A Trick of the Light

“Armand.” He extended his hand and grasped the Chief Inspector’s. “Thérèse is in the kitchen, preparing a little tray. Why don’t we sit on the balcony. What can I get you to drink?”

“Just a Perrier, si te plaît, Jérôme,” said Gamache, following his host through the familiar living room, past the piles of open reference books and Jérôme’s puzzles and ciphers. They walked onto the front balcony, which looked across the street and onto a leafy, green park. It was hard to believe that just around the corner was avenue Laurier, filled with bistros and brasseries and boutiques.

He and Reine-Marie lived just a few streets over and had been to this home many times, for dinner or for cocktails. And the Brunels had been to their home many times as well.

While this wasn’t exactly a social call the Brunels managed to make everything feel comfortable. If it was necessary to talk about crime, about murder, why not do it over drinks and cheese and spiced sausage and olives?

Armand Gamache’s feelings exactly.

“Merci, Jérôme,” said Thérèse Brunel, handing the tray of food to her husband and accepting a white wine.

They stood on the balcony in the afternoon sun, looking out over the park.

“Lovely time of year, isn’t it?” said Thérèse. “So fresh.”

Then she turned her attention to the man beside her. And he to her.

Armand Gamache saw a woman he’d known for more than ten years. Had trained, in fact. Had taught at the academy. She’d stood out from the rest of the cadets, not only for her obvious intelligence but because she was old enough to be their mother. She was, in fact, a full decade older than Gamache himself.

She’d joined the Sûreté after a distinguished career as the chief curator at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Montréal. A celebrated art historian and advocate, she’d been consulted by the Sûreté on the appearance of a mysterious painting. Not the disappearance, mind, but the sudden appearance of one.

In that instance, in that crime, she’d discovered a love of puzzles. After helping on a few cases she’d realized it was what she really wanted to do, was meant to do.

So she’d taken herself off to a quite astonished recruiting officer and signed up.

That had been twelve years ago. And now she was one of the senior officers in the Sûreté, outstripping her teacher and mentor. But only, they both knew, because he’d chosen, and been given, a different path.

“How can I help, Armand?” she asked, indicating one of their balcony chairs with an elegant, slender hand.

“Shall I leave you?” Jérôme asked, struggling out of his seat.

“No, no,” Gamache waved him down, “please stay if you’d like.”

Jérôme always liked. A retired emergency room doctor, he’d loved puzzles all his life and was more than amused that his wife, always gently poking fun at his endless ciphers, was now neck deep in puzzles herself. Of a more serious nature, to be sure.

Chief Inspector Gamache put his Perrier down and brought the dossier out of his satchel. “I’d like you to look at these and tell me what you think.”

Superintendent Brunel spread the photographs on the wrought iron table, using their glasses and food platter to pin them down against the slight breeze.

The men waited quietly as she studied them. She took her time. Cars drove by. Across the way, in the park, children kicked around a soccer ball and played on the swings.

Armand Gamache sipped his sparkling water, stirring the bubbly wedge of lime with his finger, and watched as she examined the paintings from Lillian Dyson’s apartment. Thérèse looked stern, a seasoned investigator handed an element in a murder case. Her eyes darted here and there, scanning the paintings. And then they slowed and rested first on one image then another. She moved the paintings about on the table, tilting her coiffured head to the side.

Her eyes never softened, but her expression did, as she began to lose herself in the paintings and the puzzle.

Armand hadn’t told her anything about them. About who’d done them, about what he wanted to know. He’d given her no information, except that they were from a murder investigation.

He wanted her to form her own opinion, unsullied by his questions or comments.

The Chief Inspector had taught her at the academy that a crime scene wasn’t simply on the ground. It was in people’s heads. Their memories and perceptions. Their feelings. And you don’t want to contaminate those with leading questions.