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

by Louise Penny

Gamache thought about that for a moment. “You said ‘at least, not the ones she told me about.’ Does that mean she kept some secrets from you?” He wasn’t looking at his companion. He found people opened up more if given the conceit of their own space. Instead, Chief Inspector Gamache stared straight ahead at the honeysuckle and roses growing up an arbor and warming in the early afternoon sun. “Some manage to flush it all out in one go,” said Suzanne. “But most need time. It’s not that they’re intentionally hiding anything. Sometimes they’ve buried it so deep they don’t even know it’s there anymore.” “Until?” “Until it claws its way back up. By then something tiny has turned into something almost unrecognizable. Something big and stinky.”

“What happens if people try to bury it again?” Gamache asked. “I don’t know about normal human beings, but for alcoholics it’s lethal. A secret that rotten will drive you to drink. And the drink will drive you to your grave. But not before it steals everything from you. Your loved ones, your job, your home. Your dignity. And finally, your life.” “All because of a secret?” “Because of a secret, and the decision to hide from the truth. The choice to chicken out.” She looked at him closely. “Sobriety isn’t for cowards, Chief Inspector. Whatever you might think of an alcoholic, to get sober, really sober demands great honesty, and that demands great courage. Stopping drinking’s the easy part. Then we have to face ourselves. Our demons. How many people are willing to do that?”

Clara Morrow walked slowly across the bridge, pausing to glance into the Rivière Bella Bella below. It burbled past, catching the sun in silver and gold highlights. She could see the rocks, rubbed smooth at the bottom of the stream, and every now and then a rainbow trout glided past.

“Like Humpty Dumpty, some people are just too damaged to heal.” “Was Lillian?” “She was healing. I think she might have done all right. She was sure working hard at it.” “But?” said Gamache. Suzanne took a few more steps. “Lillian was damaged, very messed up. But she was putting her life back together again, slowly. That wasn’t the problem.” The Chief Inspector considered what this woman, so loud and yet so loyal, was trying to tell him. And then he thought he had it. “She wasn’t Humpty Dumpty,” he said. “She hadn’t fallen off the wall. She pushed others. Others had had great falls, thanks to Lillian.”

For the second time in two days Clara lit the sage and sweetgrass. She gently pushed the fragrant smoke toward the intense artist, smoothing it over the woman’s head and down her body. Releasing, Clara explained, any negative thoughts, any bad energy. Then it was Gamache’s turn. She looked at him. His expression was slightly bemused, but mostly relaxed, attentive. She moved the smoke over him, until it hung like a sweet cloud around him and then dissipated in the breeze. “All the negative energy taken away,” said Clara, doing it to herself. “Gone.” If only, they all quietly thought, it was that easy.

Peter envied that. To sit alone. All alone. And be company enough. He envied that almost as much as he envied the people sitting in groups of two or three or four. Enjoying each other’s company. For Peter, the only thing worse than company was being alone.

“Why do you think Lillian Dyson came to Three Pines?” Gamache asked. “I’ve been wondering that.” “And have you come to a conclusion?” “I think it’s one of two things. She was here to either repair damage done,” Suzanne stopped to look at Gamache directly. “Or to do more.”

Listen, all the steps are important, but step nine is perhaps the most delicate, the most fraught. It’s really the first time we reach out to others. Take responsibility for what we’ve done. If it’s not done right…” “What happens?” “We can do more damage. To them and to ourselves.”

“Our lives, when we were drinking, were pretty complicated. Pretty chaotic. We got into all sorts of trouble. It was a mess. And this is all we ever wanted. A quiet place in the bright sunshine. But every day we drank we got further from it.” Suzanne looked at the little cottages around the village green. Most homes had porches and front gardens with peonies and lupins and roses in bloom. And cats and dogs lounging in the sun. “We long to find home. After years and years of making war on everyone around us, on ourselves, we just want peace.”

“And how do you find it?” Gamache asked. He more than most knew that peace, like Three Pines, could be very hard to find. “Well, first we have to find ourselves. Somewhere along the way we got lost. Ended up wandering around in a confusion of drugs and alcohol. Getting further and further away from who we really are.” She turned to him, a smile on her face again. “But some of us find our way back. From the wilderness.” Suzanne looked up from Gamache’s deep brown eyes, from the village green and homes and shops, to the forest and mountains surrounding them. “Getting sloshed was only part of the problem. This is a disease of the emotions. Of perception.” She tapped her temple a few times. “We get all screwy in how we see things, how we think. We call it stinking thinking. And that affects how we feel. And I can tell you, Chief Inspector, that it’s very hard and very scary to change our perceptions. Most can’t do it. But a lucky few do. And in doing that, we find ourselves and,” she looked around, “we find home.”

