The Brutal Telling (12 page)

“It’s a lot of house for three people. Do they have children?”

“Well, no.”

Peter’s eyes shifted down the table, then back to Gamache. Whom had he just looked at? Clara? Gabri? It was impossible to say.

“Have they made friends in the community?” Gamache leaned back and spoke in a normal tone, taking a forkful of salad.

Peter looked down the table again and lowered his voice even more. “Not exactly.”

Before Gamache could pursue it Peter got up and began clearing the table. At the sink he looked back at his friends, chatting. They were close. So close they could reach out and touch each other, which they occasionally did.

And Peter couldn’t. He stood apart, and watched. He missed Ben, who’d once lived in the old Hadley house. Peter had played there as a child. He knew its nooks and crannies. All the scary places where ghosts and spiders lived. But now someone else lived there and had turned it into something else.

Thinking of the Gilberts, Peter could feel his own heart lift a little.

“What’re you thinking about?”

Peter started as he realized Armand Gamache was right beside him.

“Nothing much.”

Gamache took the mixer from Peter’s hand and poured whipping cream and a drop of vanilla into the chilled bowl. He turned it on and leaned toward Peter, his voice drowned out by the whirring machine, lost to all but his companion.

“Tell me about the old Hadley house, and the people there.”

Peter hesitated but knew Gamache wasn’t going to let it go. And this was as discreet as it was going to get. Peter talked, his words whipped and mixed and unintelligible to anyone more than six inches away.

“Marc and Dominique plan to open a luxury inn and spa.”

“At the old Hadley house?”

Gamache’s astonishment was so complete it almost made Peter laugh. “It’s not the same place you remember. You should see it now. It’s fantastic.”

The Chief Inspector wondered whether a coat of paint and new appliances could exorcise demons, and whether the Catholic Church knew about that.

“But not everyone’s happy about it,” Peter continued. “They’ve interviewed a few of Olivier’s workers and offered them jobs at higher wages. Olivier’s managed to keep most of his staff, but he’s had to pay more. The two barely speak.”

“Marc and Olivier?” Gamache asked.

“Won’t be in the same room.”

“That must be awkward, in a small village.”

“Not really.”

“Then why are we whispering?” Gamache shut the mixer off and spoke in a normal tone. Peter, flustered, looked over at the table again.

“Look, I know Olivier’ll get over it, but for now it’s just easier not to bring it up.”

Peter handed Gamache a shortcake, which he cut in half, and Peter piled sliced ripe strawberries in their own brilliant red juice on top of it.

Gamache noticed Clara getting up and Myrna going with her. Olivier came over and put the coffee on to perk.

“Can I help?” asked Gabri.

“Here, put cream on. The cake, Gabri,” said Peter as Gabri approached Olivier with a spoonful of whipped cream. Soon a small conga line of men assembling strawberry shortcakes was formed. When they’d finished they turned around to take the desserts to the table but stopped dead.

There, lit only by candles, was Clara’s art. Or at least three large canvases, propped on easels. Gamache felt suddenly light-headed, as though he’d traveled back to the time of Rembrandt, da Vinci, Titian. Where art was viewed either by daylight or candlelight. Was this how the
Mona Lisa
was first seen? The Sistine Chapel? By firelight? Like cave drawings.

He wiped his hands on a dish towel and walked closer to the three easels. He noticed the other guests did the same thing, drawn to the paintings. Around them the candles flickered and threw more light than Gamache had expected, though it was possible Clara’s paintings produced their own light.

“I have others, of course, but these’ll be the centerpieces of the exhibition at the Galerie Fortin.”

But no one was really listening. Instead they were staring at the easels. Some at one, some at another. Gamache stood back for a moment, taking in the scene.

Three portraits, three elderly women, stared back at him.

One was clearly Ruth. The one that had first caught Denis Fortin’s eye. The one that had led him to his extraordinary offer of a solo show. The one that had the art world, from Montreal to Toronto, to New York and London, buzzing. About the new talent, the treasure, found buried in Quebec’s Eastern Townships.

And there it was, in front of them.

Clara Morrow had painted Ruth as the elderly, forgotten Virgin Mary. Angry, demented, the Ruth in the portrait was full of despair, of bitterness. Of a life left behind, of opportunities squandered, of loss and betrayals real and imagined and created and caused. She clutched at a rough blue shawl with emaciated hands. The shawl had slipped off one bony shoulder and the skin was sagging, like something nailed up and empty.

And yet the portrait was radiant, filling the room from one tiny point of light. In her eyes. Embittered, mad Ruth stared into the distance, at something very far off, approaching. More imagined than real.

Hope.

Clara had captured the moment despair turned to hope. The moment life began. She’d somehow captured Grace.

It took Gamache’s breath away and he could feel a burning in his eyes. He blinked and turned from it, as though from something so brilliant it blinded. He saw everyone else in the room also staring, their faces soft in the candlelight.

The next portrait was clearly Peter’s mother. Gamache had met her, and once met, never forgotten. Clara had painted her staring straight at the viewer. Not into the distance, like Ruth, but at something very close. Too close. Her white hair in a loose bun, her face a web of soft lines, as though a window had just shattered but not yet fallen. She was white and pink and healthy and lovely. She had a quiet, gentle smile that reached her tender blue eyes. Gamache could almost smell the talcum powder and cinnamon. And yet the portrait made him deeply uneasy. And then he saw it. The subtle turn of her hand, outward. The way her fingers seemed to reach beyond the canvas. At him. He had the impression this gentle, lovely elderly woman was going to touch him. And if she did, he’d know sorrow like never before. He’d know that empty place where nothing existed, not even pain.

