by Louise Penny
‘How so?’
‘I feel like I was given another chance. So many died, but when I didn’t I took a look at my life and realized how unhappy I was. And it wasn’t going to get better. It wasn’t Enid’s fault, but we were never really well suited. But I was afraid to change, to admit I made a mistake. Afraid to hurt her. But I just couldn’t take it anymore. Surviving the raid gave me the courage to do what I should have done years ago.’
‘The courage to change.’
‘Pardon?’
‘It was one of the lines from that prayer on the coin,’ said Gamache.
‘Yeah, I guess so. Whatever it was, I could just see my life stretching ahead getting worse and worse. Don’t get me wrong, Enid’s wonderful—’
‘We’ve always liked her. A lot.’
‘And she likes you, as you know. But she’s not the one for me.’
‘Do you know who is?’
‘No.’
Beauvoir glanced at the Chief. Gamache was now looking out the windshield, his face thoughtful, then he turned to Beauvoir.
‘You will,’ said the Chief.
Beauvoir nodded, deep in thought. Then he finally spoke.
‘What would you have done, sir? If you’d been married to someone else when you met Madame Gamache?’
Gamache looked at Beauvoir, his eyes keen. ‘I thought you said you hadn’t met the one for you.’
Beauvoir hesitated. He’d given the Chief the opening, and Gamache had taken it. And now looked at him. Waiting for an answer. And Beauvoir almost told him. Almost told the Chief everything. Longed to open his heart and expose it to this man. As he’d told Armand Gamache about everything else in his life. About his unhappiness with Enid. They’d talked about that, about his own family, about what he wanted, and what he didn’t want.
Jean Guy Beauvoir trusted Gamache with his life.
He opened his mouth, the words hovering there, just at the opening. As though a stone had rolled back and these miraculous words were about to emerge. Into the daylight.
I love your daughter. I love Annie.
Beside him Chief Inspector Gamache waited, as though he had all the time in the world. As though nothing could be more important than Beauvoir’s personal life.
The city, with its invisible cross, got bigger and bigger. And then they were over the bridge.
‘I haven’t met anyone,’ said Beauvoir. ‘But I want to be ready. I can’t be married. It wouldn’t have been fair to Enid.’
Gamache was quiet for a moment. ‘Nor would it be fair to your lover’s husband.’
It wasn’t a rebuke. Wasn’t even a warning. And Beauvoir knew then if Chief Inspector Gamache had suspected he’d have said something. He’d not play games with Beauvoir. The way Beauvoir was with Gamache.
No, this wasn’t a game. Nor was it a secret, really. It was just a feeling. Unfulfilled. Not acted upon.
I love your daughter, sir.
But those words were swallowed too. Returned to the dark to join all the other unsaid things.
They found the apartment block in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce quartier of Montréal. Squat and gray, it might have been designed by Soviet architects in the 1960s.
The grass had been peed white by dogs, and lumps of poop sat on it. The flower beds were overgrown with strangled bushes and weeds. The concrete walk to the front door was cracked and heaved.
Inside, it smelled of urine and resonated with the distant echoes of doors slamming and people shouting at each other.
Monsieur and Madame Dyson lived on the top floor. The handrail on the concrete stairs was sticky and Beauvoir quickly took his hand off of it.
Up they walked. Three flights. Not pausing for breath but not racing either. They took measured steps. Once at the top they found the door to the Dyson apartment.
Chief Inspector Gamache raised his hand, and paused.
To give the Dysons one more second of peace before shattering their lives? Or to give himself one more moment before facing them?
Rap. Rap.
It opened a crack, a security chain across a fearful face.
‘Oui?’
‘Madame Dyson? My name is Armand Gamache. I’m with the Sûreté du Québec.’ He already had his ID out and now showed it to her. Her eyes dropped to it, then back up to the Chief’s face. ‘This is my colleague Inspector Beauvoir. May we speak with you?’
