The Long Way Home(125)

“I don’t know,” said Peter, “he might have gotten close enough.”

“Think,” said Gamache, his voice firm, not bullying, but commanding.

Peter seemed to steady himself. “It was all so chaotic. We were yelling at each other. Demanding to know what had happened. He wanted to move the pillow, but I stopped him. I knew enough to know nothing should be touched.”

“But was Vachon close enough to take the knife?” Beauvoir asked.

“Yes, I guess so.” Peter was getting upset now, belligerent, feeling badgered. “But I didn’t see a knife and I didn’t see him take one. He seemed as shocked and upset as me. You don’t think Luc did it?”

Gamache looked at his watch. “It’s almost noon.”

But that meant nothing to Peter.

“When did you send Vachon to call?” asked Beauvoir.

“I got here about seven, as usual. Luc came a few minutes later.”

“Five hours.” Beauvoir looked at Gamache.

“Where would Vachon have gone to call?” Gamache asked. “Tabaquen?”

“Probably. Phone service is sketchy here, but the harbormaster generally has a good line. Needs it in case there’s an emergency on the water.”

“As far as we know, Luc Vachon never made that call,” said Gamache. “Either because he didn’t want to, or because he couldn’t.”

“If Luc did it, why’d he come back?” Peter demanded, his brain kicking in.

“Maybe he left the knife behind,” Gamache suggested. “Maybe he needed to make sure the professor was really dead. Maybe whoever did it sent him back, to retrieve the knife or other evidence.”

“‘Whoever did it’?” Peter asked. “Who do you mean?”

Gamache was looking at him. Not with the eyes of Armand, his friend. But the sharp, assessing, unrelenting gaze of the head of homicide.

“Me? You think I killed him? But why?”

“Maybe the Muse told you to do it,” Gamache suggested.

“The Muse? What’re you talking about?”

Gamache was still staring at him and Peter’s eyes widened.

“You think I’ve gone mad, don’t you? That this place has driven me insane.”

“Not just the place,” said Gamache. “But the company. Professor Norman lectured on the tenth muse. Isn’t that why you came here? To find him. And her?”

Peter flushed, either with rage or embarrassment at being caught out.

“Maybe it was all too much for you, Peter. You were lost, desperate to find a direction. Maybe the combination of Norman’s beliefs and this place was too much.” Gamache looked out at the vast, open, empty terrain. Sky and rock and water. “It would be easy to lose touch with reality.”

“And commit murder? I’m not the one who’s lost touch with reality, Armand. Yes, I can see how it might appear that I could’ve done it. And yes, Luc might’ve done it. But aren’t you forgetting something, or someone?”

“No,” said Gamache.

He wasn’t forgetting that someone was missing, besides Luc Vachon.

“Was Professor Norman surprised when Massey arrived?” Beauvoir asked.

“I think Professor Norman was beyond being surprised by anything,” said Peter. “He actually seemed pleased to see him.”

“And you left the two of them here, alone, last night,” said Beauvoir.

Peter nodded. Gamache and Beauvoir walked back into the cabin, and over to the bed.

Two young professors had met decades ago. Met and clashed. And then met again as old men. In the land God gave to Cain. They’d sat here. One on the chair. One on the bed.

And in the morning, one was dead. And one was missing.

Gamache looked down at the peaceful, almost joyous, face. And at the long, deep cut, from artery to vein.

Whoever did this had left nothing to chance.

He wanted to make sure Professor Norman, No Man, was dead.

And he was.





THIRTY-NINE

Armand Gamache didn’t know who had drawn the knife across Norman’s neck.

Professor Massey? Luc Vachon? Or Peter Morrow.

One of them had.

Gamache was sure of only one thing. He’d been wrong. Way off.

It wasn’t until that very morning, on the ship, in the pastel light of the new day, that he began to see the truth.

At about the same time Peter Morrow was staring down at this bed, he was staring down at Peter’s lip painting.

And once more Gamache had turned it around.

Changed the way he was looking at it.

That was what he’d needed to do with this case. Turn it around. They’d presumed so many things. Made so many conclusions fit the facts.

But they actually had it upside down.

If Professor Massey had painted that wonderful picture at the back of his studio, how had Norman, so far away, infected it with asbestos?