Myrna smiled and took a sip of her beer. She followed Beauvoir, who was following Gamache. “It wasn’t your fault, you know.” Beauvoir tensed, an involuntary spasm. “What d’you mean?” “What happened, in the factory. To him. There was nothing you could have done.” “I know that,” he snapped. “I wonder if you do. It must’ve been horrible, what you saw.” “Why’re you saying this?” Beauvoir demanded, his head in a whirl. Everything was suddenly topsy-turvy. “Because I think you need to hear it. You can’t always save him.” Myrna looked at the tired young man across from her. He was suffering, she knew. And she also knew only two things could produce such pain so long after the event. Love. And guilt.

And Mr. and Mrs. Dyson were always there too. As kindly supporting characters. In the background, like the Peanuts parents. Rarely seen, but somehow there were always egg salad sandwiches, and fruit salad and warm chocolate chip cookies. There was always a pitcher of bright pink lemonade.

“I’m trying to help,” said Pineault. His voice was stern, his eyes hard. Gamache was used to this, from court appearances. From high-level Sûreté conferences. And he recognized it for what it was. Chief Justice Thierry Pineault was pissing on him. It was delicate, sophisticated, genteel, mannerly. But it was still piss. The problem with a pissing contest, as Gamache knew, was that what should have remained private became public. Chief Justice Pineault’s privates were on display.

“What’re you doing here?” Castonguay repeated, the emphasis on “you,” as though Fortin had to explain himself. And he almost did, in an instinctive reaction. A need to appease these men. But Fortin stopped himself and smiled charmingly. “I’m here for the same reason you are. To sign the Morrows.” That brought a reaction from Marois. Slowly, so slowly, the art dealer turned his head and, looking directly at Fortin, he slowly, so slowly lifted his brows. In anyone else it might have been comical. But from Marois, the results were terrifying.

“People don’t change,” said Beauvoir, squashing his burger and watching the juices ooze out. Chief Justice Pineault and Suzanne had left, walking over to the B and B. And now, finally, Inspector Beauvoir could discuss murder, in peace. “You think not?” asked Gamache. On his plate were grilled garlic shrimp and quinoa mango salad. The barbeque was working overtime for the hungry lunch crowd, producing char-grilled steaks and burgers, shrimp and salmon.

They’d both looked up when André Castonguay had raised his voice. Beauvoir had even gone to get up, but the Chief had stopped him. Wanting to see how this would play out. Like the rest of the patrons, they watched Denis Fortin walk stiffly away, his back straight, his arms at his side. Like a little soldier, Gamache had thought, reminded of his son Daniel as a child, marching around the park. Either into or away from a battle. Resolute. Pretending. Denis Fortin was retreating, Gamache knew. To nurse his wounds.

Listen, people don’t change. You think the trout in the Bella Bella are there because they love Three Pines? But maybe next year they’ll go somewhere else?” Beauvoir jerked his head toward the river. Gamache looked at his Inspector. “What do you think?” “I think the trout have no choice. They return because they’re trout. That’s what trout do. Life is that simple. Ducks return to the same place every year. Geese do it. Salmon and butterflies and deer. Jeez, deer are such creatures of habit they wear a trail through the woods and never deviate. That’s why so many are shot, as we know. They never change. People are the same. We are what we are. We are who we are.”

Beauvoir ate the fry and nodded. This was his favorite part of an investigation. Not the food, though in Three Pines that was never a hardship. He could remember other cases, in other places, when he and the Chief had gone days with barely anything to eat, or shared cold canned peas and Spam. Even that, he had to admit, had been fun. In retrospect. But this little village produced bodies and gourmet meals in equal proportion.