The thin face was obviously relieved. How many times had she opened the door a crack, to see kids taunting her? To see the landlord demanding rent? To see unkindness take human form?
But not this time. These men were with the Sûreté. They wouldn’t hurt her. She was of a generation who still believed that. It was written all over her worn face.
The door closed, the chain was lifted and the door swung open.
She was tiny. And in an armchair sat a man who looked like a puppet. Small, stiff, sunken. He struggled to get up, but Gamache walked swiftly over to him.
‘No, please, Monsieur Dyson. Je vous en prie. Stay seated.’
They shook hands and he reintroduced himself, speaking slowly, clearly, more loudly than normal.
‘Tea?’ Madame Dyson asked.
Oh, no no no, thought Beauvoir. The place smelled of liniment and slightly of urine.
‘Yes, please. How kind of you. May I help?’ Gamache went with her into the kitchen, leaving Beauvoir alone with the puppet. He tried to make small-talk but ran out after commenting on the weather.
‘Nice place,’ he finally said and was treated to Monsieur Dyson looking at him as though he was an idiot.
Beauvoir scanned the walls. There was a crucifix above the dining table, and a smiling Jesus surrounded by light. But the rest of the walls were taken up with photographs of one person. Their daughter Lillian. Her life radiated out from the smiling Jesus. Her baby pictures closest to Him, then she got older and older as the pictures wrapped around the walls. Sometimes alone, sometimes with others. The parents too aged, from a young, beaming couple holding their first born, their only born, in front of a neat, compact home. To first Christmas, to gooey birthdays.
Beauvoir scanned the walls for a photo of Lillian and Clara then realized if there had been one it would have been taken down long ago.
There were pictures of a gap-toothed little girl with gleaming orange hair holding a huge stuffed dog, and a little later standing beside a bike with a big bow. Toys, gifts, presents. Everything a little girl could want.
And love. No, not just love. Adoration. This child, this woman, was adored.
Beauvoir felt something stir inside. Something that seemed to have crawled into him while he’d lain in his own blood on the floor of that factory.
Sorrow.
Since that moment death had never been the same, and neither, it must be said, had life.
He didn’t like it.
He tried to remember Lillian Dyson forty years after this picture was taken. Too much makeup, hair dyed a straw blond. Bright red look-at-me dress. Almost a mockery. A parody of a person.
But try as Beauvoir might it was too late. He saw Lillian Dyson now as a young girl. Adored. Confident. Heading into the world. A world her parents knew needed to be kept out, with chains.
But still, they’d opened the door a crack, and a crack was enough. If there was something malevolent, malicious, murderous on the other side, a crack was all it needed.
‘Bon,’ came the Chief’s voice behind him and Beauvoir turned to see Gamache carrying a tin tray with a teapot, some milk, sugar and fine china cups. ‘Where would you like me to put this?’
He sounded warm, friendly. But not jovial. The Chief wouldn’t want to trick them. Would not want to give the impression they were there with riotous good news.
‘Just here, please.’ Madame Dyson hurried to clear the TV guide and remote off a faux-wood table by the sofa, but Beauvoir got there first, scooping them up and handing them to her.
She met his eyes and smiled. Not a wide smile, but a softer, sadder version of he
And he suspected these two elderly people knew why they were there. Probably not the exact news. Not that their only daughter was dead. Murdered. But the look Madame Dyson had just given him told Jean Guy Beauvoir that she knew something was up. Amiss.
And she was being kind anyway. Or was she just trying to keep whatever news they had at bay? Keep them silent for one more precious minute.
‘A bit of milk and sugar?’ she asked the puppet.
Monsieur Dyson sat forward.
‘This is a special occasion,’ he pretended to confide in their visitors. ‘Normally she doesn’t offer milk.’
It broke Beauvoir’s heart to think these two pensioners probably couldn’t afford much milk. That what little they had was being offered now, to their guests.
‘Gives me gas,’ explained the old man.
