Brutal Telling

I have a question for you,” said Gamache as they wandered back into the Brunel living room. Jerome looked up briefly then went back to trying to tease some sense from the cryptic letters.

“Ask away.”

“Denis Fortin—”

“Of the Galerie Fortin?” the Superintendent interrupted.

Gamache nodded. “He was visiting Three Pines yesterday and saw one of the carvings. He said it wasn’t worth anything.”

Thérèse Brunel paused. “I’m not surprised. He’s a respected art dealer. Quite remarkable at spotting new talent. But his specialty isn’t sculpture, though he handles some very prominent sculptors.”

“But even I could see the carvings are remarkable. Why couldn’t he?”

“What’re you suggesting, Armand? That he lied?”

“Is it possible?”

Thérèse considered. “I suppose. I always find it slightly amusing, and sometimes useful, the general perception of the art world. People on the outside seem to think it’s made up of arrogant, crazed artists, numbskull buyers and gallery owners who bring the two together. In fact it’s a business, and anyone who doesn’t understand that and appreciate it gets buried. In some cases hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake. But even bigger than the piles of cash are the egos. Put immense wealth and even larger egos together and you have a volatile mix. It’s a brutal, often ugly, often violent world.”

Gamache thought about Clara and wondered if she realized that. Wondered if she knew what was waiting for her, beyond the pale.

“But not everyone’s like that, surely,” he said.

“No. But at that level,” she nodded to the carvings on the table by her husband, “they are. One man’s dead. It’s possible as we look closer others have been killed.”

“Over these carvings?” Gamache picked up the ship.

“Over the money.”

Gamache peered at the sculpture. He knew that not everyone was motivated solely by money. There were other currencies. Jealousy, rage, revenge. He looked not at the passengers sailing into a happy future, but at the one looking back. To where they’d been. With terror.

“I do have some good news for you, Armand.”

Gamache lowered the ship and looked at the Superintendent.

“I’ve found your ‘woo.’ ”

THIRTY

“There it is.” Thérèse Brunel pointed.

They’d driven into downtown Montreal and now the Superintendent was pointing at a building. Gamache slowed the car and immediately provoked honking. In Quebec it was almost a capital crime to slow down. He didn’t speed up, ignored the honking, and tried to see what she was pointing at. It was an art gallery. Heffel’s. And outside was a bronze sculpture. But the car had drifted past before he got a good look. He spent the next twenty minutes trying to find a parking spot.

“Can’t you just double-park?” asked Superintendent Brunel.

“If we want to be slaughtered, yes.”

She harrumphed, but didn’t disagree. Finally they parked and walked back along Sherbrooke Street until they were in front of Heffel’s Art Gallery, staring at a bronze sculpture Gamache had seen before but never stopped to look at.

His cell phone vibrated. “Pardon,” he said to the Superintendent, and answered it.

“It’s Clara. I’m wondering when you might be ready.”

“In just a few minutes. Are you all right?” She’d sounded shaky, upset.

“I’m just fine. Where can I meet you?”

“I’m on Sherbrooke, just outside Heffel’s Gallery.”

“I know it. I can be there in a few minutes. Is that okay?” She sounded keen, even anxious, to leave.

“Perfect. I’ll be here.”

He put the phone away and went back to the sculpture. Silently he walked around it while Thérèse Brunel watched, a look of some amusement on her face.

What he saw was an almost life-sized bronze of a frumpy middle-aged woman standing beside a horse, a dog at her side and a monkey on the horse’s back. When he arrived back at Superintendent Brunel he stopped.

“This is ‘woo’?”

“No, this is Emily Carr. It’s by Joe Fafard and is called Emily and Friends.”

Gamache smiled then and shook his head. Of course it was. Now he could see it. The woman, matronly, squat, ugly, had been one of Canada’s most remarkable artists. Gifted and visionary, she’d painted mostly in the early 1900s and was now long dead. But her art only grew in significance and influence.

He looked more closely at the bronze woman. She was younger here than the images he’d seen of her in grainy old black-and-white photos. They almost always showed a masculine woman, alone. In a forest. And not smiling, not happy.

This woman was happy. Perhaps it was the conceit of the sculptor.

“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” Superintendent Brunel said. “Normally Emily Carr looks gruesome. I think it’s brilliant to show her happy, as she apparently only was around her animals. It was people she hated.”

“You said you’d found ‘woo.’ Where?”

He was disappointed and far from convinced Superintendent Brunel was right. How could a long dead painter from across the continent have anything to do with the case?

Thérèse Brunel walked up to the sculpture and placed one manicured hand on the monkey.

“This is Woo. Emily Carr’s constant companion.”