A Trick of the Light (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #7)

by Louise Penny

Armand Gamache knew no good ever came from putting up walls. What people mistook for safety was in fact captivity. And few things thrived in captivity.

“She sounds like an emotional vampire,” said Myrna, at last. “A what?” “I ran into quite a few in my practice. People who sucked others dry. We all know them. We’re in their company and come away drained, for no apparent reason.”

“No, little one. Lillian’s the emotional vampire. You’re the frog.” “Sounds like a rejected Grimm’s fairy tale. ‘The Frog and the Emotional Vampire.’” Both women paused for a moment, imagining the illustrations. Myrna came back to her senses first. “The frog in the frying pan is a psychological term, a phenomenon,” she said. “If you stick a frog into a sizzling hot frying pan what’ll it do?” “Jump out?” suggested Clara. “Jump out. But if you put one into a pan at room temperature then slowly raise the heat, what happens?” Clara thought about it. “It’ll jump out when it gets too hot?” Myrna shook her head. “No.” She took her feet off the hassock and leaned forward again, her eyes intense. “The frog just sits there. It gets hotter and hotter but it never moves. It adjusts and adjusts. Never leaves.” “Never?” asked Clara, quietly. “Never. It stays there until it dies.” Clara took a long, slow, deep breath, then exhaled.

“I saw it with my clients who’d been abused either physically or emotionally. The relationship never starts with a fist to the face, or an insult. If it did there’d be no second date. It always starts gently. Kindly. The other person draws you in. To trust them. To need them. And then they slowly turn. Little by little, increasing the heat. Until you’re trapped.”

“I sometimes wonder how important place is to an artist.” Gamache also looked out over the quiet village. “So many choose the great cities. Paris, London, Venice. Cold water flats and lofts in Soho and Chelsea. Lillian Dyson moved to New York, for instance. But Clara didn’t. The Morrows chose here. Does where they live affect what they create?”

“No, but there’re other forms of attack. Of hurting. Even of killing. You can murder a person’s reputation. You can kill their drive and their desire, even their creativity, if you try hard enough.”

They didn’t have a marriage, they had a parody of a partnership.

“Change,” said Gamache. Maybe, he thought, that was the point of Humpty Dumpty. He wasn’t meant to be put together again. He was meant to be different. After all, an egg on a wall would always be in peril. Maybe Humpty Dumpty had to fall. And maybe all the King’s men had to fail. Myrna drained her mug and rose. He rose too. “People do change, Chief Inspector. But you need to know something.” She lowered her voice. “It’s not always for the better.”

“Beautiful isn’t in fashion. Edgy, dark, stark, cynical, that’s what galleries and curators want. They seem to think they’re more complex, more challenging, but I can tell you, they’re not. Light is every bit as challenging as dark. We can discover a great deal about ourselves by looking at beauty.”