World of Curiosities

CHAPTER 24

While Dr. Louissaint continued her examination, Armand placed a call to a former colleague, now retired and living in Vancouver.

Thérèse Brunel had been a senior officer in the Sûreté. She worked well past retirement, partly because she was so valuable to the force and partly because no one had the guts to have “that” conversation with her.

She’d come into policing later in life after a career as a senior curator with the Musée des beaux-arts. An investigation into art theft brought her into contact with the Sûreté, and she discovered a fascination with, and aptitude for, crime. Solving.

Over the years she and her husband had become good friends of the Gamaches.

“Thérèse? Armand.”

“Armand, it’s just after seven in the morning here.”

“Did I wake you?”

“Do you care?”

He smiled at her reply.

“Something’s happened,” she said. “What is it? The family?”

“Is fine. It’s a case. At least, I think it’s a case.”

“Could you be more vague?”

He laughed. “I need your help and probably Jérôme’s. It’s about The Paston Treasure.”

“Really? One of my favorite paintings. Now why would it be involved in a homicide case in Québec? That is what we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

“So you know the painting?”

“I do. A real curiosity.”

He explained what they’d found, and where. At first, there were sounds as people make when they’re absorbing information. But after a while, she fell silent.

“I’m glad you called in Mirlande,” said Thérèse when he’d finished. “She’ll be able to help. But I suspect the one you really want to talk to is Jérôme.”

“Eventually, yes, but I’d like to hear what you can tell me about The Paston Treasure.”

“Let me think.” There was silence down the line while she gathered her thoughts. “It was painted in the 1670s, or thereabouts, and shows many of the curios collected by the Paston family in Norfolk. That in itself would make the painting worth noticing, just as a historic record of the times. But there are a number of mysteries surrounding it, not least of which, why didn’t the artist, who clearly put a huge amount of time and effort into the thing, sign it?”

“Theories?”

“He died before he could. Or he didn’t want to be associated with it.”

“Why—”

“—wouldn’t he? I don’t know, Armand. Wish I did. It was a strange and dangerous time in England. Political unrest. Religious unrest. Talk of witches.”

“Witches?”

“Yes. One of the stranger details in the painting is almost hidden. Look closer at the roses around the neck of the cello.”

“Okay.” Armand was bending over the painting. “I don’t see anything.”

“Look closer. Though it might not be there in the version you found.”

“May I borrow your glasses?” he asked Dr. Louissaint, who, while surprised, handed them over. He looked again, then pulled back sharply. It was as though he’d been plunged into the folds of the plump white rose.

And then he saw it. Lifting off the loupe and handing it back to the conservator, he said into the phone, “It’s a ladybug.”

“Right. An exquisitely rendered one, at least in the original.” She paused, then said, almost to herself, “Interesting that your artist chose to copy such a tiny detail.” Then her voice returned to lecture mode. “In England, the bug was, at the time, known as a symbol of the Virgin Mary. But in Norfolk, where it was painted, that bug is called something else. A bishop-that-burneth.”

“Why?”

“Well, what were bishops burning at the time?”

“Witches.”

“Right. It’s possible there’s something in the painting—maybe the ladybug, maybe something else—that made it dangerous for the artist to be associated with it. It might be something lost to our modern eyes. There’re other oddities about the original, like why it was painted. Is it meant as a statement of wealth and prestige? Or perhaps a memento mori.”

“A remembrance after death?”

“Yes. Something that would immortalize the Pastons. But that’s another mystery. We don’t know if it was the father, William, who commissioned the work, or the son, Robert. This might interest you, Armand. Robert was an alchemist.”

Thérèse was rattling off other secrets, other mysteries, contained in the painting and, so far, unreleased. Like who the figures were. The humans but also those carved into the chair and the head of the cello.

“It seems the painting, or painter, was trying to say something. I wonder if those lines and symbols are in the original, but we just never noticed. I’ll have a look.”

And that brought Armand back to the main purpose of his call. “Is Jérôme there?”

“I’ll get him. Jérôme? Où es-tu?”

Thérèse’s husband had been an emergency room physician, but his hobby and passion were codes. He’d solved at least one for Gamache in the past and was on the team of volunteers trying to crack Dickens’s Tavistock letter and other literary works written, for reasons that might never be known, in coded markings.

While waiting, Gamache sent them pictures of the painting and the elephant. Overviews, but mostly close-ups of the markings and other details, including the bug. The bishop-that-burneth.

When Jérôme Brunel got on the phone, Armand explained.

“Oui, Armand, I’m looking at what you sent. Fascinating. Let me get back to you. Can I consult my group?”

