A Trick of the Light

THREE

The next morning Clara rose early. Putting on rubber boots and a sweater over her pajamas, she poured herself a coffee and sat in one of the Adirondack chairs in their back garden.

The caterers had cleaned up and there was no evidence of the huge barbeque and dance the night before.

She closed her eyes and could feel the young June sun on her upturned face and could hear birdcalls and the Rivière Bella Bella gurgling past at the end of the garden. Below that was the thrum of bumblebees climbing in and over and around the peonies. Getting lost.

Bumbling around.

It looked comical, ridiculous. But then so much did, unless you knew.

Clara Morrow held the warm mug in her hands and smelt coffee, and the fresh-mown grass. The lilacs and peonies and young, fragrant roses.

This was the village that had lived beneath the covers when Clara was a child. That was built behind the thin wooden door to her bedroom, where outside her parents argued. Her brothers ignored her. The phone rang, but not for her. Where eyes slid over and past her and through her. To someone else. Someone prettier. More interesting. Where people butted in as though she was invisible, and interrupted her as though she hadn’t just spoken.

But when as a child she closed her eyes and pulled the sheets over her head, Clara saw the pretty little village in the valley. With the forests and flowers and kindly people.

Where bumbling was a virtue.

As far back as she could remember Clara wanted only one thing, even more than she’d wanted the solo show. It wasn’t riches, it wasn’t power, it wasn’t even love.

Clara Morrow wanted to belong. And now, at almost fifty, she did.

Was the show a mistake? In accepting it had she separated herself from the rest?

As she sat, scenes from the night before came to mind. Her friends, other artists, Olivier catching her eye and nodding reassuringly. The excitement at meeting André Castonguay and others. The curator’s happy face. The barbeque back in the village. The food and drink and fireworks. The live band and dancing. The laughter.

The relief.

But now, in the clear light of day, the anxiety had returned. Not the storm it had been at its worst, but a light mist that muted the sunshine.

And Clara knew why.

Peter and Olivier had gone to get the newspapers. To bring back the words she’d waited a lifetime to read. The reviews. The words of the critics.

Brilliant. Visionary. Masterful.

Dull. Derivative. Predictable.

Which would it be?

Clara sat, and sipped, and tried not to care. Tried not to notice the shadows lengthening, creeping toward her as the minutes passed.

A car door slammed and Clara spasmed in her chair, surprised out of her reverie.

“We’re hoo-ome,” Peter sang.

She heard footsteps coming around the side of their cottage. She got up and turned to greet Peter and Olivier. But instead of the two men walking toward her, they were standing still. As though turned into large garden gnomes.

And instead of looking at her, they were staring into a bed of flowers.

“What is it?” Clara asked, walking toward them, picking up speed as their expressions registered. “What’s wrong?”

Peter turned and dropping the papers on the grass he stopped her from going further.

“Call the police,” said Olivier. He inched forward, toward a perennial bed planted with peonies and bleeding hearts and poppies.

And something else.

Chief Inspector Gamache straightened up and sighed.

There was no doubt. This was murder.

The woman at his feet had a broken neck. Had she been at the foot of a flight of stairs he might have thought it an accident. But she was lying face up beside a flower bed. On the soft grass.

Eyes open. Staring straight into the late morning sun.

Gamache almost expected her to blink.

He looked around the pleasant garden. The familiar garden. How often had he stood back there with Peter and Clara and others, beer in hand, barbeque fired up. Chatting.

But not today.

Peter and Clara, Olivier and Gabri were standing down by the river. Watching. Between Gamache and them was the yellow tape, the great divide. On one side the investigators and on the other, the investigated.

“White female,” the coroner, Dr. Harris, said. She was kneeling over the victim, as was Agent Isabelle Lacoste. Inspector Jean Guy Beauvoir was directing the Scene of Crime team for the Sûreté du Québec. They were methodically going over the area. Collecting evidence. Photographing. Carefully, meticulously doing the forensics.

“Middle-aged,” the coroner’s voice carried on. Clinical. Factual.

Chief Inspector Gamache listened as the information was reeled off. He, better than most, knew the power of facts. But he also knew few murderers were ever found in facts.