‘Now, Papa,’ said Madame Dyson, handing the cup and saucer to the Chief to hand to her husband. She too pretended to confide in their company. ‘It is true. I figure you have about twenty minutes from the first sip.’
Once they all had their cups and were seated Chief Inspector Gamache took a sip and placed the delicate bone china cup on its saucer and leaned toward the elderly couple. Madame Dyson reached out and took her husband’s hand.
Would she still call him ‘Papa’ after today, Beauvoir wondered. Or was that the very last time? Would it be too painful? That must have been what Lillian called him.
Would he still be a father, even if there were no more children?
‘I have some very bad news,’ said the Chief. ‘It’s about your daughter, Lillian.’
He looked them in the eyes as he spoke, and saw their lives change. It would forever be dated from this moment. Before the news and after the news. Two completely different lives.
‘I’m afraid she’s dead.’
He spoke in short, declarative sentences. His voice calm, deep. Absolute. He needed to tell them quickly, not drag it out. And clearly. There could be no doubt.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Madame Dyson, but her eyes said she understood fully. She was terrified. The monster every mother feared had squirmed in through that crack. It had taken her child, and was now sitting in her living room.
Madame Dyson turned to her husband, who was struggling to sit further forward. Perhaps to stand up. To confront this news, these words. To beat them back, out of his living room, out of his home, away from his door. To beat those words until they were lies.
But he couldn’t.
‘There’s more,’ said the Chief Inspector, still holding their eyes. ‘Lillian was murdered.’
‘Oh, God, no,’ said Lillian’s mother, her hand flying to her mouth. Then it slipped to her chest. Her breast. And rested there, limp.
Both of them stared at Gamache, and he looked at them.
‘I’m very sorry to have to bring you this news,’ he said, knowing how weak it sounded but also knowing to not say it would be even worse.
Madame and Monsieur Dyson were gone now. They’d crossed over to that continent where grieving parents lived. It looked the same as the rest of the world, but wasn’t. Colors bled pale. Music was just notes. Books no longer transported or comforted, not fully. Never again. Food was nutrition, little more. Breaths were sighs.
And they knew something the rest didn’t. They knew how lucky the rest of the world was.
‘How?’ Madame Dyson whispered. Beside her her husband was enraged, so angry he couldn’t speak. But his face was contorted and his eyes blazed. At Gamache.
‘Her neck was broken,’ said the Chief. ‘It was very fast. She didn’t even see it coming.’
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why would anyone kill Lillian?’
‘We don’t know. But we’ll find out who did this.’
Armand Gamache cupped his large hands toward her. An offering.
Jean Guy Beauvoir noticed the tremble in the Chief’s right hand. Very slight.
This too was new, since the factory.
Madame Dyson dropped her tiny hand from her breast into Gamache’s hands and he closed them, holding hers like a sparrow.
He said nothing then. And neither did she.
They sat in silence, and would sit there for as long as it took.
Beauvoir looked at Monsieur Dyson. His rage had turned to confusion. A man of action in his younger days now imprisoned in an easy chair. Unable to save his daughter. Unable to comfort his wife.
Beauvoir got up and offered the elderly man his own arms. Monsieur Dyson stared at them, then swung both hands to Beauvoir’s arm and grabbed on. Beauvoir lifted him to a standing position and supported him while the old man turned to his wife. And put out his arms.
She stood and walked into them.
They held each other and held each other up. And wept.
Eventually they parted.
Beauvoir had found tissues and gave each a handful. When they were able Chief Inspector Gamache asked them some questions.
‘Lillian lived in New York for many years. Can you tell us anything about her life there?’
‘She was an artist,’ her father said. ‘Wonderful. We didn’t visit her often but she came home every couple of years or so.’
It sounded vague, to Gamache. An exaggeration.
‘She made a living as an artist?’ he asked.
‘Absolutely,’ Madame Dyson said. ‘She was a big success.’
‘She was married once?’ the Chief asked.
‘Morgan was his name,’ said Madame Dyson.
‘No, not Morgan,’ said her husband. ‘But close. Madison.’
