The Long Way Home (26 page)

“I am,” the Chief admitted. “But few as comfortable as yours.
Merci
.” He lifted the mug toward Chartrand in appreciation.

“
Un plaisir
. Would you like to see the gallery?”

Gamache smiled. “Very much.”

He felt like a child given a private pass to Disneyland.

Chartrand unlocked the door and turned on the lights. Gamache walked to the center of the room and stood there. He realized, with some alarm, that he felt like weeping.

Here, around him, was his heritage. His country. His history. But it was more than that. Here on the walls, were his insides. Out.

The brightly painted homes. Red and mustard yellow. The smoke tugged from the chimneys. The church spires. The winter scenes, the snow on the pine boughs. The horses and sleighs. The soft light through the windows at night.

The man with the oil lamp. Walking a path worn through the deep snow. Toward home in the distance.

Gamache turned. He was surrounded. Immersed. Not drowning, but buoyed. Baptized.

He sighed. And looked at Marcel Chartrand, who was beside him. He also looked as though he might weep. Did the man feel like this each day?

Was this his bench above the village? Was he also surprised by joy each day?

“Peter Morrow came here often,” said Chartrand. “Just to sit. And stare at the paintings.”

Sit and stare.

God knew Gamache did enough of that himself, but the combination of words, and the inflection, triggered a memory. Not an old one. It sat near the top. And then Gamache had it.

Someone else had described Peter sitting and staring. As a child.

Madame Finney, Peter’s mother. She’d told Gamache that young Peter would just stare, for hours on end. At the walls. At the paintings. Trying to get closer to the pictures. Trying to join the genius that saw the world like that, and painted how he felt about it.

All flowing strokes, lines that joined each other, so that solid homes became land, became trees, became people, became sky and clouds. That touched the solid homes.

And all in bright, joyous colors. Not made-up hues, but ones Gamache actually saw now through the windows of the gallery. No need to embellish. To fictionalize. To romanticize.

Clarence Gagnon saw the truth. And didn’t so much capture it as free it.

Young Peter longed to be set free too. And the paintings on the walls of that grim home were his way out. Since he couldn’t actually escape into them, he’d done the next best thing.

He became an artist. Despite his family. Though his family had accomplished one thing. They drained the color and creativity from him, leaving him and his art attractive but predictable. Safe. Bleached.

Gamache stared at the walls of the Galerie Gagnon. At the vivid colors. At the swirls and flowing brush strokes. At the landscapes that were as much internal as external.

Peter had stared at these same walls. And then disappeared.

And for a moment Armand Gamache wondered if Peter had achieved the magic he seemed so desperate to find, and had actually entered one of the paintings.

He leaned closer, examining the man with the lantern. Was it Peter? Plodding toward home?

Then he grinned. Of course not. This was Baie-Saint-Paul, not the Twilight Zone.

“Is this why Peter came to Baie-Saint-Paul?” Gamache indicated the paintings lining the gallery.

Chartrand shook his head. “I think it was a perk, but not the reason.”

“What was the reason?”

“He seemed to be looking for someone.”

“Someone?”

“Someone or something, or both. I don’t know,” said Chartrand.

“Why didn’t you tell us this last night?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it. Peter was an acquaintance, nothing more. Just another artist who came to Charlevoix hoping for inspiration. Hoping that what inspired these”—he gestured toward the Gagnons on the walls—“would also inspire him.”

“That Gagnon’s muse would find him and come out to play again,” said Gamache.

Chartrand considered for a moment. “Do you think he’s dead?”

“I think it’s very difficult for people to just disappear. Much harder than we realize,” said Gamache. “Until we try.”

“Then how’s it done?”

“There’s only one way. We need to stop living in this world.”

“You mean die?”

“Well, that would do it too, but I mean remove yourself from society completely. Go to an island. Go deep into the woods. Live off the land.”

Chartrand looked uncomfortable. “Join a commune?”

“Well, most communes these days are pretty sophisticated.” He studied his host. “What do you mean?”

“When Peter first visited the gallery, he asked after a man named Norman. I had no idea who he meant, but I said I’d ask around.”