“Dyed blond hair, graying roots just showing. Slightly overweight. No ring on the ring finger.”

Facts were necessary. They pointed the way, and helped form the net. But the killer himself was tracked by following not only facts but feelings. The fetid emotions that had made a man into a murderer.

“Neck snapped at the second vertebra.”

Chief Inspector Gamache listened and watched. The routine familiar. But no less horrifying.

The taking of one life by another never failed to shock him, even after all these years as head of homicide for the storied Sûreté du Québec. After all these murders. All these murderers.

He was still amazed what one human could do to another.

Peter Morrow stared at the red shoes just poking out from behind the flower bed. They were attached to the dead woman’s feet, which were attached to her body, which was lying on his grass. He couldn’t see the body now. It was hidden by the tall flowers, but he could see the feet. He looked away. Tried to concentrate on something else. On the investigators, Gamache and his team, bending, bowing, murmuring, as though in common prayer. A dark ritual, in his garden.

Gamache never took a note, Peter noticed. He listened and nodded respectfully. Asked a few questions, his face thoughtful. He left the note-taking to others. In this case, Agent Lacoste.

Peter tried to look away, to focus on the beauty in his garden.

But his eyes kept being dragged back to the body in his garden.

Then, as Peter watched, Gamache suddenly and quite swiftly turned. And looked at him. And Peter immediately and instinctively dropped his eyes, as though he’d done something shameful.

He instantly regretted it and raised his eyes again, but by then the Chief Inspector was no longer staring at them. Instead, he was approaching them.

Peter considered turning away, in a casual manner. As though he’d heard a deer in the forest on the other side of the Rivière Bella Bella.

He started to turn, then stopped himself.

He didn’t need to look away, he told himself. He’d done nothing wrong. Surely it was natural to watch the police.

Wasn’t it?

But Peter Morrow, always so sure, felt the ground shifting beneath him. He no longer knew what was natural. No longer knew what to do with his hands, his eyes, his entire body. His life. His wife.

“Clara,” said Chief Inspector Gamache, extending his hand to her, then kissing Clara on both cheeks. If the other investigators found it odd that their Chief would kiss a suspect, they didn’t show it. And Gamache clearly didn’t care.

He went around the group, shaking hands with all of them. He came to Olivier last, obviously giving the younger man a chance to see it coming. Gamache extended his hand. And everyone watched. The body momentarily forgotten.

Olivier didn’t hesitate. He shook Gamache’s hand but couldn’t quite look him in the eye.

Chief Inspector Gamache gave them a small almost apologetic smile, as though the body was his fault. Was that how dreadful things started? Peter wondered. Not with a thunder clap. Not with a shriek. Not with sirens, but with a smile? Something horrible come calling, wrapped in civility and good manners.

But the something horrible had already been, and gone. And had left a body behind.

“How are you doing?” asked Gamache, his eyes returning to Clara.

It wasn’t a casual question. He looked genuinely concerned.

Peter could feel himself relax as the body was lifted from his shoulders. And given to this sturdy man.

Clara shook her head. “Stunned,” she said at last, and glanced behind her. “Who is she?”

“You don’t know?”

He looked from Clara to Peter, then over to Gabri and finally Olivier. Everyone shook their heads.

“She wasn’t a guest at your party?”

“She must have been, I suppose,” said Clara. “But I didn’t invite her.”

“Who is she?” asked Gabri.

“Did you get a look at her?” Gamache persisted, not quite ready to answer the question.

They nodded.

“After we called the police I went back into the garden, to look,” said Clara.

“Why?”

“I had to know if I knew her. See if she was a friend or neighbor.”

“She wasn’t,” said Gabri. “I was preparing breakfast for our B and B guests when Olivier called to tell me what had happened.”

“So you came over?” asked Gamache.

“Wouldn’t you?” asked the large man.

“I’m a homicide detective,” said Gamache. “I sort of have to. You don’t.”

“I’m a nosy son-of-a-bitch,” said Gabri. “I sort of have to too. And like Clara, I needed to see if we knew her.”

“Did you tell anyone else?” asked Gamache. “Did anyone else come into the garden to look?”

They shook their heads.

“So you all took a good look, and none of you recognized her?”

