“You can see the paintings they found in a display case near the front door,” said Massey. “Nothing remarkable, I’m afraid. No Emily Carr or Tom Thomson stuffed in for insulation.”
As they talked, Reine-Marie studied page after page of photographs of young men and women. Most of the students were white. Most with long greasy hair. And tight turtlenecks, and tighter jeans. And petulant, disinterested expressions.
Too cool for school. Too cool to care.
Reine-Marie stopped and turned back a page.
There, unmistakably, was Clara, with hair that looked like Einstein’s. Wearing a shapeless smock and a huge, happy grin on her face.
And beside her on the sofa, the same sofa Reine-Marie had just been on, various students slouched. Professor Massey, younger and even more vigorous, was standing behind them, speaking to a young man.
They were locked in earnest conversation. A cigarette hung from the young man’s mouth, a puff of smoke obscuring his face. Except for one eye. Sharp, assessing. Aware.
It was Peter.
Reine-Marie smiled at the photograph, then returned to searching for Sébastien Norman. But when she found the section on the professors it was a disappointment.
“I’d forgotten,” said Massey, when shown the section. “That was the year the editors decided not to use our actual photographs. Maybe in response to the Salon des Refusés, they published pictures of our art instead. I think they deliberately chose the most embarrassing examples.”
He took the book back and turned a few pages, and grimaced. “That’s mine. The worst thing I think I’ve done.”
There were columns of bright paint, with slashes through it. It seemed to Reine-Marie quite dynamic. Not bad at all.
But then, artists probably weren’t the best judges of their own work.
“May I take this?” she asked, indicating the yearbook.
“Yes, as long as you bring it back.”
He spoke, not surprisingly, to Ruth. He said it so tenderly that Reine-Marie was tempted to answer for her.
“I’ll be waiting,” he said to the old poet. “
I just sit where I’m put, composed of stone and wishful thinking.
”
Reine-Marie recognized the quote from one of Ruth’s poems. She wanted to warn this man to stop. She wanted to tell him that while he might think he was wooing Ruth with her own words, he had no idea what he was poking.
Ruth turned to Professor Massey and spoke, her voice strong and clear.
“
That the deity who kills for pleasure will also heal.”
She’d completed the couplet.
As they left for home, Reine-Marie mulled over what she’d heard. About Professor Norman. His passion, and his folly. The tenth muse. The missing muse.
That the deity who kills for pleasure will also heal.
Was the tenth muse that deity? Like the other muses, did it inspire? Did it heal?
But did this one also kill, for pleasure?
TWENTY-SIX
Marcel Chartrand placed the rolled-up canvases on the wooden table.
They were in his office at the back of the gallery, away from prying eyes.
The gallery itself was open, and tourists and artists and enthusiasts had streamed in all day. Not to buy, but to pay homage.
It was easy to spot those from away, and those from Québec. The tourists from other provinces or countries stood before the Clarence Gagnon oil paintings and smiled, appreciating the works of art.
Those from Québec looked about to burst into tears. An unsuspected yearning uncovered, discovered. For a simpler time and a simpler life. Before Internet, and climate change, and terrorism. When neighbors worked together, and separation was not a topic or an issue or wise.
Yet the Gagnon paintings weren’t idealized images of country life. They showed hardship. But they also showed such beauty, such peace, that the paintings, and the people looking at them, ached.
Gamache stood at the door between the office and the gallery and watched the patrons react to the paintings.
“Armand?”
Clara called him back in. He closed the door behind him and joined the others at the table.
Over lunch they’d discussed what to do next. They’d spent the morning driving to the cabin Peter had rented. Far from being a charming little Québécois chalet, this was a nondescript, cheap one-room hovel, one step up from a slum.
The landlady remembered Peter.
“Tall. Anglo. Paid cash,” she said, and looked around with distaste at the room, under no illusions about its quality. “Rents by the month. You interested?”
She eyed Clara, the most likely prospect.
“Did he have any visitors?” Clara asked.
The landlady looked at her as though it was a ridiculous question, which it was, but one that had to be asked. As was the next—
“Did he ask you about a man named Norman?”
Same response.
“Do you know a man named Norman?”
“Look, you want the place or not?”
