A Better Man

CHAPTER NINETEEN

@NouveauGalerie: Hello @CarlTracey Love your ceramic pieces. Am a gallery owner looking for exciting new talent. Can we meet?

The phone woke Armand with a start. He was instantly alert and grabbed it before it could wake up Reine-Marie.

“Oui, allô?”

“Sorry to disturb you,” said Beauvoir.

“Not at all,” said Armand, rubbing his hand across his face and feeling the stubble. “You have news?”

“The search warrant has come through.”

“Excellent. I’ll meet you at the car in…” He checked the bedside clock. It was 9:40 in the morning. He’d been asleep for just over an hour, but felt refreshed. “Twenty minutes.”

Armand quickly and quietly showered and shaved, not wanting to wake up Reine-Marie, though he did check and make sure she was okay.

The bruise now spread across the left side of her face, but there was little swelling. Still, it hurt him to see it.

She roused and opened her eyes, giving a start on seeing his face so close to hers.

“Everything all right?” she mumbled, still half asleep.

“I’m just going out. You okay? That must hurt.”

He reached out but didn’t touch it. Not wanting to add to the pain he knew she must be feeling.

“Well, I now have a much better idea, mon coeur, what you’ve gone through.”

“Me? Oh, no,” he said with a smile. “Anytime a fist comes even close, I drop to the ground and play dead. Let Jean-Guy sort it out.”

“Belly up, feet and hands to the ceiling, like a bug. Yes, I’ve seen that. You also do it when Ruth enters a room.”

“I’ll get you a Tylenol,” he said, smiling, and returned a minute later with a couple of pills and a glass of water. She was sitting up in bed now, and he sat beside her.

They talked about Annie and Jean-Guy’s news. A brother or sister for Honoré. Another grandchild for them. Yet one, neither said but both knew, who would grow up a continent away.

“There’s something I need to tell you.” He did up his tie as he spoke. “I arrested Homer Godin.”

“Yes, I know. You think he killed his daughter?”

“No, but I need to keep him from Tracey. I charged him with assault. For that.”

He pointed to her face.

“But—” she began, bringing her own hand to her face.

“I know. I won’t follow through. I just needed to get him off the streets, so he won’t go after Tracey.”

“So this might’ve been a good thing.” She touched the bruise.

“Non.” He kissed her before getting up. “Jean-Guy’s waiting for me.”

“What will you do without him, Armand?”

He opened his mouth, but there was no answer.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No. It’s good to talk about it. Jean-Guy reminded me it’s less than two weeks away.”

It wasn’t, of course, just losing Beauvoir as a colleague and friend, it was losing Annie and Honoré. And now the new baby. With their son, Daniel, and his wife and two daughters already in Paris, it meant they had no children or grandchildren close by.

But, for Reine-Marie, the dread went deeper. Something she’d never admitted to Armand. For many years she’d felt that as long as Jean-Guy was close by, he’d protect Armand.

They were meant to be together. Had been, in her opinion, for many lifetimes. As colleagues, as father and son. As brothers. As long as they were together, both would be safe.

Once downstairs, Armand flicked on the television to cable news and placed a call.

As Radio Canada interviewed an increasingly agitated Deputy Premier about the terrible flooding, Armand waited for the phone to be answered.

The phone rang, as the politician tried to explain that it could have been worse.

The phone rang, as the journalist tried to explain that it was pretty damn catastrophic for those towns that were underwater.

Both, Gamache knew, were right.

The graphic on the screen showed where work was under way to divert floodwaters upriver.

The phone rang. And rang. Then clicked over to voice mail.

The RCMP commissioner wasn’t answering. Or couldn’t answer.

Armand hung up. And decided that no news was good news. There was nothing he could do about it now, anyway.

He grabbed his coat and joined Beauvoir and Lacoste.

“Knock, knock,” said Myrna.

“Who’s there?” asked Clara, not looking up.

“Me.”

“Me who?”

“No, this isn’t a knock-knock joke,” Myrna said, entering the studio. “I just didn’t want to startle you. We were supposed to meet at the bistro for breakfast, weren’t we?”

“Sorry. I lost track of time.”

Myrna sat on the low sofa, her considerable derriere hitting the concrete floor, as it always did. She groaned, more in annoyance than pain. Would she never learn?

From her vantage point, essentially on the floor, Myrna could see that Clara was staring at a series of miniatures on her easel.

“I’ve been sitting here trying to decide if the tweeters are right,” Clara explained. “If these’re shit.”

“I believe we call those people twats, and no, they’re not right. And you think that’s bad, you should see what they’re saying about Armand’s return to the Sûreté. Madman with a gun. At least you only have a paintbrush. How much damage can you do?”

“You’d be surprised, apparently.”

Myrna brought out her phone. “Listen to this.”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“Strange, intense, feverish,” Myrna read.

“Is that about me or Armand?”

“It’s about van Gogh. Here’s another. The museum could have saved a good chunk by getting the plan and having the thing run off by the janitors with rollers. That was a review of an early Barnett Newman. I looked it up. One of his paintings just sold for eighty-four million.”

“Dollars?”

“Dog biscuits.”

At that, Leo got to his feet, tail wagging. Myrna dug into her pocket and brought one out before returning to her phone. “He’s a madman, desperate for conquest.”

“Picasso?”

“Gamache.”

Clara made a retching sound. “Just shit. Lies.”

“So if you know the tweets are wrong about Armand, why don’t you know they’re wrong about you and your art?”

“Because one’s objective and one’s subjective,” said Clara. “The record proves that Armand didn’t do any of what he’s accused of. And what he did do was to save greater pain. He’s been investigated, exhaustively, and cleared. But what I do”—Clara returned her gaze to the easel—“is open to interpretation. I had an email from my gallery in Montréal. A few collectors are asking about returning the paintings they bought, some from years ago. They’re concerned that the value has fallen through. That I’m not a real artist at all but … what did one tweet call me? A poseur.”

Actually, thought Myrna, that was one of the more polite descriptions she’d seen.

“Those are just mean people.”

“Just because it’s mean doesn’t make it wrong,” said Clara, tilting her head this way and that. Examining her works on the easel.

“All truth with malice in it,” said Myrna.

“What did you say?”

“Just a quote, from Moby-Dick,” said Myrna. “Something Armand said yesterday.”

“You think there’s truth in those tweets?”

“No, no, I didn’t mean that.” Myrna’s arms were pinwheeling as she tried to back up the conversation. “There’s no truth in them. Believe me. Just malice.”

But Clara was shaking her head. Her confidence shaken.

“Come on over for lunch later,” said Myrna, lugging herself off the sofa with a groan. “You need to get out of the studio. And out of your own head.”

“Or someplace lower?” asked Clara.

“All truth…” said Myrna, and heard her friend laugh. “You know, Moby-Dick was also savaged when it first came out. Now it’s considered one of the great novels of all time.”

Clara didn’t answer. She’d gone back to staring at the miniatures on her easel.

Myrna almost pointed out that what had happened to Vivienne Godin, what her father was living, was a tragedy. What Clara was going through was a setback. Nothing more.

But she didn’t. Myrna understood how damaging it was to compare pain. To dismiss hurt just because it wasn’t the worst.

As she walked back across the bright village green, her feet squelching in the soft turf, Myrna thought about those miniatures Clara had painted.

Perhaps, she admitted to herself privately as she walked past the wall of sandbags, not Clara’s best work.