A Trick of the Light

“Why drive an hour and a half to a party then ignore it and make straight for a quiet garden?” she asked, musing out loud.

Gamache waited. He could smell the dinner Reine-Marie had prepared. A favorite pasta dish of fresh asparagus, pine nuts and goat cheese on fettuccini. It was almost ready.

“She was in the garden to meet someone,” said Lacoste at last.

“I wonder,” said Gamache. He had his reading glasses on and was making notes. They’d already been through the facts, all the forensic findings, the preliminary autopsy results, the witness interviews. Now they were on to interpretation.

Entering the dim alley.

This was where a murderer was found. Or lost.

His daughter Annie appeared at the door with a plate in her hand.

Here? she mouthed.

He shook his head and smiled, putting up his hand to indicate just a minute more and he’d join Annie and her mother. When she left he turned his attention back to Agent Lacoste.

“And what did Inspector Beauvoir say?” asked Gamache.

“He asked similar questions. He wanted to know who I thought Lillian Dyson might be meeting.”

“That’s a good question. And what did you tell him?”

“I think she was meeting her killer,” said Isabelle Lacoste.

“Yes, but was it the person she expected to meet?” asked Gamache. “Or did she think she was meeting one person but someone else showed up?”

“You think she was lured there?”

“I think it’s a possibility,” said Gamache.

“So does Inspector Beauvoir. Lillian Dyson was ambitious. She’d just returned to Montréal and needed to jump-start her career. She knew Clara’s party would be packed with gallery owners and dealers. Where better to network? Inspector Beauvoir thinks she was tricked into going to the garden, by someone pretending to be a prominent gallery owner. Then murdered.”

Gamache smiled. Jean Guy was taking his role as mentor seriously. And doing a good job.

“And what do you think?” he asked.

“I think she would have to have a very good reason to show up at Clara Morrow’s party. By all accounts they hated each other. So what could lure Lillian Dyson there? What could overcome that sort of rancor?”

“It would have to be something she wanted very badly,” said Gamache. “And what would that be?”

“To meet a prominent gallery owner. Impress him with her art,” said Lacoste without hesitation.

“I wonder,” said the Chief, leaning over his desk and scanning the reports. “But how’d she find her way down to Three Pines?”

“Someone must have invited her to the party, perhaps lured her there with the promise of a private meeting with one of the big dealers,” said Lacoste, following the Chief’s train of thought.

“He’d have had to show her the way there,” Gamache remembered the useless maps on Lillian’s front seat, “then he killed her in Clara’s garden.”

“But why?” Now it was Agent Lacoste’s turn to ask. “Did the murderer know it was Clara’s garden, or would any place do? Could it just as easily have been Ruth’s or Myrna’s place?”

Gamache took a deep breath. “I don’t know. Why set up a rendez-vous at a party at all? If he was planning murder wouldn’t he choose someplace more private? And convenient? Why Three Pines and not Montréal?”

“Maybe Three Pines was convenient, Chief.”

“Maybe,” he agreed. It was something he’d been considering. The murder happened there because the murderer was there. Lived there.

“Besides,” said Lacoste, “the killer must’ve known there’d be plenty of suspects. The party was filled with people who knew Lillian Dyson from years ago, and hated her. And it’d be easy to melt back into the crowd.”

“But why the Morrows’ garden?” the Chief Inspector pressed. “Why not in the woods, or anywhere else? Was Clara’s garden chosen on purpose?”

No, thought Gamache, getting up from his chair, there was still too much hidden. The alley was still too dim. He liked tossing around ideas, theories, speculation. But he was careful not to run too far ahead of the facts. They were stumbling around now, in danger of getting themselves lost.

“Any progress on the motive?” he asked.

“Between Inspector Beauvoir in Montréal and me here we’ve interviewed just about everyone at the party and they all agree. Hardly anyone had any contact with Lillian since she’d been back, but anyone who knew her years ago, when she was a critic, hated and feared her.”

“So the motive was revenge?” asked Gamache.

“Either that or to stop her from doing even more damage now that she was back.”

“Good.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “There’s another possibility, though.”

He told her about his interview with Denis Fortin and the gallery owner’s certainty that a brilliant dead artist was more valuable than a brilliant living one.

Chief Inspector Gamache had no doubt that Lillian Dyson was both a loathsome person and a brilliant artist.

A brilliant dead artist. So much more sellable. And manageable. Her paintings could now make someone very rich indeed.