The Long Way Home(61)

But here it was before them, exploding into view as they walked through the archway.

The St. Lawrence River. Magnificent, wild, eternal. Fought over, painted, turned into poetry and music. It stretched into infinity before them.

“Where’re the toilets?” Beauvoir asked a server who came out onto the hidden terrace. Not waiting for an answer, Jean-Guy disappeared inside.

Only one other table was occupied in this small fieldstone courtyard. Two locals drank beer, smoked pungent Gitanes and played backgammon. They looked at the newcomers with vague interest, then went back to their game.

Clara chose a table right up against the wooden railing. On the other side was a sheer drop. And uninterrupted views of the baie of Baie-Saint-Paul.

They ordered iced teas and nachos.

Clara looked down at the place mat in front of her. As in many restaurants and brasseries across Québec, the place mat had a schematic of the village, not to scale, showing its history, as well as spots of interest and businesses. Inns, restaurants, galleries, and boutiques that had paid to be placed on the tourist map.

Peter had been here. Perhaps not to this very terrasse, but to this area.

“I’d forgotten that Cirque du Soleil started in Baie-Saint-Paul,” said Myrna, reading her place mat. “Some places are like that.”

“Like what?” asked Jean-Guy, returning from the toilet.

“Hot spots,” said Myrna. “Of creativity. Of creation. Three Pines is one. Charlevoix is obviously another.”

“I see there was a syphilis epidemic in the late seventeen hundreds,” said Jean-Guy, reading the place mat. “Called the Evil of Baie-Saint-Paul. Quite a little hot spot.”

He helped himself to nachos.

“How’d you know this terrasse was here?” Clara asked.

“It’s my superpower.”

“Jean-Guy Beauvoir,” said Gamache. “Boy Wonder.”

“They think we’re the sidekicks,” Beauvoir whispered to Myrna.

“Oh, how I’d love to get you on my couch,” she replied.

“Get in line, sister.”

Myrna laughed.

“I have an uncanny ability to find bathrooms,” he said.

“Seems a limited sort of superpower,” said Myrna.

“Yeah, well, if you really had to go, which power would you rather have? Flight? Invisibility? Or the ability to find a toilet?”

“Invisibility might be useful, but point taken, Kato.”

“I told you, I’m not the sidekick.” He gestured surreptitiously toward Gamache.

“Have you been here before?” Clara asked. “Is that how you knew?”

“Non.” He looked out across the ravine and seemed momentarily caught by the view. Then he returned his eyes to Clara. And in them she saw trees on the shoreline desperate for root. And an endless river.

“It’s not magic, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said. “I could tell there was a drop-off, and when we first came here I suspected no innkeeper would have access to this view and not take advantage of it.”

“You guessed?” asked Myrna.

“Yes.”

But both women knew it wasn’t really a guess. Jean-Guy Beauvoir might behave like a boy wonder, a sidekick. But they of all people knew that was just the fa?ade. He too had an archway, and a secret courtyard. And views he kept hidden.

They sipped their drinks and caught their breath.

“Now what?” Myrna asked.

“We’ve been to the inns and B and Bs,” said Clara, ticking off the hotels on the place mat. “We’ve shown Peter’s picture around. Now we need to take around his paintings.”

She pointed to the rolled-up canvases on the table.

“To innkeepers?” asked Jean-Guy.

“No. The galleries. Baie-Saint-Paul is thick with them.” Again she gestured toward the place mat. “If Peter is here, he probably visited one or more.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Jean-Guy, not bothering to disguise his surprise.

“You two go to the ones on this side of Baie-Saint-Paul.” She drew a circle on the place mat. “And we’ll take the other.” She looked at her watch. It was nearing five. Nearing closing time. “We need to hurry.”

She got up and they all took their place mats.

“Where should we meet?” Myrna asked.

“Here.”

Clara’s finger fell onto a brasserie in the center of town.

La Muse.

Myrna and Clara took two of Peter’s paintings, including the one with the lips. Jean-Guy picked up the one that was left and examined it, not at all sure which way was up.

He looked, briefly, from the painting to the view, and back to the painting.

And shook his head.

How does that become this? he wondered. Perhaps, he thought, as he rolled up the canvas and followed the others back through the archway, he was the boy wonder after all.

There was, in Beauvoir’s opinion, a great deal to wonder about.

* * *

Gamache and Jean-Guy were the first to make it back to La Muse.

Two of the five galleries in their area were already closed by the time they got there, including the Galerie Gagnon.

Gamache adored the works of Clarence Gagnon and was pleased that Clara had given them the territory that included the gallery dedicated to the Québécois artist. But Gamache could only peer through the front window, the paintings tantalizingly close.