and looked at Gamache, who was watching her.

  “Are you sure?” asked Clara.

  “Pretty sure,” said Beauvoir.

  There was a pause.

  “Is it possible it wasn’t Peter? That someone stole his credit card?” Clara asked. “And his passport?”

  She met Armand’s eyes. Not looking away from what that question implied. No living man would lose his documents, or have them stolen, without reporting it. If they were taken, it was from a dead man.

  “It’s possible,” Gamache admitted. “But unlikely. They’d have to have his codes and look exactly like him. Security and Customs agents look closely at passport photos now.”

  “But it’s still a possibility?” Clara asked.

  “Remote. We have agents looking into it,” Beauvoir admitted. “We’re going on the most likely scenario that it was actually Peter.”

  “But how likely is it that Peter left Venice for Dumfries?” asked Myrna.

  “I agree,” conceded Gamache. “It’s odd. Unless Peter had a particular interest in Scotland.”

  “Not that he ever mentioned,” said Clara. “Though he does like Scotch.”

  Myrna smiled. “Maybe it’s that simple. Paris for great wine, Florence for Campari, and Venice for…”

  She paused, stumped.

  “The Bellini,” said Reine-Marie. “We had one in Harry’s Bar, where it was invented. Remember, Armand?”

  “We sat at the bar at quaiside watching the vaporetti go by,” he said. “It was named after the color of a robe in a Bellini painting. Pink.”

  “Pink?” Jean-Guy mouthed to Gamache.

  “Are you suggesting Peter’s drinking his way across Europe?” asked Clara. “The Ruth Zardo Grand Tour.”

  “Don’t look at me,” said Gamache. “It’s not my theory.”

  “Then what is your theory?” Clara asked.

  His smile faded, and he took a deep breath. “I don’t have one. It’s too early. But I do know one thing, Clara. As strange as all this seems, there’s a reason Peter went to these places. We just have to work it out.”

  Clara leaned forward again, staring at the dot on the map. “Is he still there?”

  Beauvoir shook his head. “He went to Toronto—”

  “He’s in Toronto?” Clara interrupted. “Why didn’t you tell me this to begin with?” But on seeing their expressions, she stopped. “What is it?”

  “He didn’t stay there,” said Gamache. “Peter flew from Toronto to Quebec City in April.”

  “Even better,” said Clara. “He’s on his way home.”

  “Quebec City,” Gamache repeated. “Not Montréal. If he was coming back here he’d have gone to Montréal, non?”

  Clara glared, hating him for a moment. For not allowing her her delusions, even briefly.

  “Maybe he just wanted to see Quebec City,” she said. “Maybe he wanted to paint it, while he waited.” Her words, rapid-fire and insistent, faltered. “While he waited,” she repeated, “to come home.”

  But he hadn’t.

  “He took three thousand dollars out of his bank account,” Jean-Guy said, forging ahead. Then he stopped and looked at Gamache.

  “That’s the last we found of him,” said Armand. “That was April.”

  Clara grew very still. Myrna put her large hand over Clara’s, and it felt icy.

  “He might still be there,” said Clara.

  “Oui,” said Gamache. “Absolutely.”

  “Where was he staying?”

  “We don’t know. But it’s early days yet. You’re right, he might still be in Quebec City, or he might have taken that money and gone elsewhere. Isabelle Lacoste is using the resources of the Sûreté to find him. Jean-Guy is looking. I’m looking. But it might take time.”

  Reine-Marie threw a log into the fire, sending embers and sparks up the chimney. Then she went into the kitchen.

  They could smell salmon, and a slight scent of tarragon and lemon.

  Clara stood. “I’m going to Quebec City.”

  “And do what?” Myrna also got up. “I know you want to do something, but that won’t help.”

  “How do you know?” asked Clara.

  Gamache rose. “There is something you could do. I’m not sure anything’ll come of it but it might help.”

  “What?” asked Clara.

  “Peter has family in Toronto—”

  “His older brother Thomas,” said Clara. “And his sister Marianna.”

  “I was going to call them tomorrow and ask if Peter was in touch, maybe stayed with one of them.”

  “You want me to call?”

  He hesitated. “I was actually thinking you might go there.”

  “Why?” asked Myrna. “Can’t she just call? You were going to.”

  “True, but face-to-face is always better. And even better if you know the people.” Gamache looked at Clara. “I think you’ll know if they’re lying to you.”

  “I will.”

  “But what does it matter?” Myrna asked. They were walking toward the kitchen to join Reine-Marie. “He’s not there anymore.”

  “But he was there for a few months,” said Gamache. “He might have told his brother or sister where he was going next, and why. He might have told them why he was in Dumfries.”

  Gamache stopped and looked at Clara. “We have no leads in Quebec City but we have a few in Toronto. It might not help. But it might.”

