A Trick of the Light

“And she walked right up to him?” Peter asked. “She knew him?”

“Or he walked up to her,” said Gamache. “Either way, she wasn’t alarmed or frightened.”

“What was she doing back here?” Clara asked. “The barbeque was out there,” she waved beyond their home. “Everything was on the green. The food, the drinks, the music. The caterers set up all the tables and chairs out front.”

“But if people wanted to, they could walk into back yards?” Gamache asked, trying to get a picture of the event.

“Sure,” said Olivier. “If they wanted. There weren’t any fences or ropes up to stop them, but there was no need.”

“Well—” said Clara.

They turned to her.

“Well, I didn’t come back here last night, but I have at other parties. To kind of escape for a few minutes, you know?”

To their surprise, Gabri nodded. “I do the same thing, sometimes. Just to be quiet, get away from all the people.”

“Did you last night?” Gamache asked.

Gabri shook his head. “Too much to do. We had caterers, but you still have to supervise.”

“So it’s possible the dead woman came back here for a quiet moment,” said Gamache. “She might not have known it was your home.” He looked at Clara and Peter. “She just chose any place that was private, away from the crowds.”

They were silent then, for a moment. Imagining the woman in the bright red “look at me” dress. Slipping around the side of the old brick home. Away from the music, and fireworks, from the people looking at her.

To find a few moments of peace and quiet.

“She doesn’t seem the shy type,” said Gabri.

“Neither do you,” said Gamache with a small smile and surveyed the garden.

There was a problem. There were quite a few problems, actually, but the one that perplexed the Chief Inspector at the moment was that none of the four people with him now had seen the dead woman alive, at the party.

“Bonjour.”

Inspector Jean Guy Beauvoir approached. As he got closer Gabri broke into a smile and extended his hand.

“I’m beginning to think you’re bad luck,” said Gabri. “Every time you come to Three Pines there’s a body.”

“And I think you provide them just for the pleasure of my company,” said Beauvoir, warmly shaking Gabri’s hand, then accepting Olivier’s.

They’d seen each other the evening before, at the vernissage. At that time they’d been in Peter and Clara’s element. The gallery. But now they were in Beauvoir’s habitat. A crime scene.

Art scared him. But pin a dead body to the wall and he was fine. Or, in this case, drop it into a garden. This he understood. It was simple. Always so simple.

Someone had hated the victim enough to kill her.

His job was to find that person and lock him up.

There was nothing subjective about it. No question of good and bad. It wasn’t an issue of perspective or nuance. No shading. Nothing to understand. It just was.

Collect the facts. Put them in the right order. Find the killer.

Of course, while it was simple it wasn’t always easy.

But he’d take a murder over a vernissage any day.

Though, like everyone else here, he suspected in this case the murder and the vernissage were one and the same. Inter-locked.

The thought dismayed him.

“Here’re the pictures you asked for.” Beauvoir handed the Chief Inspector a photograph. Gamache studied them.

“Merci. C’est parfait.” He looked up at the four people watching him. “I’d like you all to look at these photographs of the dead woman.”

“But we’ve already seen her,” said Gabri.

“I wonder if that’s true. When I asked if you’d seen her at the party you all said she’d be hard to miss in her red dress. I thought the same thing. When I tried to remember if I’d seen her at your vernissage yesterday, Clara, what I was really doing was scouring my memory for a woman in bright red. I was focusing on the dress, not the woman.”

“So?” asked Gabri.

“So,” said Gamache. “Suppose the red dress was recent. She might have been at the vernissage, but wearing something more conservative. She might have even been here—”

“And changed into the red dress mid-party?” asked Peter, incredulous. “Why would someone do that?”

“Why would someone kill her?” asked Gamache. “Why would a perfect stranger be at the party? There’re all sorts of questions, and I’m not saying this is the answer, but it is a possibility. That you were all so impressed by the dress you didn’t really concentrate on her face.”

He held up a photograph.

“This is what she looks like.”

He handed it to Clara first. The woman’s eyes were now closed. She looked peaceful, if a little flaccid. Even in sleep there’s some life in a face. This was an empty face. Blank. No more thoughts, or feelings.

Clara shook her head and passed the picture to Peter. Around the circle of friends the photo circulated, to the same reaction.

Nothing.

“The coroner’s ready to move the body,” said Beauvoir.

Gamache nodded and placed the photo in his pocket. Beauvoir and Lacoste and the others would have their own copies, he knew. Excusing themselves they walked back to the body.