Dead Cold (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #2)(8)

‘Nylons? Hershey bar?’ The lyrical, warm voice came up behind her.

‘I was just thinking of you, you traitor. You sent me out into the mean streets of Montreal to ask strangers where I could find Siegfried Sassoon.’

Myrna was leaning against an old bank building, shaking with laughter.

‘I don’t know whether to be upset or relieved that no one knew I wanted a dead poet from the Great War to do my hair. Why didn’t you tell me it was Vidal not Siegfried?’ Now Clara was laughing too, and dropped her bags onto the snowy sidewalk.

‘It looks great,’ said Myrna, stepping back to survey Clara, her laughter finally subsiding.

‘I’m wearing a tuque, you moron,’ said Clara and both women laughed again as Clara pulled the knitted pompom hat down over her ears.

It was hard not to feel light-hearted in that atmosphere. It was close to four o’clock on 22 December and the sun had set. Now the streets of Montreal, always full of charm, were also full of Christmas lights. Up and down rue Ste-Catherine decorations glowed, the light bouncing off the snowdrifts. Cars crawled by, caught in the rush-hour snag, and pedestrians hurried along the snowy sidewalks, occasionally stopping to look in a bright shop window.

Just ahead was their destination. Ogilvy’s. And the window. Even from half a block away Clara could see the glow, and the magic reflected on the faces of the children staring up at it. Now the cold vanished, the crowds, elbowing and nudging moments before, disappeared; even Myrna receded as Clara approached the window. There it was. The Mill in the Forest.

‘I’ll meet you in there,’ Myrna whispered, but her friend had gone. Into the window Clara had climbed. Past the enraptured children in front, over the pile of clothing on the snowy sidewalk and right into the idyllic Christmas scene. She was walking over the wooden bridge now, toward the grandma bear in the wooden mill house.

‘Spare some change? L’argent, s’il vous pla?t?’

A spewing sound cut into Clara’s world.

‘Oh, gross. Mommy,’ a child cried as Clara tore her eyes from the window and looked down. The pile of clothing had thrown up, the vomit gently steaming on the crusted blanket wrapped round him. Or her. Clara didn’t know, and didn’t care. She was annoyed that she’d waited all year, all week, all day for this moment and some bum on the street had vomited all over it. And now the kids were all crying and the magic had gone.

Clara backed away from the window, and looked around for Myrna. She must have gone inside, Clara realized, and already be at the big event. It wasn’t just the window that had brought them to Ogilvy’s this day. A fellow villager and good friend, Ruth Zardo, was launching her latest book in the basement bookstore.

Normally Ruth’s slim volumes of poetry were slipped to an oblivious public following a launch at the bistro in Three Pines. But something astounding had happened. This elderly, wizened, bitter poet from Three Pines had won the Governor-General’s Award. Surprised the hell out of everyone. Not because she didn’t deserve it. Clara knew her poems were stunning.



Who hurt you once so far beyond repair



that you would greet each overture with curling lip?



It was not always so.





No, Ruth Zardo deserved the prize. It was just shocking that anyone else knew it.

Will that happen with my art? Clara wondered as she swooshed through the revolving doors into the perfumed and muted atmosphere of Ogilvy’s. Am I about to be plucked out of obscurity? She’d finally found the courage to give her work to their new neighbor, CC de Poitiers, after she’d overheard her talking in the bistro about her close personal friend, Denis Fortin.

To have a show at the Galerie Fortin in the Outremont quartier of Montreal was to have arrived. He chose only the very best, the most cutting edge, the most profound and daring of artists. And he was connected worldwide. Even…dare she think it? The Museum of Modern Art in New York. The MOMA. MOMA mia.

Clara imagined herself at the vernissage at Galerie Fortin. She’d be sparkling and witty, the center of awed attention, lesser artists and major critics hanging on her every insightful word. Peter would be standing slightly outside the circle of admirers, watching with a small smile. He’d be proud of her and finally see her as a fellow artist.





Crie sat on the snowy steps of Miss Edward’s School. It was dark now. Inside and out. She stared ahead, unseeing, the snow accumulating on her hat and shoulders. At her side was a bag containing her snowflake costume. Stuffed into it was her report card.

Straight As.

Her teachers had tsked and shaken their heads and bemoaned the fact that such brains had been wasted on someone so damaged. A crying shame, one of them had said and all had laughed at the witticism. Except Crie, who happened to be walking by.

The teachers all agreed they’d have to have a stern talk to whoever it was who’d hurt her so badly she could barely talk or meet an eye.

Eventually Crie got up and began cautiously walking toward downtown Montreal, her balance thrown off by the slippery, steep sidewalks and near unbearable weight of the chiffon snowflake.





FOUR




As Clara walked through Ogilvy’s she wasn’t sure what was worse, the stink of the wretched bum or the cloying smell of the perfumeries in the department store. After about the fifth time some slim young thing had sprayed her Clara had her answer. She was offending even herself.