The Long Way Home(70)

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.

“A step along the way.”

He nodded and got up. But before leaving, he bent down and whispered, “And I bet everyone thought you were nuts.”

* * *

“He wasn’t just crazy,” said Professor Massey. “He was insane.”

He looked from one woman to the next. They were seated in his classroom studio. He’d given Ruth what was clearly his favorite chair. The one that looked across the open space filled with drop sheets and easels, old gummed-up palettes. Blank canvases were stacked in a corner and Massey’s own paintings, unframed, were here and there on the walls, as though stuck up casually. They were very good, enlivening and warming the space.

“And not the fun sort of insanity,” Professor Massey warned. “Not eccentric. This was the dangerous kind.”