“Norman?” Gamache repeated. The name sounded familiar. “What did you find out?”

“Nothing useful.”

“But you did find something?” Gamache pushed.

“There was a guy who’d set up an artist colony in the woods, but his name wasn’t Norman. It was No Man.”

“Noman?”

“No Man.”

They stared at each other. Repeating the same thing, almost.

Finally Chartrand wrote it down and Gamache nodded. He understood, though his puzzlement increased.

No Man?

*   *   *

Clara and Myrna came down a few minutes later, followed by Jean-Guy.

“No Man?” asked Myrna.

They’d left the gallery and were walking down a narrow street toward a local café, for breakfast.

“No Man,” Chartrand confirmed.

“How odd,” said Clara.

Beauvoir didn’t know why she was surprised. Most artists he’d met shot way past odd. Odd for them was conservative. Clara, with her wild food-infested hair and
Warrior Uteruses
, was one of the more sane artists.

Peter Morrow, with his button-down shirts and calm personality, was almost certainly the craziest of them all.

“Peter wasn’t looking for No Man. He was trying to find a guy named Norman,” said Chartrand.

“And did he?” asked Clara.

“Not that I know of.”

They’d arrived at the small restaurant and sat at a table inside. At Gamache’s request, Chartrand had taken them to the local diner where Peter sometimes ate.

“
Oui
, I knew him,” said their server when shown the photograph of Peter. “Eggs on brown toast. No bacon. Black coffee.”

She seemed to approve of this spartan breakfast.

“Did he ever eat with other people?” Clara asked.

“No, always alone,” she said. “What do you want?”

Jean-Guy ordered the Voyageur Special. Two eggs and every meat they could find and fry.

Chartrand ordered scrambled eggs.

The rest had blueberry crêpes and bacon.

When the server came back with their food, Gamache asked if she knew of a Norman.

“First or last name?” she asked, pouring more coffee.

“We don’t know.”

“
Non
,” she said, and left.

“Did Peter say where he knew this Norman from?” Jean-Guy asked.

Chartrand shook his head. “I didn’t ask.”

“Can you think of a Norman in Peter’s life?” Gamache asked Clara. “A friend maybe? An artist he admired?”

“I’ve been trying to think,” she said. “But the name means nothing.”

“Where does No Man come in?” Jean-Guy asked.

“He doesn’t really,” Chartrand admitted. “Just some guy who set up an artist colony around here. It failed, and he moved on. Happens a lot. Artists need to make money and they think teaching or doing retreats will help make ends meet. It almost never does.” He smiled at Clara. “The retreat was abandoned long before Peter came here. Besides, Peter didn’t seem the joining sort.”

“
He travels the fastest who travels alone
,” said Gamache.

“I’ve always wondered if that’s true,” said Myrna. “We might go faster, but it’s not as much fun. And when we arrive, what do we find? No one.”

No man, thought Gamache.

“Clara? You’re quiet,” said Myrna.

Clara was leaning back in her chair, apparently admiring the view. But her eyes had a glazed, faraway look.

“Norman,” she repeated. “There was someone.” She looked at Myrna. “A professor named Norman at art college.”

Myrna nodded. “That’s right. Professor Massey mentioned him.”

“He was the one who set up the Salon des Refusés,” Clara said.

“Do you think it could be the same person?” Gamache asked.

Clara’s brows drew together. “I don’t see how. Peter took his course and thought it was bullshit. It couldn’t be the same person, could it?”

“Might be,” said Myrna. “Is he the one Professor Massey said was nuts?”

“Yes. I can’t believe Peter would want to track him down.”

“
Excuse-moi.”
Gamache had been listening to this and now he got up and took his phone to a quiet corner. As he spoke he turned and looked out the window. To the west. He talked for a couple of minutes, then returned to their table.

“Who’d you call?” Clara asked.

But Jean-Guy knew, even before the Chief answered the question. He knew by Gamache’s body language. His stance, his face, and where he’d gazed as he spoke.

To the west. To a village in a valley.

Beauvoir knew because that’s where he turned, when speaking with Annie.

Toward home.