Gamache looked at Beauvoir, as though trying to make up his mind about something. “You say people don’t change, but you and Enid loved each other once, right?” Beauvoir nodded. “But now you’re separated, on your way to a divorce. So what happened?” Gamache asked. “Did you change? Did Enid? Something changed.” Beauvoir looked at Gamache with surprise. The Chief was genuinely perturbed. “You’re right,” admitted Beauvoir. “Something changed. But I don’t think it was us really. I think we just realized that we weren’t the people we pretended to be.” “I’m sorry?” asked Gamache, leaning forward. Beauvoir collected his scattered thoughts. “I mean, we were young. I think we didn’t know what we wanted. Everyone was getting married and it seemed like fun. I liked her. She liked me. But I don’t think it was ever really love. And I think I was pretending, really. Trying to be someone I wasn’t. The man Enid wanted.” “So what happened?” “After the shootings, I realized I had to be the man I was. And that man didn’t love Enid enough to stay.”

Chief Inspector sipped his coffee and read from the AA book, noting passages underlined and comments in the margins, losing himself in the archaic but beautiful language of this book that so gently described the descent into hell and the long climb back out.

“There’s some debate over whether the dead woman had changed, whether she was the same person everyone knew twenty years ago, or if she was different.” “What makes you think she’d changed?” Myrna asked, then took a bite. “That coin you found in the garden? You were right, it’s from AA and it belonged to the dead woman. She’d stopped drinking for eight months now,” said the Chief. “People who knew her in AA describe a completely different person than Clara does. Not just slightly different, but completely. One is kind and generous, the other is cruel and manipulative.” Myrna frowned and thought, taking a sip of her café au lait. “We all change. Only psychotics remain the same.” “But isn’t that more growth than change? Like harmonics, but the note remains the same.” “Just a variation on a theme?” asked Myrna, interested. “Not really change?” She considered. “I think that’s often the case. Most people grow but they don’t become totally different people.” “Most. But some do?” “Some, Chief Inspector.” She watched him closely. Saw the familiar face, clean-shaven. The graying hair curling slightly around his ears. And the deep scar by his temple. Below that scar his eyes were kindly. She’d been afraid they might have changed. That when she next looked into them they’d have hardened. They hadn’t. Nor had he. But she didn’t kid herself. He might not look it, but he’d changed. Anyone who came out of that factory alive came out different.

“The same person will just keep doing the same stupid thing, over and over. So if you put all the pieces back exactly as they were, why would you expect your life to be different?” “Is there another option?” Myrna smiled at him. “You know there is. But it’s the hardest. Not many have the stomach for it.” “Change,” said Gamache.

“What I meant is that no one needs to tell me what great art is. I see it, I know it. Clara’s art is brilliant. I don’t need the Times, or Denis Fortin, or André Castonguay to tell me. But some people buy art with their ears and some with their eyes.”

“Why didn’t you tell us then?” “I should have,” she admitted. “I know that. In fact, that was one of the reasons I came down. I knew I had to tell you the truth. I was just getting my courage up.” Beauvoir looked at her with a mixture of disgust and admiration.

There were worse things than not meeting God. Meeting Him, for instance.

“Armand.” He extended his hand and grasped the Chief Inspector’s. “Thérèse is in the kitchen, preparing a little tray. Why don’t we sit on the balcony. What can I get you to drink?” “Just a Perrier, si te plaît, Jérôme,” said Gamache, following his host through the familiar living room, past the piles of open reference books and Jérôme’s puzzles and ciphers. They walked onto the front balcony, which looked across the street and onto a leafy, green park. It was hard to believe that just around the corner was avenue Laurier, filled with bistros and brasseries and boutiques.

The Chief Inspector had taught her at the academy that a crime scene wasn’t simply on the ground. It was in people’s heads. Their memories and perceptions. Their feelings. And you don’t want to contaminate those with leading questions.

“Well, Chief Inspector, I can tell you I’ve never seen these works or this artist before. The style is singular. Like nothing else out there. Deceptively simple. Not primitive, but not self-conscious either. They’re beautiful.” “Would they be valuable?” “Now there’s a question.” She considered the images again. “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.”

Thérèse looked at the paintings, almost wistfully. “They’re magnificent. I’d like to meet the artist.” She looked into Gamache’s eyes and held them for a moment longer than necessary. “But I suspect I won’t. He’s dead, isn’t he? He’s the victim?” “Why do you say that?” “Besides the fact you’re the head of homicide?” She smiled and beside her Jérôme gave a harrumph of amusement. “Because for you to bring these to me the artist would have to be either a suspect or the victim, and whoever painted these would not kill.” “Why not?” “Artists tend to paint what they know. A painting is a feeling. The best artists reveal themselves in their works,” said Superintendent Brunel, glancing again at the art. “Whoever painted this was content. Not, perhaps, perfect, but a content man.”

