A Fatal Grace

‘That’s you?’ He pointed to one of the women. Mother joined him and smiled at his amazement and inability to conceal it. She wasn’t insulted. It often amazed her too.

‘And that’s El.’ She pointed to the other woman. While both the guru and Mother were smiling, the other woman seemed to radiate. Beauvoir could barely take his eyes off her. Then he thought of the autopsy pictures Gamache had shown him. True, Mother had changed, but in ways recognizable and natural, if not attractive. The other woman had disappeared. The glow gone, the radiance dimmed and dulled and finally extinguished beneath layers of filth and despair.

‘Not many people know about Ramen Das. There was more, of course.’ Mother plopped into a seat. ‘CC called her philosophy Li Bien. I’d lived for over seventy years and only ever heard that phrase from one other person. El. CC called her business and her book Be Calm. And she used a logo only we knew about.’

‘The eagle?’

‘The symbol of Eleanor of Aquitaine.’

‘Explain that to me, Mother.’ Beauvoir couldn’t believe he’d just called her Mother, but he had, and it felt natural. He hoped he wouldn’t be suckling soon.

‘We studied British and French history in school,’ said Mother. ‘Canada apparently had no history. Anyway, when we got to the section on Eleanor of Aquitaine El became obsessed. She decided she was Eleanor of Aquitaine. Don’t look so smug, Inspector. You can’t tell me you didn’t run around playing cowboys and Indians or pretending to be Superman or Batman.’

Beauvoir snorted. He’d done nothing of the sort. That’d be crazy. He’d been Jean-Claude Killy, the world’s greatest Olympic skier. He’d even told his mother she had to call him Jean-Claude. She’d refused. Still, he’d skied astonishing races in his bedroom, winning Olympic gold, often outrunning catastrophic avalanches, saving nuns and grateful millionaires along the way.

‘El was searching even then, knowing something wasn’t right, as though she didn’t belong in her own skin. She found comfort in thinking she was Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Em even made her a necklace with Eleanor’s heraldic symbol. The eagle. A particularly aggressive eagle.’

‘So you put it all together and when CC moved here you realized she was El’s daughter.’

‘That’s right. We knew she’d had a child. El had disappeared for a few years, then we suddenly got a card from Toronto. She’d gotten into a relationship with some guy who quickly disappeared, but not before getting El pregnant. She wasn’t married and at the time, in the late fifties, that was a scandal. I’d known when she left India that she wasn’t well emotionally. Her mind was brilliant and delicate and unbalanced. Poor CC, being raised in a home like that. No wonder the idea of balance was so important to her.’ Mother looked at Beauvoir, stunned. It had just occurred to her. ‘I felt no sympathy for CC, no compassion. At first, when we realized she was our beloved El’s daughter we tried to invite her into our lives. I can’t say we ever warmed to her. She was unlikable in the extreme. El was like sunshine, bright and loving and kind. But she gave birth to darkness. CC didn’t live in her mother’s shadow, she was her mother’s shadow.’

‘This was found in El’s hand.’ Gamache tried to say it gently, but knew there was no hiding the horror of it. ‘El’s mind might have been unbalanced, but her heart was steady. She knew what was important. Through all the years on the street she held on to these two things.’ He touched the box and nodded to the necklace. ‘The three of you. She surrounded herself with her friends.’

‘We tried to follow her but she was in and out of hospitals and then finally put onto the streets. We couldn’t imagine our El living on the streets. We tried to get her into shelters but she always left. We had to learn to respect her wishes.’

‘When was CC taken from her?’ Gamache asked.

‘I don’t know exactly. I think she was about ten when El was put into hospital.’

They were silent for a moment, each imagining the little girl taken from the only home she knew. Filthy, unhealthy place, but home nevertheless.

‘When did you see El again?’

‘Mother and Kaye and I often take the bus into Montreal and a couple of years ago we saw El at the station. It was a shock, seeing her like that, but we eventually got used to it.’

‘And you showed her some of Clara’s art?’

‘Clara? Why would we do that?’ Em was obviously confused. ‘We never had long with her, just a few minutes, so we’d give her clothes and blankets and food and some money. But we never showed her Clara’s art. Why would we?’