“Who was she?” asked Clara again.

“We don’t know,” admitted Gamache. “She fell on her purse and Dr. Harris doesn’t want to move her yet. We’ll find out soon enough.”

Gabri hesitated then turned to Olivier. “Doesn’t she remind you of something?”

Olivier was silent, but Peter wasn’t.

“The witch is dead?”

“Peter,” said Clara quickly. “The woman was killed and left in our garden. What a terrible thing to say.”

“I’m sorry,” said Peter, shocked at himself. “But she does look like the Wicked Witch of the West, with her red shoes sticking out like that.”

“We’re not saying she is,” Gabri hurried to say. “But you can’t deny in that get-up she doesn’t look like anyone from Kansas.”

Clara rolled her eyes and shaking her head she muttered, “Jesus.”

But Gamache had to admit, he and his team had talked about the same thing. Not that the dead woman reminded them of the Wicked Witch, but that she clearly was not dressed for a barbeque in the country.

“I didn’t see her last night,” said Peter.

“And we’d remember,” said Olivier, speaking at last. “She’d be hard to miss.”

Gamache nodded. He’d appreciated that as well. The dead woman would have stood out in that brilliant red dress. Everything about the woman screamed “look at me.”

He looked back at her and searched his memory. Had he seen anyone in a bright red dress at the Musée last night? Perhaps she’d come straight from there, as presumably many guests did. But none came to mind. Most of the women, with the notable exception of Myrna, wore more muted colors.

Then he had a thought.

“Excusez-moi,” he said and walking swiftly back across the lawn he spoke to Beauvoir briefly then returned more slowly, thinking.

“I read the report on the drive down, but I’d like to hear from you myself how she was found.”

“Peter and Olivier saw her first,” said Clara. “I was sitting in that chair.” She waved toward the yellow Adirondack chair, one of two. A coffee mug still sat on the wooden arm. “While the guys went to Knowlton to pick up the papers. I was waiting for them.”

“Why?” asked the Chief Inspector.

“The reviews.”

“Ahh, of course. And that would explain—” He waved toward the stack of papers sitting on the grass, within the yellow police cordon.

Clara looked at them too. She wished she could say she’d forgotten all about the reviews in the shock of the discovery, but she hadn’t. The New York Times, the Toronto Globe and Mail and the London Times were piled on the ground where Peter had dropped them.

Beyond her reach.

Gamache looked at Clara, puzzled. “But if you were that anxious, why not just go online? The reviews would’ve been up hours ago, non?”

It was the same question Peter had asked her. And Olivier. How to explain it?

“Because I wanted to feel the newspaper in my hands,” she said. “I wanted to read my reviews the same way I read reviews of all the artists I love. Holding the paper. Smelling it. Turning the pages. All my life I’ve dreamed of this. It seemed worth the extra hour’s wait.”

“So you were alone in the garden for about an hour this morning?”

Clara nodded.

“From when to when?” Gamache asked.

“From around seven thirty this morning until they returned about eight thirty.” Clara looked at Peter.

“That’s right,” said Peter.

“And when you got back, what did you see?” Gamache turned to Peter and Olivier.

“We got out of the car and since we knew Clara was in the garden we decided to just walk around there.” Peter pointed to the corner of the house, where an old lilac held on to the last flowers of the season.

“I was following Peter when he suddenly stopped,” said Olivier.

“I noticed something red on the ground as we came around the house,” Peter picked up the story. “I think I assumed it was one of the poppies, fallen over. But it was too big. So I slowed down and looked over. That’s when I saw it was a woman.”

“What did you do?”

“I thought it was one of the guests who might’ve had too much to drink and passed out,” said Peter. “Slept it off in our garden. But then I could see that her eyes were open and her head—”

He tilted his, but of course he couldn’t achieve that angle. No living person could. It was a feat reserved for the dead.

“And you?” Gamache asked Olivier.

“I asked Clara to call the police,” he said. “Then I called Gabri.”

“You say you have guests?” Gamache asked. “People from the party?”

Gabri nodded. “A couple of the artists who came down from Montréal for the party decided to stay at the B and B. A few are also staying up at the inn and spa.”

