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.
“And I want you to,” she said, and meant. “But someone needs to find Peter Morrow, and you owe Clara. Dad owes her. You need to help.”
That was why she was happy. He now knew that happiness and kindness went together. There was not one without the other. For Jean-Guy it was a struggle. For Annie it seemed natural.
They curled toward each other and he held her fingers, intertwined in his, in the space between their naked bodies.
“You’re on partial leave,” said Annie. “Will Isabelle agree?”
Beauvoir was still unused to asking a Sûreté agent who was once his subordinate for permission. But he called Chief Inspector Lacoste first thing in the morning and she’d agreed. He could stay and help find Peter Morrow.
Isabelle Lacoste also owed Clara.
Annie had left. And now, at the edge of the day, Jean-Guy Beauvoir sat in the garden listening to the conversation and allowed himself a moment to drift from his head to his heart. He unconsciously held out his right hand, palm up, as though waiting for Annie’s hand.
“LaPorte?” asked Clara, straightening up after bending close to the map. “The Door? The place Frère Albert created?”
“Oui,” said Gamache. “I might be wrong, but that’s what I think.”
Like most people who admitted the possibility of being wrong, they knew he knew he probably wasn’t. But Clara was far from convinced. And Myrna didn’t seem any closer.
“Why would Peter go to LaPorte?” Myrna asked, sitting back down. She was disappointed. It was hardly a breakthrough.
“Why did Vincent Gilbert?” asked Jean-Guy, joining the conversation.
Myrna thought about that. “He’d had a successful career,” she said, remembering her conversations with the asshole saint. “But then his marriage fell apart.”
Gamache nodded. “Go on.”
Myrna thought some more.
“It wasn’t just the end of his marriage that did it,” she said, thinking out loud. “Lots of people get separated or divorced without having to hare off to a commune in France.”
Myrna lapsed into silence and thought about the missing piece. What would prompt a successful middle-aged man to give up his career and live in a community created by a humble priest, to serve children and adults with Down’s syndrome?
That was LaPorte’s vocation. It was to open a door for these people, after so many doors had been shut in their unusual faces. Frère Albert’s LaPorte offered not simply, though crucially, a place to live, but mostly it offered dignity. Equality. Belonging.