Finally they arrived at their destination.
Gamache pulled softly on the reins and felt a slight shudder as Beauvoir’s horse head-butted his mount.
Both Beauvoir and his horse had fallen into a stupor. But now they woke up.
“Why did we stop?” Beauvoir and his horse looked around.
Gamache was staring at a tree as though expecting the trunk to swing open and admit them.
* * *
Oomph. Clara landed in one of the Adirondack chairs in her garden and slid to the back, until she hit the pillow. On one wide armrest was the gin and tonic she’d been dreaming of since getting in Myrna’s sweltering car for the drive home from Montréal. On the other armrest was a bowl of chips.
She was happy to be home.
“You first,” she said, feeling her body relax into the pillow.
Reine-Marie, Armand, Jean-Guy, and Myrna were in her back garden, exchanging information.
“I think I know where Peter went when he left here,” said Gamache.
“We already know,” said Clara. She gestured toward the map Gamache was spreading on the table. “Paris.”
“Yes. Paris, Florence, Venice,” said the Chief, looking at Clara over his reading glasses. “It all seemed to make sense, except for one obvious question.”
“Dumfries,” said Reine-Marie.
Her husband nodded. “Why go to Dumfries? I got distracted by that big question, by the forest, and failed to look more closely at one very odd tree. A detail.”
“Why go all the way to Paris and stay in the 15th arrondissement?” asked Clara, sitting up in her chair again.
“Oui. Exactly.” His deep brown eyes glowed. It was unmistakable. Not that he was enjoying this, but that he was good at it. He was like a miner, carrying a torch. Illuminating dark passages. Digging deep, often dangerously deep. To get at what was buried there.
Reine-Marie recognized that gleam. And heard, again, the beating of the moth’s wings.
It was all she could do not to stand up. To look at her watch. To suggest to Armand that they had to go. Had to leave. Had to get back to their cheerful home. Where they belonged. Where they could garden, and read, sip lemonade and play bridge. And if they died, it would be in bed.
Reine-Marie shifted in her seat and cleared her throat.
Armand looked at her.
“Go on,” she said. He held her gaze and when she smiled, he nodded and turned back to Clara.
“Why the 15th?” he said. “This afternoon Vincent Gilbert gave us the answer.”
“You visited the asshole saint?” asked Myrna. It was said without rancor or judgment. They’d gotten so used to calling him that they’d almost forgotten his real name and occupation. Even Vincent Gilbert answered to that name, though he occasionally corrected them by saying, “It’s Dr. Asshole Saint to you.”
He’d begun as a successful and celebrated physician. He’d ended up a recluse in a one-room log cabin. A lot had happened in between, but it all began with a visit to Paris’s 15th arrondissement.
“I think Gilbert and Peter were drawn to the same place,” said Gamache. “Here.”
He pointed to the dirty fingerprint on the map. It sat over the spot like a cloud.
They all leaned in, except Jean-Guy.
He knew what Gamache was pointing at.
LaPorte. The Door.
As the others moved toward the map, Jean-Guy sat in the garden and closed his eyes and breathed in the fresh evening air. And missed Annie. She’d returned to her job in Montréal that morning. He’d been prepared to return with her, but as they lay in bed, Annie had suggested he stay.
“Find Peter,” she’d said. “You want to, and Dad needs your help.”
“I don’t think he does.”
She’d smiled, and traced his arm, from shoulder to elbow, with her finger.
For most of his adult life, Jean-Guy Beauvoir had dated bodies. He’d married Enid for her breasts, her legs, her delicate face. Her ability to make his friends weak at the knees.
But when his own body had been battered and bruised and the life almost taken from it, only then did Jean-Guy discover how very attractive a heart and mind could be.
A coy smile could capture him, but it was finally a hearty laugh that had freed him.
No knees would buckle for Annie Gamache. No eyes would follow her substantial body. No wolf calls for her pretty plain face. But she was by far the most attractive woman in any room.
Late into his thirties, with a broken body and a shattered spirit, Jean-Guy Beauvoir had been seduced by happiness.
“I want to go back with you,” he said, and meant.