“Really, what were you thinking?” Sandra asked, her plump lips pursing as she saw the cards Gamache laid down.
“Oui, Armand.” Reine-Marie smiled. “Six no trumps with that hand? What were you thinking?”
Gamache rose and bowed slightly. “My fault entirely.” He caught his wife’s eye, his own deep brown eyes full of amusement.
Being dummy had its advantages. He stretched his legs, sipped his cognac and walked the room. It was growing hotter. Generally a Quebec evening cooled off, but not this night. He could feel the humidity closing in, and he loosened his collar and tie.
“Very bold,” said Julia, coming up beside him as he stared again at the Krieghoff. “Are you disrobing?”
“I’m afraid I’ve humiliated myself enough for one evening.” He nodded to the table where the three bridge players were engrossed.
He leaned in and sniffed the roses on the mantelpiece.
“Lovely, aren’t they? Everything here is.” She sounded wistful, as though she was missing it already. Then he remembered Spot and thought maybe for the Finneys this was their last pleasant evening.
“Paradise lost,” he murmured.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing, just a thought.”
“You were wondering whether it’s better to reign in hell than serve in heaven?” Julia asked, smiling. He laughed. Like her mother, she didn’t miss much. “Because, you know, I have the answer to that. This is the Eleanor rose,” she said with surprise, pointing to a bright pink bloom in the bouquet. “Imagine that.”
“Someone mentioned it earlier this evening,” Gamache remembered.
“Thomas.”
“That’s right. He wanted to know if you’d found one in the garden.”
“It’s our little joke. It’s named after Eleanor Roosevelt, you know.”
“I didn’t.”
“Hmm,” said Julia, contemplating the rose and nodding. “She said she’d been flattered at first until she’d read the description in the catalogue. Eleanor Roosevelt rose: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.”
They laughed and Gamache admired the rose and the quote, though he wondered why it was a family joke directed at Julia.
“More coffee?”
Julia startled.
Pierre stood at the door with a silver coffee pot. His question was said to the room in general, but he was looking at Julia and blushing slightly. Across the room Marianna mumbled, “Here we go.” Every time the maître d’ was in the same room as Julia he blushed. She knew the signs. She’d lived with them her whole life. Marianna was the fun girl-next-door. The one to grope and kiss in the car. But Julia was the one they all wanted to marry, even the maître d’.
Now Marianna watched her sister and felt blood rushing to her face, but for a whole different reason. She watched Pierre pour the coffee and imagined the huge, framed Krieghoff sliding off the wall and smashing Julia in the head.
“Look what you’ve done to me, partner,” moaned Sandra, as Thomas took trick after trick. Finally they pushed back from the table and Thomas joined Gamache, who was looking at the other paintings in the room.
“That’s a Brigite Normandin, isn’t it?” Thomas asked.
“It is. Fantastic. Very bold, very modern. Compliments the Molinari and the Riopelle. And yet they all work with the traditional Krieghoff.”
“You know your art,” said Thomas, slightly surprised.
“I love Quebec history,” said Gamache, nodding to the old scene.
“But that doesn’t explain the others, does it?”
“Are you testing me, monsieur?” Gamache decided to push a little.
“Perhaps,” Thomas admitted. “It’s rare to find an autodidact.”
“In captivity, anyway,” said Gamache and Thomas laughed. The painting they were staring at was muted, with lines of delicately shaded beiges.
“Feels like a desert,” said Gamache. “Desolate.”
“Ah, but that’s a misconception,” said Thomas.
“Here he goes,” said Marianna.
“Not that plant story,” said Julia, turning to Sandra. “Is he still telling that?”
“Once a day, like Old Faithful. Stand back.”
“Well, time for bed,” said Madame Finney. Her husband unfolded himself from the sofa and the elderly couple left.
“Things aren’t as they seem,” said Thomas, and Gamache looked at him, surprised. “In the desert, I mean. It looks desolate but it’s actually teeming with life. You just don’t see it. It hides, for fear of being eaten. There’s one plant in the South African desert called a stone plant. Can you guess how it survives?”