TWELVE
Armand Gamache swayed on his horse/moose and thought about their visit to Vincent Gilbert. And Paris.
His Paris. Gilbert’s Paris. Peter’s Paris. And as he thought, the cool forest receded and the gnarled old tree trunks metamorphosed. They shifted and reformed until they were no longer impenetrable woods but a grand Parisian boulevard. Gamache was riding down the middle of a wide street, lined with magnificent buildings. Some Haussmann, some art nouveau, some beaux arts. He rode past parks and small cafés and great monuments.
He turned his horse/moose down boulevard du Montparnasse. Past the red awnings, past Parisians reading at round marble-topped tables. Past La Coupole, La Rotonde, Le Select—cafés where Hemingway and Man Ray lived and drank. Where centuries of writers and artists debated and inspired each other. And some never left. Off to his left Gamache could just see the Cimetière du Montparnasse, where Baudelaire lay and Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir would spend eternity under a single slab, in the company of The Kiss, the glorious sculpture by Brancusi.
And in the near distance, beyond the cemetery, the hideous Tour Montparnasse rose as a kind of warning against the modern belief that it was possible to improve on perfection.
Gamache and Beauvoir clopped past the past. Beyond the long-dead artists and writers. Beyond Montparnasse. To the neighborhood Peter Morrow had chosen to stay. So close to such an explosion of creativity.
But a world away.
They turned onto rue de Vaugirard. And the charm slowly, slowly dissipated. The City of Light faded and became just another city. At times lovely. Lively. But not the Paris of Manet and Picasso and Rodin.
Finally they arrived at their destination.
Gamache pulled softly on the reins and felt a slight shudder as Beauvoir’s horse head-butted his mount.
Both Beauvoir and his horse had fallen into a stupor. But now they woke up.
“Why did we stop?” Beauvoir and his horse looked around.
Gamache was staring at a tree as though expecting the trunk to swing open and admit them.
* * *
Oomph. Clara landed in one of the Adirondack chairs in her garden and slid to the back, until she hit the pillow. On one wide armrest was the gin and tonic she’d been dreaming of since getting in Myrna’s sweltering car for the drive home from Montréal. On the other armrest was a bowl of chips.
She was happy to be home.
“You first,” she said, feeling her body relax into the pillow.
Reine-Marie, Armand, Jean-Guy, and Myrna were in her back garden, exchanging information.
“I think I know where Peter went when he left here,” said Gamache.
“We already know,” said Clara. She gestured toward the map Gamache was spreading on the table. “Paris.”
“Yes. Paris, Florence, Venice,” said the Chief, looking at Clara over his reading glasses. “It all seemed to make sense, except for one obvious question.”
“Dumfries,” said Reine-Marie.
Her husband nodded. “Why go to Dumfries? I got distracted by that big question, by the forest, and failed to look more closely at one very odd tree. A detail.”
“Why go all the way to Paris and stay in the 15th arrondissement?” asked Clara, sitting up in her chair again.
“Oui. Exactly.” His deep brown eyes glowed. It was unmistakable. Not that he was enjoying this, but that he was good at it. He was like a miner, carrying a torch. Illuminating dark passages. Digging deep, often dangerously deep. To get at what was buried there.
Reine-Marie recognized that gleam. And heard, again, the beating of the moth’s wings.
It was all she could do not to stand up. To look at her watch. To suggest to Armand that they had to go. Had to leave. Had to get back to their cheerful home. Where they belonged. Where they could garden, and read, sip lemonade and play bridge. And if they died, it would be in bed.
Reine-Marie shifted in her seat and cleared her throat.
Armand looked at her.
“Go on,” she said. He held her gaze and when she smiled, he nodded and turned back to Clara.
“Why the 15th?” he said. “This afternoon Vincent Gilbert gave us the answer.”
“You visited the asshole saint?” asked Myrna. It was said without rancor or judgment. They’d gotten so used to calling him that they’d almost forgotten his real name and occupation. Even Vincent Gilbert answered to that name, though he occasionally corrected them by saying, “It’s Dr. Asshole Saint to you.”
He’d begun as a successful and celebrated physician. He’d ended up a recluse in a one-room log cabin. A lot had happened in between, but it all began with a visit to Paris’s 15th arrondissement.
“I think Gilbert and Peter were drawn to the same place,” said Gamache. “Here.”
He pointed to the dirty fingerprint on the map. It sat over the spot like a cloud.
They all leaned in, except Jean-Guy.
He knew what Gamache was pointing at.
LaPorte. The Door.
As the others moved toward the map, Jean-Guy sat in the garden and closed his eyes and breathed in the fresh evening air. And missed Annie. She’d returned to her job in Montréal that morning. He’d been prepared to return with her, but as they lay in bed, Annie had suggested he stay.
“Find Peter,” she’d said. “You want to, and Dad needs your help.”
“I don’t think he does.”
She’d smiled, and traced his arm, from shoulder to elbow, with her finger.