“Reine-Marie. I asked her to go to Toronto. To talk to your old professor, see the records if possible. Find out what she can about this Professor Norman.”

“But we could call from here,” said Myrna. “It’d be faster and easier.”

“Yes, but this is delicate and we have no right to the files. I think Reine-Marie will get further than a phone call. She’s very good at getting information.”

Gamache smiled as he said it. His wife had spent decades working in the national archives of Québec. Collecting information. But the truth was, she was far better at guarding it than giving it out.

Still, if anyone could wheedle classified information out of an institution, she could.

He glanced again to the west, and there he met Beauvoir’s gaze.

TWENTY-FIVE

The plane gathered speed and bumped down the runway at Montréal’s Trudeau International Airport.

Reine-Marie had booked on the airline that flew into the small Island Airport in downtown Toronto, rather than the huge international airport outside the city. It was far more convenient.

But it meant a prop plane and not everyone on board was comfortable with that. Including the woman sitting beside her.

She gripped the armrest and had a grimace on her face like a death mask.

“It’ll be all right,” said Reine-Marie. “I promise.”

“How can you know, turnip head?” the woman snapped. And Reine-Marie smiled.

Ruth couldn’t be that frightened if she remembered to insult her.

The plane popped into the air. If a jet took off like a bullet, the small turboprop took off like a gull. Airborne, but subject to wind currents. It bobbed and wobbled and Ruth started praying under her breath.

“Oh, Lord, shit, shit, shit. Oh, Jesus.”

“We’re up now,” said Reine-Marie in a soothing voice. “So you can relax, you old crone.”

Ruth turned piercing eyes on her. And laughed. As they broke through the cloud, Ruth’s talon-grip released.

“People weren’t meant to fly,” said Ruth, over the roar of the engines.

“But planes are, and as luck would have it, we’re in one. Now, we have an hour before landing, tell me more about your time in that Turkish prison. I take it you were a guard, not an inmate.”

Ruth laughed again, and color returned to her face. So afraid to fly, Ruth had come with Reine-Marie anyway. To keep her company. And, Reine-Marie suspected, to help find Peter.

Ruth gabbed away, nervous nonsense, while Reine-Marie placed her hand over Ruth’s, and kept it there for the entire flight of lunacy.

*   *   *

“Have you shown Chartrand those paintings?”

Gamache gestured toward the rolled-up canvases Clara carried with her all the time now, like a divining rod.

“No. I thought about it, but Peter could’ve shown them to him and chose not to. If he didn’t, then I don’t think I should.” She looked at Gamache closely. “Why? Do you think I should?”

Gamache thought about it. “I don’t know. I can’t honestly see how it could matter. I suppose I’m just curious.”

“About what?”

“About what Chartrand would make of them,” he admitted. “Aren’t you?”

“Curious isn’t the word,” said Clara with a grin. “More like afraid.”

“You think they’re that bad?”

“I think they’re strange.”

“And is that so bad?” he asked.

She thought about his question, bouncing the canvases in her hand. “I’m afraid people will see these and think Peter’s nuts.”

Gamache opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“Go on,” she said. “Say what’s on your mind. Peter is nuts.”

“No,” he said. “No. I wasn’t going to say that.”

“Then what were you going to say?”

Far from feeling defensive, Clara found she really did want to know.

“Warrior Uteruses,”
he said.

Clara stared at him. She could have spent the rest of her life guessing what Armand would say, and she’d never have come up with those two words.

“Warrior Uteruses
?
”
she repeated. “What’s that got to do with it?”

“You did a series of sculptures a few years ago,” he reminded her. “They were uteruses, all different sizes. You decorated them with feathers and leather and fancy soaps and sticks and leaves and lace and all sorts of things. And you put them into an art show.”

“Yes,” Clara laughed. “Oddly enough I still have them all. I considered giving one to Peter’s mother as a Christmas present, but chickened out.” She laughed. “I guess while I can sculpt them, I don’t actually have one. A warrior uterus, I mean.”

“That series wasn’t all that long ago,” Gamache reminded her.

“True.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Not at all. It was such fun. And strangely powerful. Everyone thought it was a joke, but it wasn’t.”

“What was it?” Gamache asked.