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

The Long Way Home (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #10) Page 136

“Why’d he keep it?” Peter asked.

“I’ve been wondering that myself,” said Gamache. “Why would Massey keep one of Norman’s small masterpieces? As a trophy? Killers sometimes do.”

“I think it might be simpler than that,” said Peter. “For all his faults, Professor Massey loved art. Knew art. I think that painting by Professor Norman must’ve been so great even he couldn’t destroy it.”

Peter sighed, a deep exhale. And Gamache knew what he was thinking about. The masterpiece in his own life. The one he’d destroyed. Not Clara’s painting, but her love.

*   *   *

“I’ve come too far, and waited too long.” Clara got to her feet. “I’m going.”

Myrna stood in front of her in the diner, blocking her route out.

Clara stared at her.

“I have to know,” Clara whispered, so that only Myrna could hear. “Please. Let me go.”

Myrna stepped toward Clara, who stood her ground.

And then she stepped aside.

And let her go.

*   *   *

“Clara waited for you,” said Gamache quietly. “That night of your anniversary.”

Peter opened his mouth but the words were stuck at the lump in his throat.

“I wrote,” he said at last. “To say I wasn’t going to make it, but that I’d be home as soon as I could. I gave it to that young pilot.”

“She never got the letter.”

“Oh, my God. That shithead must’ve lost it. She must think I don’t care. Oh no. Oh, Christ. She must hate me.”

Peter stood up and started for the door. “I have to go. I have to get home. I have to speak to her, to tell her. The plane’ll be here soon. I have to be on it.”

Gamache put out his hand and gripped Peter’s arm.

Peter tried to jerk free. “Let me go. I have to go.”

“She’s here,” said Gamache. “She came to find you.”

FORTY

“Clara’s here?” Peter demanded. “Where?”

“She’s with Myrna at the diner,” said Gamache.

“I’m going,” he said.

“No, you need to stay here until Beauvoir returns and we know where we stand. I’m sorry, Peter, but the priority has to be to arrest Vachon for murder. Time enough to see Clara after that.”

Gamache walked to the door and stepped onto the porch, scanning the horizon in case Beauvoir was returning with Vachon. But there was no one, and nothing, there.

He turned back to the cabin and saw Peter approach the bed. Then Peter reached out and did what he knew he shouldn’t. He broke the rules, and brushed Norman’s hand with one finger. The lightest of strokes.

Gamache gave him that private moment. He stepped off the rickety porch and looked around, turning full circle in the bright sunshine.

There was no movement. There was no sound.

Nothing.

How bleak it must have been for No Man.

For Peter.

When the only sound was the hacking, rattling cough of a dying man.

When the only activity was shopping, cooking, cleaning. Bathing a dying man.

How tempting it must have been, to leave.

But Peter Morrow had stayed. Right to the end.

“I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country,” said Gamache.

“Pardon?”

Peter had come onto the porch and was watching Gamache.

Armand turned and said to Peter, “I will pray you find a way to be useful.”

Peter stood, as silent and solid as the world around them.

“Gilead,” said Gamache. “The tenth muse is not, I think, about becoming a better artist, but becoming a better person.”

Gamache stepped onto the porch. “You found a way to be useful.”

Maybe this wasn’t Samarra after all, thought Gamache. Maybe it was Gilead.

Peter seemed to relax. Some tension, held all his life, escaped.

He followed Gamache inside.

Armand stared down at the body in the bed. Thinking, thinking.

Peter had been here alone this morning. Standing sentinel. Guarding the body until help arrived. But there had been one visitor.

Luc Vachon. Who’d helped Massey kill Norman. Who’d delivered the asbestos-infected supplies.

But, but … what had Beauvoir said? What had Peter said, when told?

That the beauty of the plan, for Vachon, was that he could delude himself into believing he wasn’t doing anything wrong. But suppose. Suppose. It wasn’t a delusion?

Gamache held his hand to his mouth and rubbed as he looked down at Sébastien Norman.