The Long Way Home

Myrna, Clara, Beauvoir, and Gamache walked, and thought, and remembered the only picture they had of Professor Norman. A self-portrait. Of a madman.

A sin-sick soul, thought Gamache. Who smeared asbestos onto his own paintings. And shipped them off. Knowing whoever opened the container, unrolled the canvases, held them, admired them, was sealing their own fate.

The asbestos would be dislodged, would float into the air and hang there, little crystals, tiny fibers. To be inhaled, to nest in the person’s lungs. And from there to burrow. And burrow. Digging deep tunnels.

While outside, the lover of art would carry on with his or her life. Unaware they’d just inhaled the scent of Samarra. Their own death.

The deck was too difficult now, and they’d retreated to the shelter of the lounge when Gamache’s phone rang.

It was the principal of the art college.

“I got worried after our conversation, Monsieur Gamache,” he said. “So I asked the health and safety person to check out some spots in the college for asbestos. She won’t have the definitive results for a few days, but it looks like we’re clear, with one exception. There’s a suspicious spot in Professor Massey’s studio.”

“What does it mean?” Myrna asked.

“I think it’s pretty clear what it means,” said Clara. They’d used the last of their change to get scalding hot chocolates out of the vending machine, and now they took a table by one of the water-slashed windows.

The bow of the Loup de Mer was rising and falling, rising and falling. Every now and then it rose higher, higher, paused there, then crashed down. A gale was building, coming straight at them. And they were heading straight for it.

They held on to their hot chocolates, but still some slopped over the sides. Clara spared a thought for Marcel Chartrand, downstairs, in the bowels.

“It means we know who Norman sent his asbestos-infected paintings to,” said Clara.

“Professor Massey,” said Beauvoir.

“But why?” asked Myrna. “Massey got him fired. Why would he trust him with his works?”

“He wasn’t trying to trust him, he was trying to kill him,” said Gamache.

He turned, by habit, to Jean-Guy Beauvoir.

This was familiar territory now, to both men. How often had they sat just like this, facing each other across arborite tables, at hacked wooden tables, at desks and in muddy fields, in cars, and planes, and trains. In the bright sunshine, and in winter blizzards.

The two of them.

Trying not to see their way clear, but to see their way into a dark heart. Trying to solve the first, the oldest, crime. Cain’s crime. Murder.

Beauvoir thought about it. “But if No Man infected his paintings and sent them off to Massey, wasn’t there a chance Massey would sell them on? Find buyers?”

That had been troubling Gamache too. Once out of No Man’s hands anything could happen to the canvases. He had no way of knowing if they’d kill Massey, or a student, or some poor anonymous art collector.

Maybe No Man didn’t really care who else he killed, as long as Professor Massey was one of them. Or maybe …

“Maybe they weren’t very good,” said Gamache. “Maybe he deliberately sent paintings he knew Massey wouldn’t show to anyone else.”

“It still doesn’t make sense,” said Myrna. “Professor Massey hated Sébastien Norman. He got Norman the job, and then Norman took complete advantage of the situation to lecture on his own pet theory of the tenth muse. Then he held the show for the rejected artwork. Professor Norman did everything but burn down the college. Why would Massey help him?”

“Would you?”

The question came from Beauvoir, and it was directed at Gamache.

“Clara and Myrna here both thought Professor Massey reminded them of you, patron. I’ve seen you do some pretty weird things for people everyone else had given up on. Including me. Do you think Massey might still try to help Norman?”

Gamache considered that. “He might. Maybe he didn’t hate Norman,” Gamache said to Myrna, “but felt sorry for him. Maybe he even felt responsible. For putting both Norman and the school in that position.”

Myrna looked at Armand. And Armand looked at Myrna.

“Yes,” she said, remembering their private therapy sessions. “It’s possible.”

“I think Massey was the agent that Luc Vachon was sending the canvases to,” said Gamache.

“Asbestos-infected canvases,” said Beauvoir. “Massey might not have hated Norman, but Norman hated Massey. For getting him fired.”