The Long Way Home(112)

By morning they were well up the coast. Leaving roads and towns and most of the trees behind. The passengers awoke to a gray sky and a shoreline made of rocks worn smooth by waves.

“Strange place,” said Myrna, joining Armand on deck and handing him a strong, sweet tea.

They leaned on the railing. There was a chill in the air that belied the summer season. It was as though they’d left the calendar behind. Time had its own rules here.

Gamache sipped his tea. It was a brew he associated with the Lower North Shore. Where pots sat on woodstoves all day, and arthritic hands added more hot water and dropped more bags in, until it was like stew.

He’d drunk gallons of the stuff as he’d sat in kitchens in the remote fishing villages along this coastline.

“You’ve been here before, haven’t you?” she asked.

“A few times.”

“Investigations?”

“Yes. Always difficult in a closed community. These people are proud, self-reliant. They didn’t even have running water or electricity until recently. They never asked for help from the government. Not a single person took unemployment, until recently. It would never occur to them to take what they considered a handout. They have their own laws and rules and code of conduct.”

“You make it sound like the Wild West.”

Gamache smiled. “I suppose it is, a bit. But not so wild really. These are fishermen. They’re a different breed. They get enough ‘wild’ from the sea. When they get home they want peace. There’s a deep civility about the people here.”

“And yet they still kill.”

“Sometimes. They’re human.” He looked at Myrna. “Do you know what Jacques Cartier called this stretch of coast?”

“Cartier the explorer?”

“Yes, back in the early fifteen hundreds. When he first saw this place he called it ‘the land God gave to Cain.’”

Myrna took that in as she watched the shoreline, where the odd, malformed trees lived. But nothing else.

“Cain. The first murderer,” said Myrna.

“A coast so forbidding, so hostile it was fit only for the damned,” said Gamache. “And yet…”

“Yes?”

He gave a small lopsided smile and stared at the far shore. “And yet I find it just about the most beautiful place on earth. I wonder what that says about me.”

“Maybe you’re drawn to the damned,” said Myrna.

“Maybe that’s why I’ve spent my life looking for murderers.”

“Have you ever been to Tabaquen?” she asked.

“Once. We arrested an old trapper for murder. He’d never been off the coast before. Never been off his trapline. He died in prison before the trial.”

“Poor man,” said Myrna. And Gamache nodded agreement.

He stared at the almost unnaturally smooth rocks gliding out of the water in great sheets.

“There’re those who seem to turn to the sea, always changing, always adapting. But never settling down. And those who turn to rocks and stones.” He waved toward the shoreline. “Solid but stuck.”

He looked at Myrna and smiled. “Sorry. I suspect that sounds romantic.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Perhaps, Myrna thought, in Montréal, or Toronto, or New York, or London it would. But hanging over the rail, looking at the cold gray water, the hard gray stones, the thick gray clouds, it sounded about right.

She watched Armand. Was he of the sea or the stone? Was she?

* * *

Clara walked along the narrow corridor, adjusting her step to the growing and unpredictable swell. She was discovering that she was good on boats. As was Myrna.

Chartrand, on the other hand, was not.

He’d stayed in the Admiral’s Suite all morning. Clara had taken him some dry toast and tea. It was the first time she’d seen their “suite,” and it had shocked her. She’d been a little suspicious of Chartrand’s absence, wondering if he was faking it. But seeing the crummy, smelly, uncomfortable cabin, she knew only a man on his deathbed would choose to spend time there.

Chartrand had roused, seen her, and through bleary eyes had thanked her.

“You should go,” he said, trying to get up on an elbow. “I don’t want you seeing me like this.”

“And if I was sick?” she asked.

“I’d want to look after you,” he said, and his pale green pallor developed an orangish hue. Had Marcel Chartrand’s face been a color wheel, he’d have failed the exam.

They sat on the narrow bed and she’d gotten a cool cloth and a Gravol.

After a few minutes the drug kicked in and Clara could see his eyelids grow heavy, his breathing grow deeper, his skin less waxy.