Jean-Guy did not laugh. He’d heard it before. Prisoners who didn’t want to be released. Men and women who reoffended so they could go back. Home. They weren’t free, but they were safe.
“I came here hoping maybe, maybe, the Gamaches would finally see me. Really see me. As I am now. Not as a screwed-up child but as a man, trying to do his best. Maybe, I thought, maybe Fiona and I could reconnect. Become a family again.” He mumbled something and Beauvoir had to ask him to repeat it.
“I thought maybe the Gamaches would invite me over for dinner.” He dropped his head and spoke to the table. “I stare at the pictures Fiona sent and pretend it’s my home. My family. I sit at the dinner table and listen as they talk about their day. And they ask me about mine. I even said to Fiona the other night that I hoped one day to meet the grandchildren. I know I won’t, but in my dreams the kids and I toss Frisbees on the village green while the Sunday roast is cooking. I’m sorry. This’s pathetic. I’m pathetic. Oh, shit.”
He dropped his head.
Jean-Guy understood. He’d been raised in a large family, but Sam was wrong about belonging. Just because there were people around didn’t mean you felt a part of it. For as long as Jean-Guy could remember, he’d always felt like a stranger. An outsider. Until he’d been invited one evening back to the Chief Inspector’s home for Sunday dinner.
He’d never really left. Not in his heart. At night, in his little apartment, Agent Beauvoir would close his eyes and smell the roast and relive that dinner. And know such a place existed. Such a thing existed. And that maybe, one day, he would not have to leave.
Yes. He understood.
Beauvoir pushed the phone across to Sam. “Erase those pictures, now. While I watch.”
“Yessir.” And Sam did.
Jean-Guy nodded and smiled and said, “Don’t worry. You’ll have a family of your own one day. It’ll be all right.”
Ça va bien aller.
It was, he remembered, exactly what he’d said to the ten-year-old Sam as the boy slobbered on his brand-new jacket.
Jean-Guy had rubbed the child’s back and repeated those words until the crying stopped.
It’ll be all right. It’ll be all right.
But it wasn’t.
“You came up here for a reason, Armand,” said Myrna. “Not just for Earl Grey.”
It took Armand a moment to remember. “Did the Special Handling Unit in the penitentiary try art therapy?”
She raised her brows. “What brought on that question?” Then she glanced toward the hole in the wall and had her answer. “Forget I asked. We tried everything. Forming choirs. Teaching them dog training. You don’t want to know how that went. Sports. Like lunatics ourselves, we kept trying and failing. And yes, including art therapy.” Myrna examined him. “You’ve been to the SHU. It’s a madhouse. Literally. All anyone wants is to prevent a catastrophe. A riot. Bedlam.”
“A breakout.”
“That, thankfully, has never happened, nor could it.”
“Did it work?”
“Art therapy with psychopaths? Jesus, that sounds like a really bad reality show. Though”—she paused—“I might actually watch that.”
They both spent a moment imagining …
“Did it work? Not even close. Two of them stabbed each other. One died.”
“So it was discontinued?”
“I left, so I don’t know. I hope so, but there comes a point where the guards and workers are as deranged as the prisoners. Rational decisions are few and far between. It’s brutal.”
Gamache got up. “I’m asking a few people over to the Old Train Station—”
“Your Incident Room.”
“Oui. I need some help with the painting.”
“To move it?”
“No. To decode it.”
CHAPTER 28
It looked farcical.
The villagers stood in front of The Paston Treasure, each of them holding a magnifying device to their face.
After inviting them over, Armand had gone into Monsieur Béliveau’s shop. It was a true “general store,” selling everything from fish and oranges to rubber boots and … magnifying glasses.
Clara held her grandmother’s blue enamel opera glasses. Myrna and Billy had their own glasses. Ruth peered through binoculars. No one had the courage, or the will, to ask what she used them for.
Olivier, Gabri, Robert and Sylvie Mongeau, and Reine-Marie each accepted magnifying glasses from Armand.
They were examining something none had noticed before. The small markings that the art conservator had found.
Reine-Marie was the first to lower her magnifier. “They’re everywhere.”
“It’s so strange,” said Gabri. “What do they mean?”
“Don’t you think if he knew,” snapped Ruth, shoving Rosa toward Gamache, “he wouldn’t need us?”
The duck nodded.
Now that they could see them, it seemed, like the roofline and the hidden room, so obvious. These weren’t marks to simulate texture, these were symbols.
“Lots of paintings have hidden messages,” said Clara. “Even the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo painted an angel essentially giving the pope the finger.”
“And writers do it all the time,” agreed Reine-Marie. “They’re only just now decoding Dickens’s Tavistock letter.”
It was the letter Jérôme Brunel was working on as part of his hobby. Armand still hadn’t heard back from the retired doctor and made a mental note to follow up.
“You know the Voynich manuscript?” Myrna asked Reine-Marie.
“Is that the Jesuit one?” she asked. She had a vague memory of reading about it.
“Right. Voynich was an antiquarian bookseller. In 1912 he bought a collection of books from some Jesuit college, and among them was a manuscript from the 1400s. It’s more than two hundred pages all written in this unknown language, with illustrations and graphs. No one knows who did it, or why. Or what it means.”
“It’s strange that the marks would be put on the elephant,” said Olivier.
“Elephant?” asked Sylvie. “There’s no elephant in the painting, is there?”
“No, I mean the bronze statue. A guest took it from the B&B,” said Gabri. “It was in the attic too, with the same markings etched in. I tried to track down Madame Mountweazel but couldn’t find her.”
“Mountweazel?” said Reine-Marie. “Lillian Virginia Mountweazel?”
They turned to her, amazed.
“Oui,” said Gabri. “You know her? You weren’t even here when she was.”
“Who is she?” asked Armand.
Reine-Marie looked torn between amusement and concern. “She doesn’t exist.”
“Then how do you know her name?” asked Jean-Guy.
“And she does exist,” said Gabri. “We met her.”
“No, I mean the name, Mountweazel. It’s a code too.”
“What do you mean?” asked Sylvie. “Code for what?”
Reine-Marie was quiet for a moment, gathering her thoughts. “Years ago, before the internet and electronic ways to investigate intellectual property thefts, publishers would put traps into books. Fictitious entries in reference books, to catch copyright thieves. Lillian Virginia Mountweazel is the most famous.”
“Well,” said Gabri, “famous?”
“Among archivists, yes. She’s almost a folk hero. Lillian Virginia Mountweazel is a fake biographical entry in The New Columbia Encyclopedia. She was described as a fountain designer who died in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine.”
The minister, Robert Mongeau, was the first to break the silence, with a laugh. Soon the others were chuckling too.