“You might. It’s one of those tricks of fate. Not all asbestos miners developed lung disease. Some people exposed only incidentally did.”
“How much would you have to inhale?” asked Beauvoir.
“Again, it depends. Sorry to be so vague, but my memory is that some miners inhaled it all their lives and were fine, other people inhaled it once and died. It just depended on the person, the fibers.”
“But theoretically it could be very little,” said Beauvoir. “And it could be with only one exposure.”
“Could be,” said Julie, “but really, that would have to be unbelievably unlucky. But it could happen.”
“If asbestos was found in the insulation of an art gallery and was removed, could some of it get onto the canvases?” Gamache asked.
“I’d expect the people removing it would’ve cleared the place. Asbestos could only be removed by people trained to do it. It wasn’t just ripped out.”
“Suppose they hadn’t taken everything down?” asked Gamache.
Julie studied the large man in front of her.
“If you want clear answers, you’ll have to ask clear questions.”
Gamache raised his brows slightly and smiled. “Yes, I can see how that would help. The container the asbestos was found in probably held a rolled-up painting. Or a blank canvas. One or the other. Could the asbestos have been on the canvas and fallen off?”
Julie thought about that for a moment. “A canvas would actually be a pretty good vehicle for asbestos. It has a fine weave. Asbestos fibers could cling to it.”
“And if it was painted? Would the asbestos stick to oil paint?” Clara asked.
“Not as much. But if it was a blank canvas…”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m not an artist—”
“I am,” said Clara.
Julie turned to her. “If you got a rolled-up blank canvas, what would you do?”
“I’d unroll and stretch it. Tack it to a wooden frame, so I could paint it.”
Julie was nodding. “You’d handle it.”
“Of course.”
Clara’s eyes widened. “And that would dislodge the asbestos. Like dust. It would float in the air.”
Julie was nodding. “And because you were handling it, you’d be close enough to breathe it in. But there’s another thing.”
“The brush strokes,” said Clara, seeing where the young teacher was going.
“Exactly. As you brush on the paint, you’d be brushing off the asbestos dust. It would be the perfect way to get it into the air.”
“And again,” said Gamache, “the artist would be close enough to inhale.”
“He’d be less than an arm’s length away,” Julie confirmed.
They considered that for a moment.
“But suppose the rolled-up canvas was already painted,” said Clara. “Could the asbestos be applied then?”
“Not as effectively, as I said. It would slide right off. It needs something to stick onto.”
“Like the back of the canvas,” said Myrna, and they looked at her. “If the front was painted, the back would still be just raw material, right? Something for the asbestos to”—Myrna turned to Julie—“in your words, ‘stick onto.’”
Julie nodded. “It would work. When the painting was unrolled, the asbestos would get into the air.”
“But it gets worse,” said Clara. “The painting wouldn’t just be unrolled. It would have to be tacked onto a frame. I’ve done it lots of times. Bought a cheap old oil painting at a flea market that wasn’t framed. Just rolled up. You have to staple it to a wooden frame.”
“And if the back was coated with asbestos dust?” asked Myrna.
“It would get everywhere,” said Julie. “On the hands, the clothing. In the air.”
“To be inhaled,” said Myrna.
Julie was looking at them, her exuberance muted by a dawning suspicion.
“How long would it take someone to get sick?” asked Myrna.
“Depends on the exposure. Like I said, it might never happen,” said Julie, guarded now. “But mostly it took years, decades, for asbestos to become lethal.”
She looked at their grim faces. “What’s all this about? You’re not planning to do it, are you?”
“And if we were?” asked Gamache.
“You’d be murderers.” She looked pale and Gamache hurried to reassure her.
They weren’t planning murder. Just the opposite.
“You’re trying to stop a murder?” she asked, incredulous. Looking from face to face and back to Gamache. “But if it’s asbestos, you’re probably too late. The person would’ve already been murdered. They just haven’t died yet.”