The Long Way Home (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #10)

The Long Way Home (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #10) Page 36

He was in the vegetable garden and looked, to Gamache, more and more like a biblical prophet, or a madman. Gilbert wore a once white, now gray, nightshirt down to mid-calf, and plastic sandals he could hose off. Which was a good thing, because he was up to his ankles in compost.

“Can’t a neighbor come to visit?” asked Gamache, after securing his mount to a tree.

“What do you want?” Dr. Gilbert repeated, straightening up and walking toward them.

“Drop the act, Vincent,” said Gamache with a laugh. “I know you’re happy to see me.”

“Did you bring me anything?”

Gamache gestured toward Beauvoir, whose eyes widened.

“You know I’m a vegetarian,” said Gilbert. “Anything else?”

Gamache reached into his saddlebags and pulled out a brown paper bag and the map.

“Welcome, stranger,” said Gilbert. He grabbed the paper bag, opened it, and inhaled the aroma of the croissants.

Tossing one precious pastry into the woods, without explanation, he took the rest into his log cabin, followed by Gamache and Beauvoir.

*   *   *

The train lurched forward but was soon traveling swiftly and smoothly toward Montréal.

“What was that about Francis Bacon?” Myrna asked. The steward had taken their lunch order. “I’m presuming he meant the twentieth-century painter and not the sixteenth-century philosopher.”

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.