She’d joined the Surete after a distinguished career as the chief curator at the Musee des Beaux Arts in Montreal. A celebrated art historian and advocate, she’d been consulted by the Surete on the appearance of a mysterious painting. Not the disappearance, mind, but the sudden appearance of one.
In that instance, in that crime, she’d discovered a love of puzzles. After helping on a few cases she’d realized it was what she really wanted to do, was meant to do.
So she’d taken herself off to a quite astonished recruiting officer and signed up.
That had been twelve years ago. And now she was one of the senior officers in the Surete, outstripping her teacher and mentor. But only, they both knew, because he’d chosen, and been given, a different path.
“How can I help, Armand?” she asked, indicating one of their balcony chairs with an elegant, slender hand.
“Shall I leave you?” Jerome asked, struggling out of his seat.
“No, no,” Gamache waved him down, “please stay if you’d like.”
Jerome always liked. A retired emergency room doctor, he’d loved puzzles all his life and was more than amused that his wife, always gently poking fun at his endless ciphers, was now neck deep in puzzles herself. Of a more serious nature, to be sure.
Chief Inspector Gamache put his Perrier down and brought the dossier out of his satchel. “I’d like you to look at these and tell me what you think.”
Superintendent Brunel spread the photographs on the wrought iron table, using their glasses and food platter to pin them down against the slight breeze.
The men waited quietly as she studied them. She took her time. Cars drove by. Across the way, in the park, children kicked around a soccer ball and played on the swings.
Armand Gamache sipped his sparkling water, stirring the bubbly wedge of lime with his finger, and watched as she examined the paintings from Lillian Dyson’s apartment. Therese looked stern, a seasoned investigator handed an element in a murder case. Her eyes darted here and there, scanning the paintings. And then they slowed and rested first on one image then another. She moved the paintings about on the table, tilting her coiffured head to the side.
Her eyes never softened, but her expression did, as she began to lose herself in the paintings and the puzzle.
Armand hadn’t told her anything about them. About who’d done them, about what he wanted to know. He’d given her no information, except that they were from a murder investigation.
He wanted her to form her own opinion, unsullied by his questions or comments.
The Chief Inspector had taught her at the academy that a crime scene wasn’t simply on the ground. It was in people’s heads. Their memories and perceptions. Their feelings. And you don’t want to contaminate those with leading questions.
Finally she leaned away from the table and looked up, first as always at Jerome, then to Gamache.
“Well, Superintendent?”
“Well, Chief Inspector, I can tell you I’ve never seen these works or this artist before. The style is singular. Like nothing else out there. Deceptively simple. Not primitive, but not self-conscious either. They’re beautiful.”
“Would they be valuable?”
“Now there’s a question.” She considered the images again. “Beautiful isn’t in fashion. Edgy, dark, stark, cynical, that’s what galleries and curators want. They seem to think they’re more complex, more challenging, but I can tell you, they’re not. Light is every bit as challenging as dark. We can discover a great deal about ourselves by looking at beauty.”
“And what do these,” Gamache indicated the paintings on the table, “tell you?”
“About myself?” she asked with a smile.
“If you’d like, but I was thinking more about the artist.”
“Who is he, Armand?”
He hesitated. “I’ll tell you in a moment, but I’d like to hear what you think.”
“Whoever painted these is a wonderful artist. Not, I think, a young artist. There’s too much nuance. As I said, they’re deceptively simple, but if you look closely they’re made up of grace notes. Like here.” She pointed to where a road swept around a building, like a river around a rock. “That slight play of light. And over here, in the distance, where sky and building and road all meet and become difficult to distinguish.”
Therese looked at the paintings, almost wistfully. “They’re magnificent. I’d like to meet the artist.” She looked into Gamache’s eyes and held them for a moment longer than necessary. “But I suspect I won’t. He’s dead, isn’t he? He’s the victim?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Besides the fact you’re the head of homicide?” She smiled and beside her Jerome gave a harrumph of amusement. “Because for you to bring these to me the artist would have to be either a suspect or the victim, and whoever painted these would not kill.”
“Why not?”
“Artists tend to paint what they know. A painting is a feeling. The best artists reveal themselves in their works,” said Superintendent Brunel, glancing again at the art. “Whoever painted this was content. Not, perhaps, perfect, but a content man.”
“Or woman,” said the Chief Inspector. “And you’re right, she’s dead.”
He told them about Lillian Dyson, her life and her death.