“Was this a last-minute booking?”

“At the B and B it was. They made it sometime during the party.”

Gamache nodded and turning away he gestured toward Agent Isabelle Lacoste, who quickly joined him, listened as the Chief murmured instructions, then walked rapidly away. She spoke to two young Sûreté agents, who nodded and left.

It always fascinated Clara to see how easily Gamache took command, and how naturally people took his orders. Never barked, never shouted, never harsh. Always put in the most calm, even courteous manner. His orders were couched almost as requests. And yet not a person mistook them for that.

Gamache turned back to give the four friends his full attention. “Did any of you touch the body?”

They looked at each other, shaking their heads, then back to the Chief.

“No,” said Peter. He was feeling more certain now. The ground had firmed up, filled in with facts. With straightforward questions and clear answers.

Nothing to be afraid of.

“Do you mind?” Gamache started walking toward the Adirondack. Even had they minded, it wouldn’t have mattered. He was going there and they were welcome to join him.

“Before they came back, when you were sitting here alone, you didn’t notice anything strange?” he asked as they walked. It seemed obvious that had Clara seen a body in her garden she’d have said something earlier. But it wasn’t just the body he wanted to know about. This was Clara’s garden, she knew it well, intimately. Perhaps something else was wrong. A plant broken, a shrub disturbed.

Some detail his investigators might miss. Something so subtle she herself might have missed it, until he asked her directly.

And, to her credit, she didn’t come back with a smart-ass reply.

But Gabri did. “Like the body?”

“No,” said the Chief, as they arrived at the chair. He turned and surveyed the garden from there. It was true that at this angle the dead woman was hidden by the flower beds. “I mean something else.”

He turned thoughtful eyes on Clara.

“Is there anything unusual about your garden this morning?” He shot a warning glance at Gabri, who put a finger to his mouth. “Anything small? Some detail off?”

Clara looked around. The back lawn was dotted with large flower beds. Some round, some oblong. Tall trees along the riverbank threw dappled shade, but most of it was in bright noonday sun. Clara scanned her garden, as did the others.

Was there something different? It was so hard to tell now, what with all the people, the newspapers, the activity, the yellow police tape. The newspapers. The body. The newspapers.

Everything was different.

She turned back to Gamache, her eyes asking for help.

Gamache hated to give it, hated to suggest in case he led her to see something that wasn’t really there.

“It’s possible the murderer hid back here,” he finally said. “Waiting.”

He left it at that. And he could see Clara understood. She turned back to her garden. Had a man intent on murder waited here? In her private sanctuary?

Had he hidden himself in the flower beds? Crouching behind the tall peony? Had he peered out from the morning glory climbing the post? Had he knelt behind the growing phlox?

Waiting?

She looked at each and every perennial, each shrub. Looking for something knocked down, knocked askew, a limb twisted, a bud broken off.

But it was perfect. Myrna and Gabri had worked days on the garden, getting it immaculate for the party. And it was. Last night. And it was that morning.

Except for the police, like pests, crawling all over it. And the bright body. A blight.

“Do you see anything?” she asked Gabri.

“No,” he said. “If the murderer hid back here it wasn’t in one of the flower beds. Maybe behind a tree?” He waved toward the maples but Gamache shook his head.

“Too far away. It would take him too long to make it across the lawn and around the flower beds. She’d have seen him coming.”

“So where did he hide?” Olivier asked.

“He didn’t,” said Gamache, sitting in the Adirondack chair. From there the body was also hidden. No, Clara couldn’t see the dead woman.

The Chief Inspector hauled himself up. “He didn’t hide. He waited in plain sight.”

“And she walked right up to him?” Peter asked. “She knew him?”

“Or he walked up to her,” said Gamache. “Either way, she wasn’t alarmed or frightened.”

“What was she doing back here?” Clara asked. “The barbeque was out there,” she waved beyond their home. “Everything was on the green. The food, the drinks, the music. The caterers set up all the tables and chairs out front.”

“But if people wanted to, they could walk into back yards?” Gamache asked, trying to get a picture of the event.

“Sure,” said Olivier. “If they wanted. There weren’t any fences or ropes up to stop them, but there was no need.”

“Well—” said Clara.

