The Long Way Home(57)
This was, truth be told, the third time that night Gamache had gotten up to check his emails. The first two without real hope, but this time there’d been a chance.
He returned to bed and fell back into a restless sleep.
An hour later he got up again. As he crept down the stairs he saw a rectangle of light coming from the study. He didn’t think he’d left a lamp on and smiled as he stood in the door frame.
“Anything?”
“Tabarnac!” Beauvoir started. “You scared the shit out of me. Sir.”
“I hope not.” Gamache went in and looked over Jean-Guy’s shoulder. “Porn?”
“Not unless waiting ages for the damned dial-up to connect turns you on.”
“I remember when—” Gamache started and was rewarded with a surly look from Jean-Guy.
Finally the emails started downloading.
“Rien,” said Beauvoir, pushing away from the desk. “Nothing.”
The two men walked into the living room.
“You think that constable will recognize something from the paintings?” Beauvoir asked, sitting on the arm of the sofa. Gamache dropped into an armchair, crossed his legs and adjusted his dressing gown.
“Frankly, I’m hoping he doesn’t just delete my messages.”
“You really think those paintings are landscapes?” Beauvoir seemed less than convinced.
“I think it’s a possibility.”
Maybe, thought Gamache, Peter’s paintings really were markers, recording where he was. His inuksuit.
“If those’re landscapes, Scotland must be a pretty weird place.”
Gamache laughed. “I didn’t say he was good at it.”
“No kidding.”
“It might be like the Impressionists. They painted nature, but it was like they painted with their feelings.”
“Then he couldn’t have liked Scotland much.” Beauvoir slid off the arm of the sofa and landed on the seat. “But if he was so interested in experimenting with landscapes, couldn’t he have done it in Paris or Venice? Why Scotland?”
“And why Dumfries?” said Gamache. He hauled himself up. “Back to bed.”
But at that moment there was a ping.
They looked at each other. An email had arrived.
* * *
Reine-Marie felt the bed beside her. It was cool. She sat up and looked out the window. The sun wasn’t yet up. But Armand was.
Putting on her dressing gown, she went downstairs. This time Henri followed, his toenails clicking on the wood floors.
“Armand?”
The living room was in darkness but a light was on in the study.
“In here,” came the familiar voice.
“Anything?” she asked.
“Something,” said Jean-Guy, stepping out of the way so that his mother-in-law could get a good view. “I think.”
Gamache offered her his chair.
Reine-Marie sat down and looked at the screen.
“It’s cosmic,” she read, then looked up at her husband. “I don’t understand. Do you think he means ‘comic’?”
Armand and Jean-Guy were staring at the curt message with as much puzzlement as she felt.
Constable Stuart had replied to Gamache’s email with two short words.
It’s cosmic.
* * *
Robert Stuart had been in the pub the night before when his iPhone buzzed. He had it programmed so that it made different sounds depending on who was trying to reach him.
This was clearly a work email, and normally it would never occur to him to check it, except that the man on the next barstool had been prattling on and on about how he’d been screwed on some tax bill.
Stuart lifted his iPhone and gave his companion an apologetic shrug, which the man ignored, and continued to babble. Stuart took his iPhone and his pint and found a seat in a quiet corner.
The message was from that man in Canada. The French guy with the weird accent. It couldn’t be important.
Constable Stuart put the device down. The email had served its purpose in allowing him to escape. The actual message could wait until the morning.
He sipped his beer and looked around, but his eyes kept falling back to the worn wooden table. Finally he picked up the device and opened the message. His eyes widened a bit in interest, then he opened the attachments.
Scrolling through the pictures quickly, he shook his head and felt vaguely disappointed. He didn’t know much about art, but he knew shit when he saw it. He was glad Apple hadn’t yet figured out how to send smells.
And yet. And yet. There was something about one of the images in particular. The Canadian man, a retired homicide investigator he said, hadn’t asked him to judge the art. Just to tell him if any of the places looked familiar.
They did not. Truth be told, they didn’t look like “places.” Just splotches of bright paint.