The Long Way Home

Ten minutes later they were walking along an overgrown path through the woods.

And then, as though they’d crossed some barrier, the woods stopped and they emerged into sunshine. Before them was a clearing overgrown with grasses and bushes. They had to force their way through the bracken until they were in the middle of a large circular field.

It was pocked with bumps and lumps. Gamache assumed they were tree stumps, but then realized they formed shapes. Squares. Rectangles.

Foundations.

What was now a tangle of wildflowers and burrs and weeds had once been homes.

Not just abandoned, but dismantled. Taken apart. Until just the bare bones remained as evidence that anyone had once lived here.

Gamache heard a noise beside him. A sort of exhale, a moan.

He looked over at Clara, who was standing very still and staring ahead of her. He followed her eyes, but saw nothing unusual.

“Clara?” Myrna asked. She’d also noticed the sudden stillness, the focus, in her friend.

Now Clara moved. Rapidly. She unrolled Peter’s paintings and, dumping the other two on the ground, grabbed one and started walking, this way and that. The painting held open at arm’s length, like a map. She searched the field, a dowser desperate to find the wellspring.

She stumbled over the rocks and stones and foundations.

And then she stopped.

“Here. Peter was here when he painted this.”

They joined her. And exchanged glances. There was no correlation between the wild colors and fierce strokes of the painting and this bucolic scene. A desperate wife had seen something not there.

But the longer they looked, the more it fell into place.

If the clearing wasn’t seen literally, if the true colors weren’t looked for on the canvas, then slowly it revealed itself.

What Clara held was a strange marriage, a sort of alchemy, between reality and perception. Between what they saw and what Peter felt.

“He was here,” Myrna agreed. “And the other?”

Myrna retrieved the other painting and, with Beauvoir beside her, held it up and walked through the field. Until they stopped.

“Here.”

And then they all looked at Marcel Chartrand.

“You knew, didn’t you?” said Gamache.

“Not at first,” he said. “Not when I saw the paintings in my office. It’s impossible to connect them with here.”

Reluctantly, Gamache had to agree. But he still stared at Chartrand.

“When did you know that Peter had been here?”

“After we realized Professor Norman and No Man are the same person. You have to understand, I hadn’t given this fellow No Man a thought in years. Artist colonies pop up around here all the time. There was one a few years back where the members only painted in shades of green. Another where they only spoke Latin. Some of the communities survive for a while, most don’t. That’s just the way it is.”

“But you didn’t tell us Peter came here,” said Beauvoir. He and Myrna had rejoined them.

“I still wasn’t sure until we got here.” Chartrand looked at Clara.

“How’d he know how to find it?” Gamache asked. “It’s not exactly on the tourist place mat. Did you tell him? Did you bring him here?”

“I told you, no. But it wasn’t a secret. Everyone knew about the colony. As I said, it was just one of many. There’re probably former members still living in the area. Maybe one of them told Peter about it.”

“But you knew where it was. You’ve been here before,” Gamache said.

“Once.”

“Were you a member?” He watched Chartrand closely.

“Me?” The gallery owner seemed genuinely surprised at the suggestion. “No. I’m not an artist.”

“Was this place really about art?” Myrna asked. “Or about the tenth muse?”

“Art, as far as I know.”

“Why did you come here if not for the art?” Gamache asked.

“No Man asked me to talk about Clarence Gagnon. He was interested in him. All the members were.”

“Why?” Gamache asked.

“You know why,” said Chartrand. “I can see it when you look at his paintings. The man wasn’t just a genius, he was courageous, bold. Willing to break with convention. He painted traditional images, but with such—” Chartrand searched for the word, and in the silence they could hear the buzz of flies and bees. “Grace. He painted with grace.”

And Gamache knew the truth in that.

“Do you think Clarence Gagnon had found the tenth muse?”