A Trick of the Light

Beauvoir hesitated. He’d given the Chief the opening, and Gamache had taken it. And now looked at him. Waiting for an answer. And Beauvoir almost told him. Almost told the Chief everything. Longed to open his heart and expose it to this man. As he’d told Armand Gamache about everything else in his life. About his unhappiness with Enid. They’d talked about that, about his own family, about what he wanted, and what he didn’t want.

Jean Guy Beauvoir trusted Gamache with his life.

He opened his mouth, the words hovering there, just at the opening. As though a stone had rolled back and these miraculous words were about to emerge. Into the daylight.

I love your daughter. I love Annie.

Beside him Chief Inspector Gamache waited, as though he had all the time in the world. As though nothing could be more important than Beauvoir’s personal life.

The city, with its invisible cross, got bigger and bigger. And then they were over the bridge.

“I haven’t met anyone,” said Beauvoir. “But I want to be ready. I can’t be married. It wouldn’t have been fair to Enid.”

Gamache was quiet for a moment. “Nor would it be fair to your lover’s husband.”

It wasn’t a rebuke. Wasn’t even a warning. And Beauvoir knew then if Chief Inspector Gamache had suspected he’d have said something. He’d not play games with Beauvoir. The way Beauvoir was with Gamache.

No, this wasn’t a game. Nor was it a secret, really. It was just a feeling. Unfulfilled. Not acted upon.

I love your daughter, sir.

But those words were swallowed too. Returned to the dark to join all the other unsaid things.

*   *   *

They found the apartment block in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce quartier of Montréal. Squat and gray, it might have been designed by Soviet architects in the 1960s.

The grass had been peed white by dogs, and lumps of poop sat on it. The flower beds were overgrown with strangled bushes and weeds. The concrete walk to the front door was cracked and heaved.

Inside, it smelled of urine and resonated with the distant echoes of doors slamming and people shouting at each other.

Monsieur and Madame Dyson lived on the top floor. The handrail on the concrete stairs was sticky and Beauvoir quickly took his hand off of it.

Up they walked. Three flights. Not pausing for breath but not racing either. They took measured steps. Once at the top they found the door to the Dyson apartment.

Chief Inspector Gamache raised his hand, and paused.

To give the Dysons one more second of peace before shattering their lives? Or to give himself one more moment before facing them?

Rap. Rap.

It opened a crack, a security chain across a fearful face.

“Oui?”

“Madame Dyson? My name is Armand Gamache. I’m with the Sûreté du Québec.” He already had his ID out and now showed it to her. Her eyes dropped to it, then back up to the Chief’s face. “This is my colleague Inspector Beauvoir. May we speak with you?”

The thin face was obviously relieved. How many times had she opened the door a crack, to see kids taunting her? To see the landlord demanding rent? To see unkindness take human form?

But not this time. These men were with the Sûreté. They wouldn’t hurt her. She was of a generation who still believed that. It was written all over her worn face.

The door closed, the chain was lifted and the door swung open.

She was tiny. And in an armchair sat a man who looked like a puppet. Small, stiff, sunken. He struggled to get up, but Gamache walked swiftly over to him.

“No, please, Monsieur Dyson. Je vous en prie. Stay seated.”

They shook hands and he reintroduced himself, speaking slowly, clearly, more loudly than normal.

“Tea?” Madame Dyson asked.

Oh, no no no, thought Beauvoir. The place smelled of liniment and slightly of urine.

“Yes, please. How kind of you. May I help?” Gamache went with her into the kitchen, leaving Beauvoir alone with the puppet. He tried to make small-talk but ran out after commenting on the weather.

“Nice place,” he finally said and was treated to Monsieur Dyson looking at him as though he was an idiot.

Beauvoir scanned the walls. There was a crucifix above the dining table, and a smiling Jesus surrounded by light. But the rest of the walls were taken up with photographs of one person. Their daughter Lillian. Her life radiated out from the smiling Jesus. Her baby pictures closest to Him, then she got older and older as the pictures wrapped around the walls. Sometimes alone, sometimes with others. The parents too aged, from a young, beaming couple holding their first born, their only born, in front of a neat, compact home. To first Christmas, to gooey birthdays.

Beauvoir scanned the walls for a photo of Lillian and Clara then realized if there had been one it would have been taken down long ago.

There were pictures of a gap-toothed little girl with gleaming orange hair holding a huge stuffed dog, and a little later standing beside a bike with a big bow. Toys, gifts, presents. Everything a little girl could want.