A Trick of the Light - Louise Penny [30]
Lillian Dyson couldn’t have known it when she bought them, but these maps were also useless. Just to be sure, he opened one and where Three Pines should have been there was the winding Bella Bella River, hills, a forest. And nothing else. As far as the official mapmakers were concerned Three Pines didn’t exist.
It had never been surveyed. Never plotted. No GPS or sat nav system, no matter how sophisticated, would ever find the little village. It only appeared as though by accident over the edge of the hill. Suddenly. It could not be found unless you were lost.
Had Lillian Dyson been lost? Had she stumbled onto Three Pines and the party by mistake?
But no. That seemed too big a coincidence. She was dressed for a party. Dressed to impress. To be seen. To be noticed.
Then why hadn’t she been?
“Why was Lillian here?” he asked, almost to himself.
“Did she even know it was Clara’s home, do you think?” Beauvoir asked.
“I’ve wondered that,” admitted Gamache, taking off his reading glasses and getting out of the car.
“Either way,” said Beauvoir, “she came.”
“But how.”
“By car,” said Beauvoir.
“Yes, I’ve managed to get that far,” said Gamache with a smile. “But once in the car how’d she get here?”
“The maps?” asked Beauvoir, with infinite patience. But when he saw Gamache shaking his head he reconsidered. “Not the maps?”
Gamache was silent, letting his second in command find the answer himself.
“She wouldn’t have found Three Pines on those maps,” said Beauvoir, slowly. “It isn’t on them.” He paused, thinking. “So how’d she find her way here?”
Gamache turned and started making his way back toward Three Pines, his pace measured.
Something else occurred to Beauvoir as he joined the Chief. “How’d any of them get here? All those people from Montréal?”
“Clara and Peter sent directions with the invitation.”
“Well, there’s your answer,” said Beauvoir. “She had directions.”
“But she wasn’t invited. And even if she somehow got her hands on an invitation, and the directions, where are they? Not in her handbag, not on her body. Not in the car.”
Beauvoir looked away, thinking. “So, no maps and no directions. How’d she find the place?”
Gamache stopped opposite the inn and spa.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. Then Gamache turned to look at the inn. It had once been a monstrosity. A rotting, rotten old place. A Victorian trophy home built more than a century ago of hubris and other men’s sweat.
Meant to dominate the village below. But while Three Pines survived the recessions, the depressions, the wars, this turreted eyesore fell into disrepair, attracting only sorrow.
Instead of a trophy, when villagers looked up what they saw was a shadow, a sigh on the hill.
But no longer. Now it was an elegant and gleaming country inn.
But sometimes, at certain angles, in a certain light Gamache could still see the sorrow in the place. And just at dusk, in the breeze, he thought he could hear the sigh.
In Gamache’s breast pocket was the list of guests Clara and Peter had invited from Montréal. Was the murderer’s name among them?
Or was the murderer not a guest at all, but someone already here?
“Hello, there.”
Beside him Beauvoir gave a start. He tried not to show it, but this old home, despite the facelift, still gave Beauvoir a chill.
Dominique Gilbert appeared around the side of the inn. She was wearing jodhpurs and a black velvet riding hat. In her hand she carried a leather crop. She was about to either go for a ride, or direct a Mack Sennett short.
She smiled when she recognized them, and put out her hand.
“Chief Inspector.” She shook his hand then turned to Beauvoir and shook his. Then her smile faded.
“So it’s true about the body in Clara’s garden?”
She removed her hat to show brown hair flattened to her skull by perspiration. Dominique Gilbert was in her late forties, tall and slender. A refugee, along with her husband, Marc,