They turned to her.

“Well, I didn’t come back here last night, but I have at other parties. To kind of escape for a few minutes, you know?”

To their surprise, Gabri nodded. “I do the same thing, sometimes. Just to be quiet, get away from all the people.”

“Did you last night?” Gamache asked.

Gabri shook his head. “Too much to do. We had caterers, but you still have to supervise.”

“So it’s possible the dead woman came back here for a quiet moment,” said Gamache. “She might not have known it was your home.” He looked at Clara and Peter. “She just chose any place that was private, away from the crowds.”

They were silent then, for a moment. Imagining the woman in the bright red “look at me” dress. Slipping around the side of the old brick home. Away from the music, and fireworks, from the people looking at her.

To find a few moments of peace and quiet.

“She doesn’t seem the shy type,” said Gabri.

“Neither do you,” said Gamache with a small smile and surveyed the garden.

There was a problem. There were quite a few problems, actually, but the one that perplexed the Chief Inspector at the moment was that none of the four people with him now had seen the dead woman alive, at the party.

“Bonjour.”

Inspector Jean Guy Beauvoir approached. As he got closer Gabri broke into a smile and extended his hand.

“I’m beginning to think you’re bad luck,” said Gabri. “Every time you come to Three Pines there’s a body.”

“And I think you provide them just for the pleasure of my company,” said Beauvoir, warmly shaking Gabri’s hand, then accepting Olivier’s.

They’d seen each other the evening before, at the vernissage. At that time they’d been in Peter and Clara’s element. The gallery. But now they were in Beauvoir’s habitat. A crime scene.

Art scared him. But pin a dead body to the wall and he was fine. Or, in this case, drop it into a garden. This he understood. It was simple. Always so simple.

Someone had hated the victim enough to kill her.

His job was to find that person and lock him up.

There was nothing subjective about it. No question of good and bad. It wasn’t an issue of perspective or nuance. No shading. Nothing to understand. It just was.

Collect the facts. Put them in the right order. Find the killer.

Of course, while it was simple it wasn’t always easy.

But he’d take a murder over a vernissage any day.

Though, like everyone else here, he suspected in this case the murder and the vernissage were one and the same. Inter-locked.

The thought dismayed him.

“Here’re the pictures you asked for.” Beauvoir handed the Chief Inspector a photograph. Gamache studied them.

“Merci. C’est parfait.” He looked up at the four people watching him. “I’d like you all to look at these photographs of the dead woman.”

“But we’ve already seen her,” said Gabri.

“I wonder if that’s true. When I asked if you’d seen her at the party you all said she’d be hard to miss in her red dress. I thought the same thing. When I tried to remember if I’d seen her at your vernissage yesterday, Clara, what I was really doing was scouring my memory for a woman in bright red. I was focusing on the dress, not the woman.”

“So?” asked Gabri.

“So,” said Gamache. “Suppose the red dress was recent. She might have been at the vernissage, but wearing something more conservative. She might have even been here—”

“And changed into the red dress mid-party?” asked Peter, incredulous. “Why would someone do that?”

“Why would someone kill her?” asked Gamache. “Why would a perfect stranger be at the party? There’re all sorts of questions, and I’m not saying this is the answer, but it is a possibility. That you were all so impressed by the dress you didn’t really concentrate on her face.”

He held up a photograph.

“This is what she looks like.”

He handed it to Clara first. The woman’s eyes were now closed. She looked peaceful, if a little flaccid. Even in sleep there’s some life in a face. This was an empty face. Blank. No more thoughts, or feelings.

Clara shook her head and passed the picture to Peter. Around the circle of friends the photo circulated, to the same reaction.

Nothing.

“The coroner’s ready to move the body,” said Beauvoir.

Gamache nodded and placed the photo in his pocket. Beauvoir and Lacoste and the others would have their own copies, he knew. Excusing themselves they walked back to the body.

Two assistants stood by a stretcher, waiting to lift the woman onto it and take her to the waiting van. The photographer also waited. All looking at Chief Inspector Gamache. Waiting for him to give the order.

“Do you know how long she’s been dead?” Beauvoir asked the coroner, who’d just stood up and was moving her stiff legs.