She was repulsive. And yet he couldn’t help being drawn to her, like a person afraid of heights drawn to the edge.

And the third elderly woman he couldn’t place. He’d never seen her before and he wondered if she was Clara’s mother. There was something vaguely familiar about her.

He looked at it closely. Clara painted people’s souls, and he wanted to know what this soul held.

She looked happy. Smiling over her shoulder at something of great interest. Something she cared about deeply. She too had a shawl, this of old, rough, deep red wool. She seemed someone who was used to riches but suddenly poor. And yet it didn’t seem to matter to her.

Interesting, thought Gamache. She was heading in one direction but looking in the other. Behind her. From her he had an overwhelming feeling of yearning. He realized all he wanted to do was draw an armchair up to that portrait, pour a cup of coffee and stare at it for the rest of the evening. For the rest of his life. It was seductive. And dangerous.

With an effort he pulled his eyes away and found Clara standing in the darkness, watching her friends as they looked at her creations.

Peter was also watching. With a look of unmarred pride.

“
Bon Dieu
,” said Gabri. “
C’est extraordinaire.
”

“
Félicitations
, Clara,” said Olivier. “My God, they’re brilliant. Do you have more?”

“Do you mean, have I done you?” she asked with a laugh. “
Non, mon beau.
Only Ruth and Peter’s mother.”

“Who’s this one?” Lacoste pointed to the painting Gamache had been staring at.

Clara smiled. “I’m not telling. You have to guess.”

“Is it me?” asked Gabri.

“Yes, Gabri, it’s you,” said Clara.

“Really?” Too late he saw her smiling.

The funny thing was, thought Gamache, it almost could have been Gabri. He looked again at the portrait in the soft candlelight. Not physically, but emotionally. There was happiness there. But there was also something else. Something that didn’t quite fit with Gabri.

“So which one’s me?” asked Ruth, limping closer to the paintings.

“You old drunk,” said Gabri. “It’s this one.”

Ruth peered at her exact double. “I don’t see it. Looks more like you.”

“Hag,” muttered Gabri.

“Fag,” she mumbled back.

“Clara’s painted you as the Virgin Mary,” Olivier explained.

Ruth leaned closer and shook her head.

“Virgin?” Gabri whispered to Myrna. “Obviously the mind fucks don’t count.”

“Speaking of which,” Ruth looked over at Beauvoir, “Peter, do you have a piece of paper? I feel a poem coming on. Now, do you think it’s too much to put the words ‘asshole’ and ‘shithead’ in the same sentence?”

Beauvoir winced.

“Just close your eyes and think of England,” Ruth advised Beauvoir, who had actually been thinking of her English.

Gamache walked over to Peter, who continued to stare at his wife’s works.

“How are you?”

“You mean, do I want to take a razor to those and slash them to bits, then burn them?”

“Something like that.”

It was a conversation they’d had before, as it became clear that Peter
might soon have to cede his place as the best artist in the family, in the village, in the province, to his wife. Peter had struggled with it, not always successfully.

“I couldn’t hold her back even if I tried,” said Peter. “And I don’t want to try.”

“There’s a difference between holding back and actively supporting.”

“These are so good even I can’t deny it anymore,” admitted Peter. “She amazes me.”

Both men looked over at the plump little woman looking anxiously at her friends, apparently unaware of the masterpieces she’d created.

“Are you working on something?” Gamache nodded toward the closed door to Peter’s studio.

“Always am. It’s a log.”

“A log?” It was hard to make that sound brilliant. Peter Morrow was one of the most successful artists in the country and he’d gotten there by taking mundane, everyday objects and painting them in excruciating detail. So that they were no longer even recognizable as the object they were. He zoomed in close, then magnified a section, and painted that.

His works looked abstract. It gave Peter huge satisfaction to know they weren’t. They were reality in the extreme. So real no one recognized them. And now it was the log’s turn. He’d picked it up off the pile beside their fireplace and it was waiting for him in his studio.

The desserts were served, coffee and cognac poured; people wandered about, Gabri played the piano, Gamache kept being drawn to the paintings. Particularly the one of the unknown woman. Looking back. Clara joined him.

“My God, Clara, they’re the best works of art ever produced by anyone, anywhere.”

“Do you mean it?” she asked in mock earnestness.

He smiled. “They are brilliant, you know. You have nothing to be afraid of.”

“If that was true I’d have no art.”

Gamache nodded toward the painting he’d been staring at. “Who is she?”

“Oh, just someone I know.”

Gamache waited, but Clara was uncharacteristically closed, and he decided it really didn’t matter. She wandered off and Gamache continued to stare. And as he did so the portrait changed. Or perhaps, he thought,
it was a trick of the uncertain light. But the more he stared the more he got the sense Clara had put something else in the painting. Where Ruth’s was of an embittered woman finding hope, this portrait also held the unexpected.

A happy woman seeing in the near and middle distance things that pleased and comforted her. But her eyes seemed to just be focusing on, registering, something else. Something far off. But heading her way.

Gamache sipped his cognac and watched. And gradually it came to him what she was just beginning to feel.

Fear.