Not.
The landlady locked up.
“Did he say why he was here?” Clara tried one more time as they stood outside the door.
“Oh, sure, we had long discussions over fondue and white wine.”
She looked at Clara with distaste. “I don’t know why he was here. I don’t care. He paid cash.”
“Did he tell you where he was going, when he left?” Clara persevered in the face of obvious defeat.
“I didn’t ask, he didn’t tell.”
And that was that.
Then they went back to the brasserie, to cleanse their palates with burgers.
“What next?” Clara asked.
“Reine-Marie should be at your college in Toronto,” Gamache said, looking at his watch. “She’ll let us know what she finds out.”
“And until then?” Myrna asked.
“There is one thing we can do, I suppose,” said Clara, shooting a glance at Gamache. “We could show Peter’s paintings to Marcel.”
Clara turned to Myrna and laid a hand on the rolled-up canvas.
“What do they tell you?”
Myrna noticed the protective action. “I take it you don’t want my opinion as an art critic.”
“Since you happen to think I’m a genius, I think your expertise in that area is unquestioned. But no, it’s the other I want.”
Myrna studied her friend for a moment. “They tell me that Peter was deeply troubled.”
“Do you think he’d lost his mind?” Clara asked.
“I think,” said Myrna slowly, “that Peter could afford to lose some of his mind. It wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.”
Myrna smiled then. Just a little.
“Right,” said Clara, getting up and grabbing the scrolled paintings. “Let’s go.”
She marched away like a Crimean war general leading a futile charge.
She headed up the hill to the Galerie Gagnon, leaving the others, and the bill, behind.
“She has flair, I’ll give her that,” said Jean-Guy, hurriedly taking a last huge bite of his hamburger. Gamache, paying, knew that “flair” was not one of Beauvoir’s compliments.
And now they stood over the table as Marcel Chartrand unrolled the canvases.
The one on top was of the lips.
Gamache studied the curator as Chartrand studied the painting. But study, Gamache realized, was the wrong word. Chartrand was absorbing it. Trying not to think about the painting, but to experience it. In fact, the other man’s eyes were almost closed.
Chartrand tilted his head a little this way. Then that.
And then a slight smile formed. His trained eye had seen the painted lips.
For the painting was smile-up. It was the giddy, laughing perspective.
“It’s a bit of a mess,” Chartrand said. “Here and here.” He waved his hands over the canvas. “It looks like Peter was just filling in gaps, not sure what to do. There’s no cohesion. But there is, I have to admit, a certain”—he searched for the word—“buoyancy.”
Clara reached out and slowly turned Peter’s painting. Like the rotation of the earth. Around. Slowly around. Until day became night. Smiles became frowns. Laughter became sorrow. Sky became water.
“Oh.”
That was all Chartrand said, and needed to say. His expression said the rest. His body, in its sudden tension, spoke.
Gamache felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. Excusing himself, he stepped out the back door.
“
Bonjour?
Reine-Marie?”
“
Oui
. We’re in the airport lounge, catching the next flight back to Montréal. I wanted to give you a quick call.”
“How’d it go?”
“I’m not really sure.”
She filled him in on their visit to the art college and Professor Massey. And Professor Norman.
“So he was from Québec,” said Armand. “But they don’t know where?”
“The office is looking,” she said. “The registrar is a bit overwhelmed right now. Getting ready for her own vacation, but I think I convinced her to look for Professor Norman’s dossier. The old files aren’t on computer, so she’ll have to go through them manually.”
“And she’s willing to do it?”
“Fortunately you only really need that one kidney, right, Armand?”
He grimaced. “As long as that’s the only body part you offered her.”
Reine-Marie’s laughter came down the line and he smiled as he turned in her direction. In the background he heard them calling her flight.
“Armand, what do you know about the Muses?”
“The Muses?” He wasn’t sure he heard her over the general boarding announcement. And then there was another, clearer voice.
“Get off the phone, for chrissake.”
“Is that Ruth?”
“She came with me. I think she has a crush on Professor Massey.”
“Ruth?”
“I know. You should’ve seen her. All giggly and blushing. They even recited part of her poetry together.
I just sit where I’m put
… That one.”
“Ruth?”