“But the video didn’t make you look bad, Armand,” said Jérôme. “Just the opposite. It made you look very good.” “And what would cripple you, Jérôme?” Gamache looked with affection at the man across from him. “Being falsely accused or being falsely praised? Especially when there was so much pain and so little to praise.” “It wasn’t your fault,” said Jérôme, looking his friend square in the face. “Merci,” Gamache inclined his head, “but it wasn’t my finest hour either.” Jérôme nodded. The spotlight could be a tricky thing. It could send a person rushing for someplace dim to hide. Away from the crippling glare of public approval.

There, in bold type, were the words “A Deeply Moving Exhibit.” And what followed was not so much a review or critique but a comedy routine, a riff on the word “move,” as in “movement.” As in “bodily function.” Even the drained agents chuckled as they read. It was juvenile, immature. But still, quite funny. Like watching someone slip on a banana peel. And fall. Nothing subtle about it. But for some reason laughable. Isabelle Lacoste did not laugh. Unlike the others, she’d seen how this review concluded. Not with the period on the page, but with the body sprawled in the late spring garden. It started with a joke, and it ended in murder.

He was always wanting. But up until now he hadn’t really known what he wanted, so he’d gone after everything.

He sat in Clara’s studio and waited. God, he knew, lived here too. Not just in St. Thomas’s on the hill. But here, in the cluttered space, with the dried-up apple cores, the tins with oil-hardened brushes shoved into them. The paintings. The big fiberglass feet and the uteruses rampant. Across the hall in his pristine studio he’d made space for inspiration. All clean and tidy. But inspiration had mistaken the address, and landed here instead. No, thought Peter, it wasn’t just inspiration he was looking for, it was more. That had been the problem. All his life he’d mistaken the one for the other. Thinking inspiration was enough. Mistaking the created for the Creator.

As Lacoste entered she scanned the room, not taking anything for granted. Just because it was familiar, and comfortable, didn’t mean it was safe. Most accidents happen close to home, most murders happen in the home.

Chief Inspector Gamache rose as they entered and greeted them as though it was his home and they honored guests. No one was fooled. Nor were they meant to be. It was a courtesy, nothing more.

Thierry smiled briefly, then looked very serious. “Anyone can make sure her rights aren’t violated. I think you can. But what you can’t do is guard her sobriety. Only another alcoholic can help her stay sober through this. If she loses that she loses everything.” “Is it that fragile?” asked Gamache. “It’s not that sobriety is so fragile, it’s that addiction is so cunning. I’m here to guard her against her addiction. You can guard her rights.”

And yet…” Gamache paused. “Did you notice her reaction when talking about the review?” “She’s still angry,” said Lacoste. Gamache nodded. “She’s spent twenty-three years in AA trying to get over her resentments, and she’s still angry. Can you imagine someone who hasn’t been trying? How angry they must be?”

Gamache had left him. Alone. To die. He’d abandoned him, to die alone on a filthy factory floor. Beauvoir hit replay, replay, replay. And in each, of course, the same thing happened. Myrna was wrong. He wasn’t upset because he’d failed to save Gamache. He was angry because Gamache had failed to save him. And the bottom dropped out from beneath Jean-Guy Beauvoir.

Getting up, he threw on some clothes and tiptoed downstairs. Putting on his Barbour coat and a cap he left the B and B. The air was fresh and cool and now even the owl was quiet. Nothing stirred. Except a homicide detective.

He’d come close, so close it shocked him, to striking Jean-Guy. Gamache had been angry before. Had certainly been taunted and tested. By yellow journalists, by suspects, by defense lawyers and even colleagues. But he’d rarely come this close to actually lashing out physically. He’d pulled himself back. But with an effort so great it left him winded and exhausted. And hurt. He knew that. Knew the reason suspects and even colleagues, while frustrating and maddening, hadn’t brought him this close to physical violence was because they couldn’t hurt him deeply. But someone he cared about could. And did.

Gamache got up and went to turn the computer off. The video had restarted and before the Chief could turn it off he saw again Jean-Guy Beauvoir gunned down. Falling. Hitting the concrete floor. Until this moment Chief Inspector Gamache hadn’t realized that Jean-Guy Beauvoir never really got up.