For most of his adult life, Jean-Guy Beauvoir had dated bodies. He’d married Enid for her breasts, her legs, her delicate face. Her ability to make his friends weak at the knees.
But when his own body had been battered and bruised and the life almost taken from it, only then did Jean-Guy discover how very attractive a heart and mind could be.
A coy smile could capture him, but it was finally a hearty laugh that had freed him.
No knees would buckle for Annie Gamache. No eyes would follow her substantial body. No wolf calls for her pretty plain face. But she was by far the most attractive woman in any room.
Late into his thirties, with a broken body and a shattered spirit, Jean-Guy Beauvoir had been seduced by happiness.
“I want to go back with you,” he said, and meant.
“And I want you to,” she said, and meant. “But someone needs to find Peter Morrow, and you owe Clara. Dad owes her. You need to help.”
That was why she was happy. He now knew that happiness and kindness went together. There was not one without the other. For Jean-Guy it was a struggle. For Annie it seemed natural.
They curled toward each other and he held her fingers, intertwined in his, in the space between their naked bodies.
“You’re on partial leave,” said Annie. “Will Isabelle agree?”
Beauvoir was still unused to asking a S?reté agent who was once his subordinate for permission. But he called Chief Inspector Lacoste first thing in the morning and she’d agreed. He could stay and help find Peter Morrow.
Isabelle Lacoste also owed Clara.
Annie had left. And now, at the edge of the day, Jean-Guy Beauvoir sat in the garden listening to the conversation and allowed himself a moment to drift from his head to his heart. He unconsciously held out his right hand, palm up, as though waiting for Annie’s hand.
“LaPorte?” asked Clara, straightening up after bending close to the map. “The Door? The place Frère Albert created?”
“Oui,” said Gamache. “I might be wrong, but that’s what I think.”
Like most people who admitted the possibility of being wrong, they knew he knew he probably wasn’t. But Clara was far from convinced. And Myrna didn’t seem any closer.
“Why would Peter go to LaPorte?” Myrna asked, sitting back down. She was disappointed. It was hardly a breakthrough.
“Why did Vincent Gilbert?” asked Jean-Guy, joining the conversation.
Myrna thought about that. “He’d had a successful career,” she said, remembering her conversations with the asshole saint. “But then his marriage fell apart.”
Gamache nodded. “Go on.”
Myrna thought some more.
“It wasn’t just the end of his marriage that did it,” she said, thinking out loud. “Lots of people get separated or divorced without having to hare off to a commune in France.”
Myrna lapsed into silence and thought about the missing piece. What would prompt a successful middle-aged man to give up his career and live in a community created by a humble priest, to serve children and adults with Down’s syndrome?
That was LaPorte’s vocation. It was to open a door for these people, after so many doors had been shut in their unusual faces. Frère Albert’s LaPorte offered not simply, though crucially, a place to live, but mostly it offered dignity. Equality. Belonging.
Frère Albert’s brilliance was in knowing that a community created to help others would never thrive. But one created for equal benefit would. He knew he too was flawed. Perhaps not in ways as obvious as someone with Down’s syndrome. But in ways more subtle, yet equally challenging.
The great genius of LaPorte was the absolute knowledge that everyone there had something to learn from, something to give to, the other. There was no distinction between the Down’s syndrome member and anyone else.
“Dr. Gilbert went there to volunteer as the community’s medical director,” said Myrna. “Not because he could heal them, but because he needed to be healed.”
“Exactly,” said Gamache. “We all need to be healed at some time in our lives. We’ve all been deeply hurt. His hurt was, I think, the same as Peter’s. Not physical, but spiritual. They both had a hole. A tear.”
This was met with silence.
Everyone around that table knew how that felt. The horror of realizing all the toys, all the success, all the powerful boards and new cars and accolades hadn’t filled the hole. They’d actually made it bigger. Deeper.
There was nothing wrong with success, but it had to have meaning.
“Vincent Gilbert knocked on LaPorte hoping to find himself,” said Gamache.
“And you think Peter did too?” asked Clara.
“Do you?” he asked her.
“I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country,” Clara said.
“I will pray you find a way to be useful,” Gamache completed the quote.
Reine-Marie dropped her eyes to her hands and saw the paper napkin twisted and shredded there.
Clara nodded slowly. “I think you might be right. Peter went to Paris not to find a new artistic voice. It was simpler than that. He wanted to find a way to be useful.”
The sun was going down and the birds and crickets and scrambling creatures grew quiet. The scent of roses and sweet peas drifted toward them on the heavy evening air.
“Then why didn’t he stay?” Clara asked.
“Maybe the hole was too big,” said Myrna.
“Maybe his courage failed,” said Reine-Marie.
“Maybe while LaPorte was Dr. Gilbert’s answer, it wasn’t Peter’s,” said Jean-Guy. “His was somewhere else.”
Gamache nodded. He had a call in to the S?reté in Paris, asking them to visit LaPorte with Peter Morrow’s picture and the dates. To confirm what they suspected. Peter had been there.
And Peter had left there.