  “I’ll go,” said Clara. “Of course I’ll go. First thing in the morning.”

  She looked relieved to finally have something to do besides worry.

  “Then I’ll go with you,” said Myrna.

  “What about the shop?” Clara asked.

  “I think the hordes desperate for secondhand books can wait a couple of days,” said Myrna, putting out knives and forks. “I might ask Ruth to look after the store. She spends most of her time asleep in the chair by the window anyway.”

  “That’s Ruth?” asked Reine-Marie. “I thought it was a mannequin.”

  Clara sat down and pushed the salmon around on her plate. While the others talked she listened to the drum of rain against the window.

  She was anxious to get going.

  NINE

  Clara and Myrna caught the morning train out of Montréal’s Central Station.

  Clara listened to the sound of the wheels and felt the comforting, familiar movement. She leaned back, her head lolling on the rest, and stared out the window at the forests and fields and isolated farms.

  This was a journey she’d made many times. First on her own, to art college in Toronto. A great adventure. Then with Peter to art shows in Toronto. Always his, never hers. Prestigious juried shows his work had been selected for. She’d sat beside him, holding his hand. Excited for him.

  Today the train felt both familiar and foreign. Peter wasn’t there.

  In the reflection of the window she noticed Myrna staring at her. Clara turned to face her friend.

  “What is it?”

  “Do you want Peter back?”

  It was the question Myrna had been wanting to ask for a while, but the time had never seemed right. But now it did.

  “I don’t know.”

  It wasn’t that Clara couldn’t answer that question, but that she had too many answers.

  Waking up alone in bed, she wanted him back.

  In her studio, painting, she didn’t.

  With her friends in the bistro, or over dinner with them, she didn’t miss him at all.

  But eating alone, at the pine table? In bed at night? She still sometimes spoke to him. Told him about her day and pretended he was there. Pretended he cared.

  And then she turned out the light, and rolled over. And missed him even more.

  Did she want him back?

  “I don’t know,” she repeated. “I asked him to leave because he stopped caring for me, stopped supporting me. Not because I’d stopped caring for him.”

  Myrna nodded. She knew this. They’d talked about it through the past year. Their close friendship had grown closer and more intimate as Clara opened up.

  All the stuff stuffed down, all the stuff that women were not supposed to feel, and never, ever show, Clara had showed Myrna.

  The neediness, the fear, the rage. The terrible, aching loneliness.

  “Suppose I’m never kissed on the lips again?” Clara had asked one afternoon in midwinter, as they ate lunch in front of the fire.

  Myrna knew that fear too. She knew all of Clara’s fears because she shared them. And admitted them to Clara.

  And over the course of the year, as the days grew longer, their friendship deepened. As the night receded, the fear had also receded. And the loneliness of both women had ebbed away.

  Do you want Peter back?

  Myrna had asked Clara the question she was afraid to ask herself.

  In the window, imposed over the endless forest, Myrna could see her ghostly self.

  “Suppose something’s happened to him?” Clara spoke to the back of the seat in front of her. “It would be my fault.”

  “No,” said Myrna. “You asked him to leave. What he did after that was his choice.”

  “But if he stayed in Three Pines he’d be fine.”

  “Unless he had an appointment in Samarra.”

  “Samarra?” Clara turned to look at her friend. “What’re you talking about?”

  “Somerset Maugham,” said Myrna.

  “Are you having a stroke?” Clara asked.

  “Maugham used the old fable in a story,” Myrna explained. “I spend my days reading, remember. I know all these obscure things. I’m lucky I don’t work in Sarah’s bakery.”

  Clara laughed. “I just want to find him, to know he’s all right. And then I can get on with my life.”

  “With or without him?”

  “I think I’ll know when I see him.”

  Myrna tapped Clara’s hand lightly. “We’ll find him.”

  Once in Toronto they checked into the Royal York hotel. Myrna had a shower and when she came out she found Clara on her laptop.

  “I’ve marked the major art galleries on the map,” said Clara over her shoulder, nodding to the map open on the bed. “We can do them tomorrow.”

  Myrna rubbed her wet hair and sat on the bed, studying the map with its Xs and circles.

  “I thought we should start with Peter’s brother and sister,” said Clara. “Thomas’s office is just up Yonge Street. We have an appointment at four. Marianna is meeting us for a drink in the hotel bar at five thirty.”

  “You’ve been busy,” said Myrna. She got up to look at the page Clara was reading on her laptop. “What’s so interesting?”

  And then she stopped.

  At the top of the page were the words “W. Somerset Maugham.”

  “A servant goes into the marketplace in Baghdad,” Clara read off the screen, her back to her friend. “There he bumps into an old woman. When she turns around, he recognizes her as Death.”

