A Trick of the Light - Louise Penny [14]
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