“Other decoders? Not yet. Thérèse knows, of course, but otherwise, please keep this to yourself.”

“Tell Armand there are no markings on the original,” Thérèse shouted in the background.

“I heard,” he said.

Jérôme laughed. “So did all of Vancouver.”

After he’d hung up, Armand put on a pot of coffee. As the room filled with the welcome aroma of the rich, strong drink, he stood at the window, one hand clasping the other behind his back.

It was a beautiful, bright morning, sun gleaming off the moisture from the rain the day before. It would soon evaporate, but for now, it gave an otherworldly look to a village that already appeared out of time and place.

He saw Harriet leave the B&B and wondered if she’d been home last night. And wondered what Myrna would say to her niece.

Then he saw Fiona leave their home. As he watched, he realized that over the years of visiting her in prison, of trying to soften the judicial blow he’d helped land, he’d come to think of her as a sort of niece. Not, of course, with the depth of love he felt for his real nieces, but a member of the extended family nevertheless.

And now, after Amelia’s report the night before and other evidence, he was forced to confront something else.

Matthew 10:36.

It was something his first mentor, his first chief in homicide, had told him.

“Oh, one other thing, Armand.” He’d stopped the young agent as he was leaving a meeting with the other officers. This was shortly after he’d joined homicide. Shortly after the shootings at the Polytechnique that were to haunt him for the rest of his life.

“Matthew 10:36.”

Agent Gamache had stood at the door waiting for more. But that was it. He was dismissed. A week or so passed before Armand, in a quiet moment, remembered and looked up the reference in the family Bible.

A man’s foes shall be they of his own household.

Agent Gamache hadn’t believed it. Had dismissed it as the sad perception of a highly effective officer who’d grown cynical with age.

But Matthew 10:36 had proven true. If the definition of “household” included the wider extended family of colleagues within the force. That was what his first boss had been trying to tell him. To warn him.

Almost too late, Gamache, by then the head of homicide himself, had seen it.

Armand watched as Fiona began walking. The bistro, he sent out the plea. Go there. Or the bookstore. Or the bakery.

Anywhere but—

She walked straight to the B&B. To join her brother.

—there.

Now he had to face the possibility that Jean-Guy was right, and his foes were literally within his own household.

And yet, his mind said, why shouldn’t she spend time with her brother? Was it so wrong?

Was he doing to Sam Arsenault what had been done to Anne Lamarque and so many others? Judging and condemning without evidence. He believed the boy, the young man, was mentally ill. And yet, there was no proof beyond two winks and the subtle movement of one finger. And a lingering chill in his core. Was that enough to condemn? Surely not.

Could he have been wrong about him? About her? Did he, as Jean-Guy believed, have it backward? That yes, there was a psychopath in that family, but it wasn’t the boy.

Once again, he remembered the conversation Amelia had described. It had been Fiona who’d asked about the grandchildren. Not Sam.

A cold resolve settled into his core.

Earlier that morning, in the car over to the Stone house with the search warrant, he’d told Jean-Guy about sending Amelia away, and what she’d said to him in Clara’s garden. What Sam and Fiona had asked her the night before. About the family. About the grandchildren.

Beauvoir was silent, then finally said, “They could just be interested.”

“For God’s sake, Jean-Guy, you know it’s more than that. Sam Arsenault’s clever. He’s doing this to get back at me, and God knows how far he’ll go.”

“What I know, patron, is that you’re obsessed with him. You’ve had it in for him from the first moment you met. I don’t know what that’s about, but it’s blinding you to the real threat.”

“You mean Fiona. I arrested her. Hardly the act of a blind man.”

“And you vouched for her, got her parole. Invited her into your home.” Beauvoir took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “I’m sorry. I’m just worried if there really is trouble, we’ll be looking in the wrong direction. You remember that day when we first met them? When you told them their mother was dead?”

“Of course.”

“One of them cried. One of them did not. Which one is most likely to be a psychopath?”

That gave Armand pause. Though he also knew one of the great skills of a psychopath was the ability to feign appropriate emotions.

“Let me talk to Sam,” said Beauvoir. “See what I can find out.”

“The children, Jean-Guy. Whether it’s Sam or Fiona or both, they’ve brought in the children. You’d better be sure.”

Now back in the Incident Room, while Beauvoir led the search of the Stone house, and the conservators examined the painting, Gamache went over reports.

When they’d finished, Dr. Louissaint approached him.

“We’ve taken samples of the paint and the canvas. I can tell you that, judging by the brushstrokes, more than one person worked on it.”