‘Yes, that’s it. It was a long time ago and they weren’t married long. We never met him but he wasn’t a nice man. Drank. Poor Lillian was taken in by him completely. Very charming, but they so often are.’
Gamache noticed Beauvoir taking out his notebook.
‘You say he drank?’ asked the Chief. ‘How do you know?’
‘Lillian told us. She finally kicked him out. But that was long ago.’
‘Do you know if he ever stopped drinking?’ asked Gamache. ‘Perhaps joined Alcoholics Anonymous?’
They looked lost. ‘We never met him, Chief Inspector,’ she repeated. ‘I suppose he might have, before he died.’
‘He died?’ asked Beauvoir. ‘Do you know when?’
‘Oh, a few years ago now. Lillian told us. Probably drank himself to death.’
‘Did your daughter talk about any particular friends?’
‘She had a lot of friends. We spoke once a week and she was always off to parties or vernissages.’
‘Did she talk about any by name?’ Gamache asked. They shook their heads. ‘Did she ever mention a friend named Clara, back here in Québec?’
‘Clara? She was Lillian’s best friend. Inseparable. She used to come by for supper when we lived in the house.’
‘But they didn’t stay close?’
‘Clara stole some of Lillian’s ideas. Then she dropped Lillian as a friend. Used her and threw her away as soon as she had what she wanted. Hurt Lillian terribly.’
‘Why did your daughter go to New York?’ asked Gamache.
‘She felt the art scene here in Montréal wasn’t very supportive. They didn’t like it when she criticized their work, but that was her job, after all, as a critic. She wanted to go someplace where artists were more sophisticated.’
‘Did she talk about anyone in particular? Someone who might have wished her ill?’
‘Back then? She said everyone did.’
‘And more recently? When did she come back to Montréal?’
‘October sixteenth,’ said Monsieur Dyson.
‘You know the exact date?’ Gamache turned to him.
‘You would too, if you had a daughter.’
The Chief nodded. ‘You’re right. I do have a daughter and I’d remember the day she returned home.’
The two men looked at each other for a moment.
‘Did Lillian tell you why she returned?’ Gamache did a quick calculation. It would have been about eight months earlier. Shortly after that she’d bought her car and begun going to art shows around town.
‘She just said she was missing home,’ said Madame Dyson. ‘We thought we were the luckiest people alive.’
Gamache paused to let her gather herself. Both Sûreté officers knew there was a small window after telling loved ones the news before they were completely overcome. Before the shock wore off and the pain began.
That moment was fast approaching. The window was slamming shut. They had to make each question count.
‘Was she happy in Montréal this time?’ Gamache asked.
‘I’ve never seen her happier,’ said her father. ‘I think she might’ve found a man. We asked but she always laughed and denied it. But I’m not so sure.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Gamache asked.
‘When she came for dinner she’d always leave early,’ said Madame Dyson. ‘By seven thirty. We kidded her that she was off on a date.’
‘And what did she say to that?’
‘She just laughed. But,’ she hesitated, ‘there was something.’
‘What do you mean?’
Madame Dyson took another deep breath as though trying to keep herself going, long enough to help this police officer. To help him find whoever had killed their daughter.
‘I don’t know what I mean, but she never used to leave early, then suddenly she did. But she wouldn’t tell us why.’
‘Did your daughter drink?’
‘Drink?’ asked Monsieur Dyson. ‘I don’t understand the question. Drink what?’
‘Alcohol. We found something at the site that might have come from Alcoholics Anonymous. Do you know if your daughter belonged to AA?’
‘Lillian?’ Madame Dyson looked astonished. ‘I’ve never seen her drunk in my life. She used to be the designated driver at parties. She’d have a few drinks sometimes, but never many.’
‘We don’t even keep alcohol in the house,’ said Monsieur Dyson.
‘Why not?’ Gamache asked.
‘We just lost interest, I suppose,’ said Madame Dyson. ‘There were other things to spend our pensions on.’
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