It had proven easy to get the broad strokes of Chief Justice Thierry Pineault’s life. Canadians enjoyed an open society. Trumpeted it. Reveled in being the very model of transparency, where decisions were made in full view. Where public and powerful figures were accountable and their lives open to examination. Such was the conceit. And, like most open societies, few bothered to test the limits, to see where and when open became closed. But there was always a limit. Chief Inspector Gamache had found it a few minutes earlier.

Gamache knew the story. Superintendent Brunel had told him. How the child had been killed by a drunk driver. Gamache wanted to find out who that driver was, and whether it was, as he suspected, Pineault himself. What else could have shattered the man so much he’d hit bottom? Stopped drinking? Turned his life around. Had the dead grandchild given Thierry Pineault a second chance at life? That could also explain the strange connection between the Chief Justice and young Brian. Both knew what it felt like to hear the soft thud. The hesitation of the car. And to know what it was.

She rubbed her eyes. With each new review she had to remind herself why she was there. Had to remember Lillian Dyson lying on the soft green grass in Peter and Clara’s garden. A woman who would grow no older. A woman who had stopped, there. In the pretty, peaceful garden. Because someone had taken her life. Though, after reading all these repulsive reviews Lacoste was tempted to take a club to the woman herself. She felt dirty, as though someone had thrown a pile of merde all over her. But someone had killed Lillian Dyson, hideous human being or not, and Lacoste was determined to find out who. The more she read the more she was convinced that someone was hiding here. In the newspaper morgue. In the microfiche. The beginning of this murder was so old it existed only on plastic files seen through a dusty viewer. An outdated technology that recorded a murder. Or at least, the birth of a death. The beginning of an end. An old event still fresh and alive in someone’s mind. No, not fresh. It was rotten. Old and rotten, the flesh falling off it. And Agent Lacoste knew if she looked long enough, and hard enough, the murderer would be revealed.

A chilly, damp breeze was blowing into Beauvoir’s room, fluttering the white cotton curtains. It had begun to drizzle and the Chief could hear the muffled tap of rain on leaves, and smell the familiar scent of wood fires from the village homes.

“How many OxyContin pills do you take?” Beauvoir had a protest on his lips, but silenced it. “What the prescription says.” “And what’s that?” The Chief’s face was stern, his eyes sharp. “One pill every night.” “Do you take more?” “No.” The two men stared at each other, Gamache’s deep brown eyes unyielding. “Do you?” he repeated. “No,” said Beauvoir, adamant. “Listen, we deal with enough junkies, I don’t want to turn into that.” “And you think that’s what the junkies wanted?” demanded Gamache.

The drizzle had turned into a Scotch mist and clung to the hills surrounding the village so that Three Pines felt particularly intimate. As though the rest of the world didn’t exist. Only here. Quiet and peaceful. A log fire crackled in the grate. Just enough to take the chill off. Agent Lacoste was exhausted. She wished she could take her bowl of café au lait and a croissant, and curl up on the large sofa by the fireplace. And read one of the well-worn paperbacks from Myrna’s shop. An old Maigret. Read and nap. Read and nap. In front of the fireplace. While the outside world and worries receded into the mist.

Toast and home-made confiture for Beauvoir. Pear and spiced blueberry crêpes for Lacoste. She’d kept herself awake on the drive down from Montréal by imagining what breakfast she’d have. This won. A bowl of porridge with raisins, cream and brown sugar was placed in front of the Chief.

“Great. It’ll be very relaxed. En famille.” Gamache smiled at the French phrase. It was one Reine-Marie often used. It meant “come as you are,” but it meant more than that. She didn’t use it for every relaxed occasion and with every guest. It was reserved for special guests, who were considered family. It was a particular position, a compliment. An intimacy offered.

Armand Gamache called Reine-Marie then showered and looked longingly at his bed. The room, like all the others in Gabri and Olivier’s B and B, was surprisingly simple. But not Spartan. It was elegant and luxurious, in its way. With crisp white bed linen, and a duvet filled with goose down. Hand-stitched Oriental carpets were thrown onto wide plank pine floors, which were original from when the B and B had been a coaching inn. Gamache wondered how many fellow travelers had rested in that very room. A pause in their difficult and dangerous journey. He wondered, briefly, where they’d come from and where they were going. And if they made it. The B and B was far less magnificent than the inn and spa on the hill. And he supposed he could have stayed there. But as he got older he yearned for less and less. Family, friends. Books. Walks with Reine-Marie and Henri, their dog. And a full night’s sleep in a simple bedroom.