A Trick of the Light

TWENTY-NINE

All eyes turned to look.

The murderer smiled tentatively, then his eyes darted around the room, resting finally on Jean Guy Beauvoir, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. The only way out. Blocked.

“You?” said Clara, barely above a whisper. “You killed Lillian?”

Denis Fortin turned to face Clara.

“Lillian Dyson deserved what she got. The only surprise is that someone hadn’t wrung her neck sooner.”

Olivier, Gabri and Suzanne moved away from him, getting over to the other side of the room. The gallery owner stood up, and looked at them, across a great divide.

Only Gamache seemed at ease. Unlike the rest, he hadn’t scrambled to safety, but remained seated across from Fortin.

“Lillian had gone to apologize to you, hadn’t she,” said the Chief Inspector, as though having a friendly chat with an excitable guest.

Fortin stared at him and finally nodded, then sat back down.

“She didn’t even make an appointment. Just showed up at the gallery. Said she was sorry she’d been so horrible in her review.”

Fortin had to pause, to gather himself.

“‘I’m sorry,’” he said, lifting a finger for each word, “‘I was cruel in my review of your art.’”

He looked at his fingers. “Eleven words, and she thinks that makes us even. Have you seen the review?”

Gamache nodded. “I have it here. But I won’t read it.”

Fortin met his eyes. “Well, thank you for that, at least. I can’t even remember the exact wording, but I know it was as though she’d strapped a bomb to my chest and set it off. All the worse because at my show she was gushing. Couldn’t have been friendlier. Said how much she loved the works. Convinced me I could expect a glowing review in La Presse that Saturday. I waited all week, barely able to sleep. I told all my family and friends.”

Fortin stopped to gather himself again. The lights flickered, staying off longer. Peter and Clara got candles from the sideboard and placed them around the room, ready in case they lost power.

Outside lightning flashed and forked behind the mountains. Closing in on Three Pines.

Rain pelted against the windowpanes.

“And then the review appeared. It wasn’t just bad, it was a catastrophe. Malicious. Mocking. She made fun of what I’d created. My paintings may not have been brilliant, but I was just starting, doing my best. And she dug her heels into them and ground. It was more than just humiliating. I might’ve recovered from that, it was that she convinced even me that I had no talent. She killed the best part of me.”

Denis Fortin stopped trembling. He stopped moving. He seemed to stop breathing. He just ground to a halt. Staring blankly ahead.

A giant flash lit up the village green followed immediately by a bang so loud it shook the little house. Everyone leapt, including Gamache. The rain now pounded against the windows, demanding to be let in. Outside they could hear the wild wind in the trees. Twisting them, shaking them. In the next flash of lightning they could see young leaves torn from maples and poplars and whipping across the village green. They could hear the aspens, quaking.

And in the center of the village they could see the three great pines, twirling at their tops. Catching the whirlwind.

The guests looked at each other, wide eyed. Waiting. Listening. Expecting a rending, a tearing, a crashing.

“I stopped painting,” said Fortin, raising his voice above the din. The only one who seemed not to care or notice the storm.

“But you made a career for yourself as a gallery owner,” said Clara, trying to ignore what was happening outside. “You were a huge success.”

“And you ruined that,” said Fortin.

The storm was now directly overhead. Peter lit the candles and the oil lamps as the lights flickered on and off. On and off.

Clara, though, was frozen in her chair. Staring at Denis Fortin.

“I’d told everyone I’d dropped you because you were crap, and they believed me. Until the Musée decided to give you a solo show. A solo show, for chrissake. It made me look like a fool. I lost all credibility. I have nothing except my reputation, and you took that away.”

“Is that why you killed Lillian here?” asked Clara. “In our garden?”

“When people remember your show,” he said, staring at her, “I want them to remember a corpse in your garden. I want you to remember that. To think of your solo show, and to see Lillian, dead.”

He glared at the semi-circle of faces. They looked as though he was something fetid, something fecal.

The lights flickered, then dimmed. A brown-out. They could feel the strain as the light fought to stay on.

And then it left.

And they were left with the wavering candle-light.

No one spoke. Instead they waited, to see if something else would happen. Something worse. They could hear the furious lashing of the wind in the trees, and the rain against the windows and the roof.

