A Trick of the Light

“You can’t, and you know it. You’re the Chief Justice. Decide, sir. Now.”

Armand Gamache faced Chief Justice Pineault, waiting for an answer. The Chief Justice was taken aback, clearly not thinking he’d be challenged.

“I’m here as her AA friend. As Thierry P.”

The answer surprised Gamache and he showed it.

“You think that’s the weaker role, Chief Inspector?”

Gamache didn’t say anything, but he obviously did.

Thierry smiled briefly, then looked very serious. “Anyone can make sure her rights aren’t violated. I think you can. But what you can’t do is guard her sobriety. Only another alcoholic can help her stay sober through this. If she loses that she loses everything.”

“Is it that fragile?” asked Gamache.

“It’s not that sobriety is so fragile, it’s that addiction is so cunning. I’m here to guard her against her addiction. You can guard her rights.”

“You trust me to do that?”

“You I do. But your Inspector?” The Chief Justice nodded toward Beauvoir, who was just leaving the restrooms. “You need to watch him.”

“He’s a senior homicide officer,” said Gamache, his voice cold. “He needs no watching.”

“Every human needs watching.”

That sent chills down Gamache, and he wondered at this man who had such power. Who had so many gifts, and so many flaws. And he wondered, once again, who was Chief Justice Pineault’s sponsor. What was he whispering into that powerful ear?

“Monsieur Pineault has agreed to be Madame Coates’s AA friend and to help her in that role,” said the Chief Inspector as they took their seats.

Both Lacoste and Beauvoir looked surprised but didn’t say anything. It made their job easier.

“You lied to us,” Beauvoir repeated, and held the review up to Suzanne’s face. “Everyone quoted it wrong, didn’t they? Remembered it as being written about some guy no one could remember. But it wasn’t about a man, it was about a woman. You.”

“Suzanne,” warned Thierry, then looked at Gamache. “I’m sorry. I can’t just stop being a jurist.”

“You’ll have to try harder, monsieur,” said Gamache.

“Besides,” said Suzanne, “it’s a little late for caution, don’t you think?” She turned back to the Sûreté officers. “A Chief Justice, a Chief Inspector, and now it appears I’ve become the chief suspect.”

“Too many chiefs again?” asked Gamache with a rueful smile.

“Way too many for my comfort,” said Suzanne. She waved at the sheet of paper and snorted. “Goddamned review. Bad enough to be insulted like that, but then to have it misquoted. The least they could do is get the insult right.”

She seemed more amused than angry.

“It threw us off,” admitted Gamache, leaning his elbows on the table. “Everyone quoted it as ‘He’s a natural…’ when in fact the review says, ‘She’s a natural.…’”

“How’d you finally realize that?” asked Suzanne.

“Reading the AA book helped,” said Gamache, nodding toward the large book still on his desk. “It talks about the alcoholic as ‘he,’ but clearly many are ‘she’s.’ All the way through this investigation people did it. Where a gender was in question there was an assumption it was ‘he’ and not ‘she.’ I realized it’s a sort of automatic position. When people couldn’t remember who the review was written about they just said, ‘He’s a natural…,’ when in fact Lillian wrote it about you. Agent Lacoste here finally found it in the clippings morgue of La Presse.”

They all looked at the photocopied article. Something dragged up from a morgue. Buried in the files, but far from dead.

There was a picture of Suzanne, unmistakable even twenty-five years younger. She was grinning and standing in front of one of her paintings. Proud. Excited. Her dream finally coming true. Her art finally noticed. After all, the reviewer for La Presse was there.

Suzanne’s smile in the photograph was permanent, but in person it faded, to be replaced by something else. A look of almost whimsy.

“I remember that moment. The photographer asking me to stand beside one of my works and smile. But smiling wasn’t a problem. Had he asked me to stop, that might’ve been difficult. The vernissage was at a local café. Lots of people there. And then Lillian introduced herself. I’d seen her at shows but always avoided her. She seemed so sour. But this time she was really sweet. Asked me some questions and said she was going to do a review of my show in La Presse. That photograph,” she gestured toward the paper on the table, “was taken about thirty seconds after she said that.”

They all looked again.

It showed a young Suzanne with a smile that burst out of the old photograph. It lit up the room even now. A young woman, though, who didn’t yet realize the ground had just fallen out from underneath her. Who didn’t yet appreciate she’d been tossed into mid-air. Into thin air. By the sweet woman beside her, taking notes. Also smiling.

It was a chilling image. Like seeing a person just as the truck enters the frame. Milliseconds before the disaster.