The Long Way Home
It did not take four hours to comb Port-Menier.
They split up, with Clara and Chartrand taking one part of town and the others taking the other. An hour after leaving the ship, and speaking to every merchant and villager they could find, Myrna, Jean-Guy, and Gamache arrived at the only restaurant in town.
“You must be starving,” Gamache said to Myrna. “I know I am.”
“I could eat,” she said.
They ordered fish and chips, and Beauvoir ordered a pizza as well. “And one to go,” he shouted. “You never know,” he told Gamache.
“I honestly don’t think we can get the pizza box into the cabin,” said Gamache, taking his reading glasses off and putting the menu aside. “And I’m a little worried if we eat the pizza we won’t fit in either.”
When the food came, they discovered that the fish was cod.
“Caught today,” said the young server. “And the potatoes are fresh today too.”
He gestured out the window to the huge ship they’d come in on. Clearly “fresh” was a sliding scale.
“You get many people off the ship?” Gamache asked. He cut into the crispy fish.
“Some. Most just want to stretch their legs. Like you.”
“Do many stay?” Jean-Guy took up the line of questioning while Gamache ate.
“Here? No,” the young man laughed. “Some hunters come for a week or so later in the season. Some fishermen. But no one lives here. Except us.”
He didn’t seem upset about that. If anything, he seemed relieved.
“We’re looking for a friend of ours,” said Gamache. It was Beauvoir’s turn to eat, and his turn to talk. “He’d have been on the Loup de Mer a few months ago. Tall, English.”
He showed the waiter the photograph.
“No, sorry,” said the waiter, after studying it and handing it back.
By now the restaurant was filling with people who called the young man Cyril. They ordered scallops and cod cheeks and all sorts of things not on the menu.
“Would you like to try some, b’y?”
One of the older women, stout and dressed like a man, came over and offered her basket of cod cheeks to Beauvoir.
He shook his head.
“Ach, come on. I can see you drooling from across the room.”
That brought laughter from the rest of the crowd, and now a middle-aged man joined her. “Come along, Mother. Don’t be bothering these nice people.”
“Oh, it’s no bother,” said Beauvoir. He’d seen the look of slight hurt in the old woman’s face. “Can I have one?”
He took one of the tiny, deep-fried nuggets from her basket, dipped it in sauce, and ate it.
The room grew quiet.
When he reached for another one, they cheered as though the World Cup was theirs.
The elderly woman pretended to bat Jean-Guy’s hand away.
“Cod cheeks for the table, Cyril,” the man beside her said.
By the time Clara and Marcel arrived an hour later, Myrna and a group of women were dancing in the middle of the room and singing along to the jukebox.
“Man Smart (Woman Smarter),” they sang and danced with their arms waving above their heads, to great cheers.
Jean-Guy was across the diner, chatting with some fishermen.
“Any luck?” Clara asked as she and Marcel slid into the booth beside Gamache.
“No. You?”
Clara shook her head and tried to say something, but the music and laughter drowned her out.
“Let’s go outside,” Gamache shouted into her ear. He held on to Chartrand’s arm, pinning the man in place. “Order the cod cheeks and chips. You won’t regret it.”
And then he and Clara left.
“What is it?” he asked. He’d noticed the urgency with which she’d tried to make herself heard in the restaurant.
“Marcel and I have been walking around the village and out along the shore,” she said. “It gave me time to think.”
“Oui?”
“That pilot shouldn’t have recognized Peter from the old picture.”
They’d walked rapidly through the town, and now stood on a small dock. The rowboat tied there knocked gently against the floats.
Gamache stared at her, remembering the image.
“It was too old, too small,” said Clara, watching as Gamache’s mind raced. “And Peter’s face was almost completely hidden behind the smoke.”
“My God, it was Massey,” said Armand, arriving at the same conclusion as Clara. “The pilot recognized Professor Massey, not Peter.”