Gamache, though, never took his eyes off Denis Fortin.

“If you hated me that much, why’d you come to my vernissage at the Musée?” Clara asked.

Fortin turned back to Gamache. “Can you guess?”

“To apologize,” said Gamache.

Fortin smiled. “Once Lillian left and the howl in my head settled down, I got to thinking.”

“How to kill twice,” said Gamache.

“A coup de grâce,” said Fortin.

“Grace had nothing to do with it,” said Gamache. “It was a plan filled with hatred.”

“If it was, it was put there by Lillian,” said Fortin. “She made the monster. She shouldn’t have been surprised when it turned on her. And yet, you know, she was.”

“How did you know Lillian even knew me?” asked Clara.

“She told me. Told me what she was doing. Going around and apologizing to people. She said she’d tried to find you in the Montréal phone book, but you weren’t there. She wondered if I’d ever heard of you.”

“And what did you tell her?”

He smiled then. Slowly.

“At first I said no, but after she left I got to thinking. I called and told her about your show. Her reaction to the news was almost payback enough. She wasn’t altogether happy to hear it.”

His vile smile spread to his eyes.

“The Québec art world is a small place, and I’d heard about the after-party down here, though I hadn’t, of course, been invited. I told Lillian and suggested it would be a good place for her to talk to you. Took her a few days, but she called back. Wanted the details.”

“But you had a problem,” said the Chief Inspector. “You’d been to Three Pines before, so giving Lillian directions was no problem. And you knew she was happy to crash the party. But you needed to be here too. And for that you needed a legitimate invitation. But you and Clara weren’t exactly on good terms.”

“True, but Lillian had given me an idea.” Fortin looked at Clara. “I knew if I apologized you’d accept. Which is why you’ll never make it in the art world. No guts. No backbone. I knew if I asked to come to the party here, begged, you’d agree. But I didn’t have to. You invited me.”

Fortin shook his head. “I mean, honestly. I treat you like crap and you not only forgive me, but invite me down to your home? You’ve got to have more sense than that, Clara. People’ll take advantage of you, if you’re not careful.”

Clara glared at him, but kept her mouth shut.

Another great blast of thunder shook the home, as the storm bounced and magnified, trapped in the valley.

The living room felt intimate. Ancient. As an old sin was revealed. The light from the candles faltered, catching people and furniture. Turning them into something grotesque on the walls, as though there was another range of dark listeners behind them.

“How did you know I killed Lillian?” Fortin asked Gamache.

“It was, finally, quite simple,” said Gamache. “It had to be someone who’d been to the village before. Knew not only how to find Three Pines but which home was Clara’s. It seemed too much of a coincidence that Lillian would be killed just by chance in Clara’s garden. No, it must have been planned. And if it was planned, then what was the purpose? Killing Lillian in the garden hurt two people. Lillian, of course. But also Clara. And the party gave you a village filled with suspects. Other people who have known Lillian. Might have wanted her dead. That also explained the timing. The murderer had to be someone in the artistic community, who knew Clara and Lillian, and Three Pines.”

The Chief Inspector held Fortin’s gleaming eyes.

“You.”

“If you’re expecting remorse you won’t find it. She was a hateful, vindictive bitch.”

Gamache nodded. “I know. But she was trying to get better. She might not have said it as you’d have liked, but I think she really was sorry for what she’d done.”

“You try forgiving someone who ruined your life, you smug bastard, then come and lecture me about forgiveness.”

“If that’s the criteria, then let me lecture you.”

Everyone turned to a dark corner, where there was just the suggestion of an outline. Of an odd woman, with mismatched clothing.

“She’s a natural,” said Suzanne in a whisper, still heard amid the din outside. “Producing art like it’s a bodily function. I managed to forgive that. And you know why?”

No one answered.

“God forgive me, not for Lillian’s sake but my own. I’d held on to that hurt, coddled it, fed it, grew it. Until it had all but consumed me. But finally I wanted something even more than I wanted my pain.”

The storm seemed to have slipped out of the valley and was slowly lumbering away, to another destination.

“A quiet place,” said Chief Inspector Gamache, “in the bright sunshine.”

Suzanne smiled and nodded. “Peace.”