The Long Way Home(32)

Clara nodded but said nothing.

“What did Professor Massey mean?” Myrna pressed. It had clearly meant something.

Clara looked out the window, at the rear end of Toronto. For a moment Myrna wondered if she’d heard the question. But then Clara spoke. To the overflowing garbage bins. To the washing on the line. To the graffiti. Not actual art, but the artist’s name over and over. Declaring himself. Spray-painted in huge, bold, black letters. Over and over.

“Bacon often painted in threes.” Clara’s words created a fine fog on the window. “Triptychs. I think the one Professor Massey had in mind was George Dyer.”

That meant nothing to Myrna, but it clearly meant a great deal to Clara.

“Go on.”

“I think Professor Massey was trying to warn me.” Clara turned away from the window and looked at her friend.

“Tell me,” said Myrna, though it was clear Clara would have rather done just about anything else than put these thoughts into words.

“George Dyer and Bacon were lovers,” said Clara. “They went to Paris for a huge show of Bacon’s paintings. It was the first great triumph of his career. While Bacon was being celebrated—”

Clara stopped, and Myrna felt the blood rush from her own face.

“Tell me,” she repeated softly.

“Dyer killed himself in their hotel room.”

The words were barely audible. But Myrna heard them. And Clara heard them. Put out into the world.

The women stared at each other.

“It’s what you were trying to warn me about,” Clara said, her voice still barely above a whisper. “When you told me about Samarra.”

Myrna couldn’t answer. She couldn’t bear to add to the dread in Clara’s face. In her whole body.

“You think Peter has done the same thing,” said Clara.

But still Clara’s eyes pleaded with Myrna. To tell her she was wrong. To reassure her that Peter was just off painting. He’d lost track of the time. The date.

Myrna said nothing. It might have been kindness. Or cowardice. But Myrna remained silent, and allowed Clara her delusion.

That Peter would come home. Might even be waiting for them, when they got back. With beer. A couple of steaks. An explanation. And profuse apologies.

Myrna looked out the window. The tenements were still whizzing by, apparently endless. But the graffiti artist’s name had disappeared.

A fine hotel room in Paris, she thought. Samarra. Or some corner of Québec. However he got there, Myrna was afraid Peter Morrow had reached the end of the road. And there he’d met Death.

And she knew that Clara feared the same thing.

* * *

Vincent Gilbert’s log cabin hadn’t changed much since the last time Beauvoir had visited. It was still a single room, with a large bed at one end, and a kitchen at the other. The rough pine floor was strewn with fine Oriental carpets, and on either side of the fieldstone fireplace were shelves crammed with books. Two comfortable armchairs with footstools sat facing each other across the hearth.

Before Vincent Gilbert had moved in, this rustic cabin had been the scene of a terrible crime. A murder so unnatural it had shocked the nation. Some places held on to such malevolence, as though the pain and shock and horror had fused to the structure.

But this little home had always felt strangely innocent. And very peaceful.

Dr. Gilbert poured them glasses of spring water and made sandwiches with tomatoes still warm from his garden.

Gamache spread the map of Paris on the table, smoothing it with his large hand.

“So, what do you want, Armand?” Dr. Gilbert asked for the third time.

“When you went to Paris, after you left your wife, where did you go?”

“I’ve told you that before. Weren’t you paying attention?”

“I was, mon ami,” said Gamache soothingly. “But I’d like to see again.”

Gilbert’s eyes filled with suspicion. “Don’t waste my time, Armand. I have better things to do than repeat myself. There’s manure to spread.”

Some considered Vincent Gilbert a saint. Some, like Beauvoir, considered him an *. The residents of Three Pines had compromised and called him the “* saint.”

“But that doesn’t mean he isn’t still a saint,” Gamache had said. “Most saints were *s. In fact, if he wasn’t one that would disqualify him completely.”

The Chief had walked away with a smile, knowing he’d completely messed with Beauvoir’s mind.

“Asshole,” Beauvoir had hissed.

“I heard that,” said Gamache, not turning back.

And now Jean-Guy looked at the two men. Gilbert elderly, imperious, thin and weathered, with sharp eyes and a temperament quick to take offense. And Gamache, twenty years younger, larger, calmer.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir had seen great kindness in Gilbert, and ruthlessness in Gamache. Neither man, Beauvoir was pretty sure, was a saint.

“Show me on the map exactly where you stayed in Paris,” said Gamache, paying absolutely no attention to Gilbert’s little tantrum.

“Fine,” the doctor huffed. “It was here.” His fingernail, black-rimmed with earth, fell on the map.

They bent over to examine the spot, like scientists over a litmus test. Then Gamache straightened up.

“Did you ever talk about your time in Paris with Peter Morrow?” he asked.