  “Clara,” said Myrna. “I didn’t—”

  “Death glares at him and the servant, frightened, runs away. He goes straight to his master and explains that he met Death in the market and that he needs to get away, to save himself. The master gives him a horse and the servant takes off, riding as fast as he can for Samarra, where he knows Death won’t find him.”

  “I don’t know why I mentioned—”

  Clara made a subtle movement with her hand, and Myrna fell silent.

  “Later that day the master is in the marketplace and he too meets Death,” Clara continued reading. “He asks her why she frightened his servant and Death explains that she hadn’t meant to scare him. She was just surprised.”

  Clara turned around and stared at Myrna. “You finish the story. You know it.”

  “I should never have said—”

  “Please,” said Clara.

  Finally Myrna, in a soft voice, spoke.

  “Death said, I was simply surprised to see him in the market. Because I have an appointment with him tonight. In Samarra.”

  * * *

  “Did you get Peter’s photograph?” Gamache asked Lacoste.

  “Oui. And I’ve sent it to Quebec City,” she said. “They’re looking into it. I’ve also sent it out across the Sûreté du Québec network and to police in Paris, Florence, and Venice. I’ve asked them to track his movements. It’s been almost a year, so I’m not expecting much, but I have to try.”

  Gamache smiled. Many had thought him mad, or hopped up on painkillers, when he’d appointed an inspector in her early thirties as his successor to lead the famed homicide division. But he’d prevailed. And had never, ever doubted his choice of Isabelle Lacoste.

  “Good.”

  He was about to ring off when he remembered, “Oh, and Dumfries. Could you check that out too, please?”

  “Right. I forgot.”

  He hung up and tapped the phone a few times with his finger. Then he went over to his computer and dialed into the Internet.

  Once connected, he went to Google and typed in “Dumfries.”

  * * *

  “Well, that wasn’t very helpful,” said Myrna. “Is he always like that?”

  They’d descended the TD Bank Tower and were standing in the lobby. Myrna was taking a moment to admire the Mies van der Rohe design. The light and height. A contrast to the closed-off, closed-in, squalid little scene they’d left on the 52nd floor.

  Thomas Morrow was elegant, tall, gracious. He appeared, in many ways, an animated version of the building itself. Except there was nothing open and bright about him.

  The office tower was more than it initially appeared. Thomas Morrow was less.

  “Worse,” said Clara. “I think you being there made him nicer than he normally is.”

  “You’re joking,” said Myrna. Their shoes rapped on the marble floor. The clock above the long marble security desk said four thirty-five. Thomas Morrow had made his sister-in-law wait twenty minutes and then had given them ten minutes of his time before moving on to more pressing issues than a missing brother.

  “I’m sure Peter’s fine,” Morrow had said, a smile on his face that only managed to look condescending. “You know him. He’s gone off to paint and lost track of the time.”

  Myrna said nothing, she simply observed Thomas Morrow. He was in his early sixties, she guessed. He sat with his legs splayed open, inviting the women to stare at his cr otch. His suit was beautifully cut and his tie was silk. His back was to the view, which meant his visitors saw him against the backdrop of the huge black towers around him and the glittering great lake beyond.

  He was like a monarch, surrounding himself with the symbols of power, hoping to disguise his own weakness.

  Clara kept her temper. “I’m sure you’re right, but I’m really just interested in knowing if you saw him when he was here.”

  Thomas shook his head. “But I wouldn’t expect him to get in touch. No art on my walls.”

  He pointed with some pride to the bank of photographs. Not of family or friends, but of business triumphs. Golfing trophies. Famous people he’d met.

  Strangers.

  “He was probably going to shows and checking out galleries,” said Thomas Morrow. “Have you asked the galleries?”

  “That’s a good idea,” said Clara with a tight smile. “Thank you.”

  Morrow got up and walked to the door. “I’m glad I could help.”

  And that was that.

  “We could’ve done that over the phone,” said Myrna as they walked out into the blast furnace of the Toronto summer. The heat shimmered off the buildings and bounced off concrete and drilled into the pavement, which gave off the scent of melting asphalt in the heavy, humid air.

  Myrna found it strangely calming. Her mother’s and grandmother’s comfort smells were cut grass and fresh baking and the subtle scent of line-dried sheets. For Myrna’s generation the smells that calmed were manufactured. Melting asphalt meant summer. VapoRub meant winter, and being cared for. There were Tang and gas fumes and long-gone photocopy ink.

  All comforted her, for reasons that beggared understanding, because they had nothing to do with understanding.

  After years in Three Pines, her comfort scents were evolving. She still loved the smell of VapoRub, but now she also appreciated the delicate scent of worms after a rain.

  “I wanted to be able to watch him,” said Clara as they waited at a corner with a crowd of other perspiring people for the light to turn. “To see if he was lying, or holding something back.”

  “And was he? Do you think he saw Peter, or spoke to him?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Myrna thought about it. “Why did he say that about his walls?”