“Hurry up,” came the snarly voice. “If we get on now we might down a Scotch before the fucking thing takes off.”
Ruth.
“I have to go,” said Reine-Marie. “I’ll tell you more once we’re home. Professor Massey gave me a yearbook. I’ll study it on the flight.”
“
Merci
,” he called down the line. “
Merci.
”
But she was gone.
He returned to the office to find the four of them bent over one of the other canvases.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Nothing.” Chartrand shook his head and straightened up as though repulsed by the canvas. “Poor Peter.”
Clara met Gamache’s eye, her fears realized. It felt like Peter’s dirty underwear was spread out on the desk.
“You?” Jean-Guy asked, pointing to the phone still in the Chief’s hand.
“Reine-Marie. She and Ruth are just getting on the flight back to Montréal.”
“Ruth?” asked Clara.
“Yes, she went with Reine-Marie. Seems Professor Massey took a shine to her.”
“He seemed so sane,” said Myrna, shaking her head. “Did he survive?”
“Oh, he survived,” said Gamache. “Ruth even giggled.”
“No ‘numb nuts’?” asked Jean-Guy. “No ‘shithead’? Must be love. Or hate.”
“Did Reine-Marie find out anything?” Clara asked.
“Only that Professor Norman was considered unbalanced. He taught art theory. He’s from Québec. She’s waiting to find out where.”
“I’d forgotten about that,” said Clara. “Had a strange accent, though. Hard to place.”
“Just as their flight was called, she asked if I knew anything about the Muses,” said Gamache. “Does that make sense?”
“The brasserie?” asked Myrna.
“No, I think she meant the actual Greek goddesses.”
Clara snorted. “God, I’d forgotten about that too. Professor Norman was obsessed by the Muses. Peter used to laugh about that.”
“But what’s so funny?” Myrna asked. “Don’t most artists have a muse?”
“Absolutely, but Norman turned it into a sort of mania. A prerequisite.”
“A muse is supposed to inspire an artist, right?” said Jean-Guy.
“
Oui,
” said Chartrand. “There was Manet’s Victorine and Whistler’s Joanna Hiffernan—” He paused. “How odd.”
“How so?” asked Gamache.
“Both those women inspired works that ended up in the first Salon des Refusés.”
“So much for muses,” said Jean-Guy.
“But there’re lots of other examples,” said Chartrand. “And even those two paintings were eventually considered works of genius.”
“Because of the muses?” asked Jean-Guy. “Don’t you think the artists’ talent might’ve had something to do with it?”
“
Absolument,
” said Chartrand. “But something magical happens when a great artist meets his or her muse.”
There’s that word again, thought Gamache.
Magic.
Clara listened but couldn’t bear to look at Beauvoir as Chartrand tried to explain the inexplicable. Jean-Guy was so like Peter, in so many ways.
Peter hadn’t believed in muses. He believed in technique and discipline. He believed in the color wheel and rules of perspective. He believed in hard work. Not in some mythical, magical being who would make him a better artist. It was absurd.
Clara had secretly hoped that, despite what Peter believed, she was his muse. His inspiration. But she’d had to eventually surrender that thought.
“Who’s your muse?” Jean-Guy asked.
“Mine?” asked Clara.
“Yeah. If a muse is so important, who’s yours?”
She wanted to say Peter. Would have said Peter a while ago, if only out of loyalty. It was the easy and obvious answer.
But not the truthful one.
Myrna spared her from having to answer.
“It’s Ruth.”
Clara smiled at her friend, and nodded.
Demented, drunken, delusional Ruth inspired Clara.
Ruth, with the lump in her throat.
“Only successful artists have muses?” Beauvoir asked.
“Oh no,” said Chartrand. “Many artists have one, or a series of them. A muse might inspire them, but it doesn’t make them great artists or guarantee success.”
“Sometimes the magic works?” Jean-Guy looked at Clara, and smiled. Leading her to wonder if he knew more, or understood more, than he let on.
“If the muse is a person,” said Beauvoir, thinking out loud, “what happens to the artist if their muse dies?”
Clara, Myrna, Chartrand, and Gamache looked at each other. What did happen if a muse died? A muse was a very powerful person in an artist’s life.