“More than one? Two? Three?”

“I don’t know. The painting’s so big it’s hard to tell on a short exam. The scans might tell us more.” She turned back to the painting. “What I don’t get is how someone managed to print a life-sized copy of The Paston Treasure onto this canvas.”

“Would it be difficult?” asked Gamache.

“I can’t think of any machine that could do it.”

“I’ve heard of one,” said the young apprentice. “Or at least there was a proposal for one a few years ago. They came to my art college for advice, since we also have a big printer, but not this size.”

“Who was asking?” asked Gamache.

“Corrections Canada.”

“The prison system?” said Gamache.

“As part of art therapy, I guess. They wanted inmates to copy some masterpieces. Kenojuak Ashevak. Group of Seven. A few Morrows. Clara, not Peter, of course.”

Of course, thought Gamache, and felt a pang of pain for the man. No memento mori for Peter Morrow.

“Why would they need advice from your college?” he asked. “Surely that’s easily done with existing technology.”

“For those smaller works, yes, but they were interested in larger canvases too, so that the inmates would have to work in teams. Learn to work together,” said Maryse.

Gamache looked at Dr. Louissaint. Two or three artists …

He knew that choirs had been formed in penitentiaries for that same purpose. To literally create harmony. Teams of inmates had also been trained to work with puppies to become guide dogs.

Was it possible this was painted by inmates, as part of art therapy? But that raised a whole lot of other questions. Not just how it got into the attic, but how it got out of a prison.

And why didn’t the inmates just copy the original, which would have been the assignment, but put their own spin on the masterpiece? Why these particular modern touches?

“Alors, it is puzzling,” said Dr. Louissaint. “A joke perhaps?”

“Perhaps.”

“Will you let me know what the markings say, if anything? Maybe they’re just random.”

“Could be.”

But he doubted it. And he knew she did too.

After seeing them off, he pulled a chair over in front of the painting. And stared. Trying to enter it. Trying to enter the mind of the person who’d conceived it.

Was there, perhaps like the original, something dangerous here?

Ten minutes later Armand’s phone rang. It was Jean-Guy.

“You found something?”

“A ticket to an art show. For The Paston Treasure. In the UK.”

“When?”

“Three years ago. Monsieur Godin swears he’s never seen it before and that his wife wasn’t at the show.”

True, thought Armand, remembering Godin saying they never traveled.

“Send me a picture of the ticket.”

Armand heard a sound behind him and turned to see Robert Mongeau, the minister, at the door. He had his hands pulsing in front of him as if to say he did not want to interrupt.

Gamache waved him in.

There was a ding as Jean-Guy’s photograph arrived.

“There’s something else,” said Beauvoir. “It was used as a bookmark. Get this. It was in one of Ruth’s poetry books.”

Gamache felt the hair on the nape of his neck go up.

“Godin doesn’t recognize the book either and seemed surprised. They never read poetry. I’ve had forensics go over the book. No prints.”

“Which book is it?”

“I’m F.I.N.E.”

They both knew Ruth’s code. The letters stood for “Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Egotistical.” Which Ruth was. Which most people were.

“And the poem where the card was?”

“Just a moment, I’ll find it.” There was rustling as the book was taken out of the evidence bag. Gamache knew that slim volume of poetry well. He and Reine-Marie had a dog-eared copy in their own bookcase. Ruth had even signed it, if a scribbled Fuck Off could be considered a signature.

Robert Mongeau, with his back to Gamache, was studying The Paston Treasure. It was almost certainly the reason for his visit. While his calling might be from God, that did not stop the minister from answering more human callings. Like curiosity.

“Oh, by the way, I’ve arranged lunch with Sam at the bistro,” said Jean-Guy. “Fucking gloves,” he mumbled.

Armand noticed that Mongeau was peering closely at the painting and was just about to ask him to step back when the minister did just that. And started softly humming.

“Got it,” said Jean-Guy. “The poem is called ‘Waiting.’”

“I know it.”

And the tune the minister was humming? Did he know that too? It seemed familiar.

Mongeau’s voice grew more assured, so that Armand could now hear the song clearly.

“We sat down and wept,” Mongeau sang in a soft but a clear tenor. “And wept.”

Armand turned to face the minister, and as he did, the phone and Beauvoir slipped from his hand.

“Patron?” came the tiny voice from below. “Armand? Is something wrong? What’s happened?”

Words from Ruth’s poem “Waiting” sprang to Armand’s mind. Dredged up by the music.

And now it is now, and the dark thing is here.

The waiting, it seemed, was over.