Louise Penny - A Fatal Grace

‘But,’ said Peter, ‘you grew out of it.’

‘True,’ said Clara, lying just a little, ‘though it was replaced by other fantasies.’

‘Oh, please. Heterosexual fantasies have no place at the dinner table,’ said Gabri.

But Clara’s adult dream world had nothing to do with sex.

‘And that’s the trouble,’ said Gamache. ‘I agree as children we all created worlds of our own. Cowboys and Indians, space explorers, princes and princesses.’

‘Shall I tell you mine?’ Gabri offered.

‘Please, dear Lord, let the house explode now,’ said Ruth.

‘I used to dream I was straight.’

The simple and devastating sentence sat in the middle of their circle.

‘I used to dream I was popular,’ said Ruth into the silence. ‘And pretty.’

‘I used to dream I was white,’ said Myrna. ‘And thin.’

Peter remained mute. He couldn’t remember any fantasies he’d had as a child. Coping with reality had taken up too much of his mind.

‘And you?’ Ruth asked Gamache.

‘I used to dream I’d saved my parents,’ he said, remembering the little boy looking out the living-room window, leaning over the back of the sofa, resting his cheek on the nubbly fabric. Sometimes, when the winter wind blew, he could still feel it rough against his cheek. Whenever his parents went out for dinner he’d wait, looking into the night for the headlights. And every night they came home. Except one.

‘We all have our fantasies,’ said Myrna. ‘Was CC any different?’

‘There is one difference,’ said Gamache. ‘Do you still want to be white and thin?’

Myrna laughed heartily. ‘No way. Would never occur to me now.’

‘Or straight?’ he asked Gabri.

‘Olivier would kill me.’

‘Eventually, for better or worse, our childhood fantasies disappear or are replaced by others. But not CC. That’s the difference. She seemed to believe them, even to the extent of choosing the name de Poitiers. We don’t even know what her real name was.’

‘I wonder who her parents were?’ said Gabri. ‘She was in her late forties, right? So they’d probably be in their seventies at least. Like you.’ Gabri turned to Ruth, who waited a moment then spoke.

‘Long dead and buried in another town,

my mother hasn’t finished with me yet.

’

‘From a poem?’ Gamache asked when Ruth had finished. It sounded familiar.

‘You think?’ said Ruth with a snarl.

‘When my death us do part

Then shall forgiven and forgiving meet again,

Or will it be, as always was, too late?

’

‘Oh, thank God. I thought we’d be without your poetry for one night,’ said Gabri. ‘Please, continue. I don’t feel quite suicidal enough.’

‘Your poetry is remarkable,’ said Gamache. Ruth looked more stricken by his kind words than Gabri’s insults.

‘Fuck off.’ She shoved Gamache aside and made for the door.

‘The Shit’s hit the Fan,’ said Gabri.

Gamache remembered where he’d heard the poem. He’d read it in the car on his way down to start the case. He carefully retrieved The Lion in Winter from the video machine.

‘Thank you,’ he said to Clara and Peter. ‘I have to get back to Inspector Beauvoir. Do you have one of your portfolios?’ he asked Clara. ‘I’d like to take it.’

‘Sure.’ She led him into her studio and over to her crowded desk. Turning the lamp on she riffled the stacks of papers. He watched her until his eyes wandered, drawn to something shining on the bookcase behind her desk. He stood still for a moment, almost afraid that if he moved the object would flitter away. Silently, slowly, he edged forward, creeping up on it. As he moved he put his hand into his pocket and withdrew a handkerchief. Reaching out, his hand steady and true, he delicately hugged the object in the handkerchief and picked it off its stand. Even through the cloth it felt almost warm.

‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ said Clara, as he drew back and held the object under the lamp. ‘Peter gave it to me for Christmas.’

In his palm Gamache held a glowing ball. A scene was painted on it. Three pine trees with snow heavy on the branches. Underneath was the word Noël , and below that, very lightly, was something else. A single capital letter.

L .

Gamache had found the Li Bien ball.

Peter Morrow looked as though he’d been cornered, and he had. When asked Clara had happily declared that the lovely ornament was the very first Christmas gift Peter had ever bought for her. Up until this year, she’d explained, they’d been too poor.

‘Or too cheap,’ said Ruth.

‘Where did you get it?’ Gamache asked, his voice polite, but with a firmness that demanded an answer.

‘I forget,’ Peter tried, but seeing the determination in Gamache’s eye he changed his mind. ‘I wanted to buy you something.’ Peter turned to Clara, trying to explain.

‘But?’ Clara could see where this was going.

‘Well, I was driving to Williamsburg to shop – ’

‘The Paris of the North,’ explained Gabri to Myrna.

‘Famous for its shops,’ agreed Myrna.

‘ – when I passed the dump, and—’

‘The dump?’ Clara exclaimed. ‘The dump?’

Now Lucy the dog started snaking between Clara’s legs, upset by the frequency Clara had achieved.

‘Careful, you’ll shatter the ball,’ said Ruth.

‘The dump.’ Clara’s voice deepened and she lowered her head, her eyes glowering at Peter who wished, as Ruth had earlier, that maybe the house could just explode now.

‘The Jacques Cousteau of dumpster diving has struck treasure again,’ said Gabri.

‘You found this,’ Gamache held the Li Bien ball up, ‘in the Williamsburg dump?’

Peter nodded. ‘I was just looking, just for fun. It was a mild day so everything wasn’t frozen together. I wasn’t there long and that thing just caught my eye. You can see why. Even now just by lamplight it’s glowing; you can imagine what it looked like in broad daylight. It was like a beacon. It was calling to me.’ He looked at Clara to see if maybe that would work. ‘I think I was meant to find it. Destiny.’

She remained unconvinced of the divinity of his gift.

‘When was this?’ Gamache asked.

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Remember, Mr Morrow.’ They all looked at Gamache now. The man seemed to have grown and now radiated an authority and insistence that silenced even Ruth. Peter thought a moment.

‘It was a few days before Christmas. I know, it was the day after your book launch,’ he said to Ruth. ‘The twenty-third of December. Clara was home and could walk Lucy while I went Christmas shopping.’

‘Christmas garbage sifting, don’t you mean?’ said Clara.

Peter sighed and said nothing.

‘Where was it in the dumpster?’ Gamache asked.

‘Right on the edge, as though someone had reached up and placed it there, not just thrown it in.’

‘Did you find anything else?’

Gamache watched Peter closely to see if he was lying. Peter shook his head. Gamache believed him.

‘What is it? Why’s it so important?’ Myrna asked.

‘It’s called a Li Bien ball,’ said Gamache, ‘and it belonged to CC. She built her whole spiritual philosophy around it. In her book she described it, exactly like this, and said it was the only thing she had left from her mother. In fact, she said her mother painted it.’

‘It has three pine trees on it,’ continued Myrna.

‘And an initial,’ said Clara. ‘L.’

‘So that’s why CC moved here,’ said Gabri.

‘Why?’ said Peter, who’d been thinking of his own world of trouble ahead and not really concentrating on the conversation.