“Between twelve and fifteen hours,” said Dr. Harris.

Gamache checked his watch and did the math. It was now eleven thirty on Sunday morning. That meant she was alive at eight thirty last night and dead by midnight. She never saw Sunday.

“No apparent sexual assault. No assault at all, except the broken neck,” said Dr. Harris. “Death would’ve been immediate. There was no struggle. I suspect he stood behind her and twisted her neck.”

“As simple as that, Dr. Harris?” asked the Chief Inspector.

“I’m afraid so. Especially if the victim wasn’t tensing. If she was relaxed and caught off guard there’d be no resistance. Just a quick twist. A snap.”

“But do most people know how to break someone’s neck?” asked Agent Lacoste, brushing off her slacks. Like most Québécoise she was petite and managed a casual elegance even while dressed for the country.

“It doesn’t take much, you know,” said Dr. Harris. “A twist. But it’s possible the killer had a fall-back plan. To throttle her, if the twist didn’t work.”

“You make it sound like a business plan,” said Lacoste.

“It might have been,” said the coroner. “Cold, rational. It might not be physically hard to snap someone’s neck, but believe me, it would be very difficult emotionally. That’s why most people are killed with guns or a club to the head. Or even a knife. Let something else do the actual killing. But to do it with your own hands? Not in a fight but in a cold and calculated act? No.” Dr. Harris turned back to the dead woman. “It would take a very special person to do that.”

“And by ‘very special’ you mean?” Gamache asked.

“You know what I mean, Chief Inspector.”

“But I want you to be clear.”

“Someone who either didn’t care at all, was psychotic. Or someone who cared very, very deeply. Who wanted to do it with his bare hands. To literally take the life, himself.”

Dr. Harris stared at Gamache, who nodded.

“Merci.”

He glanced at the coroner’s assistants and at a signal they lifted the body onto a stretcher. A sheet was placed over the dead woman and she was carried away, never to be in the sun again.

The photographer started snapping pictures and the forensics team moved in. Collecting evidence from beneath the body. Including the clutch purse. The contents were carefully cataloged, tested, photographed, printed then brought to Beauvoir.

Lipstick, foundation, Kleenex, car keys, house keys and a wallet.

Beauvoir opened it and read the driver’s license then handed it to the Chief Inspector.

“We have a name, Chief. And an address.”

Gamache glanced at the driver’s license, then at the four villagers, watching him. He walked back across the lawn to join them.

“We know who the dead woman is.” Gamache consulted the driver’s license. “Lillian Dyson.”

“What?” exclaimed Clara. “Lillian Dyson?”

Gamache turned to her. “You know her?”

Clara stared at Gamache in disbelief then looked beyond her garden, across the meandering Rivière Bella Bella, and into the woods.

“Surely not,” she whispered.

“Who was she?” Gabri asked but Clara seemed to have fallen into a stupor, staring bewildered into the forest.

“Can I see her picture?” she finally asked.

Gamache handed her the driver’s license. It wasn’t the best photo, but certainly better than the one taken that morning. Clara examined it, then took a long, deep breath, and held it for a moment before exhaling.

“It could be her. The hair’s different. Blond. And she’s a lot older. Heavier. But it might be her.”

“Who?” demanded Gabri again.

“Lillian Dyson, of course,” said Olivier.

“Well I know that,” Gabri turned to, and on, his partner. “But who’s she?”

“Lillian was—”

Peter stopped as Gamache raised his hand. Not in a threat, but an instruction. To stop talking. And Peter did.

“I need to hear it from Clara first,” said the Chief Inspector. “Would you like to speak in private?”

Clara thought for a moment, then nodded.

“What? Without us?” asked Gabri.

“I’m sorry, mon beau Gabri,” said Clara. “But I’d rather speak to them quietly.”

Gabri looked hurt, but accepted. The two men left, walking around the corner of the home.

Gamache caught Agent Lacoste’s eye and nodded then he looked at the two Adirondack chairs in front of them. “Could we find two more chairs?”

With Peter’s help two more Adirondack chairs were brought over and the four of them sat in a circle. Had there been a campfire in the center it might have felt like a ghost story.

And in a way, it was.