Clara met Gamache’s eye, her fears realized. It felt like Peter’s dirty underwear was spread out on the desk.
“You?” Jean-Guy asked, pointing to the phone still in the Chief’s hand.
“Reine-Marie. She and Ruth are just getting on the flight back to Montréal.”
“Ruth?” asked Clara.
“Yes, she went with Reine-Marie. Seems Professor Massey took a shine to her.”
“He seemed so sane,” said Myrna, shaking her head. “Did he survive?”
“Oh, he survived,” said Gamache. “Ruth even giggled.”
“No ‘numb nuts’?” asked Jean-Guy. “No ‘shithead’? Must be love. Or hate.”
“Did Reine-Marie find out anything?” Clara asked.
“Only that Professor Norman was considered unbalanced. He taught art theory. He’s from Québec. She’s waiting to find out where.”
“I’d forgotten about that,” said Clara. “Had a strange accent, though. Hard to place.”
“Just as their flight was called, she asked if I knew anything about the Muses,” said Gamache. “Does that make sense?”
“The brasserie?” asked Myrna.
“No, I think she meant the actual Greek goddesses.”
Clara snorted. “God, I’d forgotten about that too. Professor Norman was obsessed by the Muses. Peter used to laugh about that.”
“But what’s so funny?” Myrna asked. “Don’t most artists have a muse?”
“Absolutely, but Norman turned it into a sort of mania. A prerequisite.”
“A muse is supposed to inspire an artist, right?” said Jean-Guy.
“Oui,” said Chartrand. “There was Manet’s Victorine and Whistler’s Joanna Hiffernan—” He paused. “How odd.”
“How so?” asked Gamache.
“Both those women inspired works that ended up in the first Salon des Refusés.”
“So much for muses,” said Jean-Guy.
“But there’re lots of other examples,” said Chartrand. “And even those two paintings were eventually considered works of genius.”
“Because of the muses?” asked Jean-Guy. “Don’t you think the artists’ talent might’ve had something to do with it?”
“Absolument,” said Chartrand. “But something magical happens when a great artist meets his or her muse.”
There’s that word again, thought Gamache. Magic.
Clara listened but couldn’t bear to look at Beauvoir as Chartrand tried to explain the inexplicable. Jean-Guy was so like Peter, in so many ways.
Peter hadn’t believed in muses. He believed in technique and discipline. He believed in the color wheel and rules of perspective. He believed in hard work. Not in some mythical, magical being who would make him a better artist. It was absurd.
Clara had secretly hoped that, despite what Peter believed, she was his muse. His inspiration. But she’d had to eventually surrender that thought.
“Who’s your muse?” Jean-Guy asked.
“Mine?” asked Clara.
“Yeah. If a muse is so important, who’s yours?”
She wanted to say Peter. Would have said Peter a while ago, if only out of loyalty. It was the easy and obvious answer.
But not the truthful one.
Myrna spared her from having to answer.
“It’s Ruth.”
Clara smiled at her friend, and nodded.
Demented, drunken, delusional Ruth inspired Clara.
Ruth, with the lump in her throat.
“Only successful artists have muses?” Beauvoir asked.
“Oh no,” said Chartrand. “Many artists have one, or a series of them. A muse might inspire them, but it doesn’t make them great artists or guarantee success.”
“Sometimes the magic works?” Jean-Guy looked at Clara, and smiled. Leading her to wonder if he knew more, or understood more, than he let on.
“If the muse is a person,” said Beauvoir, thinking out loud, “what happens to the artist if their muse dies?”
Clara, Myrna, Chartrand, and Gamache looked at each other. What did happen if a muse died? A muse was a very powerful person in an artist’s life.
Take that away, and what do you have?
Beauvoir could see his question had stumped them. But far from feeling he’d scored a point, he felt a growing disquiet.
He thought about what he’d heard and what he knew about the art world. And artists. Most would sell their soul for a solo show. And they’d kill for recognition.
In Beauvoir’s experience, the only thing worse for an artist than not being celebrated was if someone they knew was.
It could be enough to drive an already unbalanced artist over the edge. Drive them to drink. To drugs. To kill.
Themselves. Or the other artist. Or, maybe, the muse.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Reine-Marie finished the email to Armand while waiting for Ruth at the airport in Montréal. Their flight had landed twenty minutes earlier, and Ruth had limped right over to the public washroom.
The old poet had refused to use the facilities on the plane, fearing if it crashed she’d be found dead in there.
“Are you really afraid of what people would think?” Reine-Marie had asked.
“Of course not. But where would I haunt? I have my afterlife mapped out. I die in my home in Three Pines and then haunt the village. If I die in a plane toilet, where would I go?”
“Good thinking,” said Reine-Marie.
And so Ruth had headed off to the facilities at Trudeau Airport, which apparently was worth the risk of eternity. Reine-Marie reread her email, detailing their visit to Professor Massey. She would call Armand when they got back to Three Pines, but she wanted him to have some of the details in writing.
She almost hit send, but then remembered something she’d left off the message. An attachment. She’d already attached one photo, but now she added another.
Reine-Marie opened the yearbook, found the section on the professors, and took a photo. Then she closed the book quickly, squashing the image inside like a bug.
No need to spend more time looking at it than necessary. She felt almost guilty sending it off to Armand. She hoped he read her email before opening the attachment. It would come as a shock otherwise.
She hit send just as Ruth reappeared.
“So, tell me about the tenth muse,” Reine-Marie said as they walked slowly through the airport to their car.
“It’s bullshit,” said Ruth. “The tenth muse doesn’t exist.”
“But the other nine do?”
Ruth grunted in laughter. “Touché.” She gathered her thoughts before speaking. “The Nine Muses were created by the Greeks. They’re goddesses of knowledge and inspiration. They represented poetry, history, science, drama.” Ruth searched her memory as they walked. “Dance.” She thought some more. “And a bunch of others. They’re the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Memory.”
“Ironic,” said Reine-Marie. “But none for art? Why not?”
“How the hell should I know? There’s at least one muse for poetry, that’s all I care about.”
“Do you have a muse?”
“Do I look like a lunatic?”
“Well, you have a duck. It seemed possible you also have a muse.”
Ruth smiled. “Fair play. But no, I have no muse.”
“Why not?”
“Too much power. Suppose it left? Where would I be then? No, I prefer to rely on my own meager talents.”
They walked in silence for a few paces, until Ruth gave a long, low guttural prompt.
“But, Ruth, your talent is legendary. Mammoth,” said Reine-Marie. “The only thing that’s meager is your ego.”
“You mean that?” said Ruth, with a smile.
“Can we get back to the Muses?” asked Reine-Marie. They were at the car, and after getting Ruth settled, she sat in the driver’s seat, thinking. “Nine Muses. So where does this tenth one come in?” Reine-Marie asked.
“There’s a theory that there were
actually ten sisters,” said Ruth. “But somewhere along the line, one was dropped. Erased.”
“The one for art?”
Ruth shrugged.
Reine-Marie started up the car and left the parking lot, heading back to Three Pines.
“Muses work all day long,” said Ruth. “And then at night get together and dance.”
Reine-Marie tried to keep her eyes on the road, but she shot Ruth a glance.
“You say that like you’ve seen them.”
The old woman laughed. “It’s a quote from Degas. But sometimes, on moonlit nights on the village green…”
Reine-Marie looked again at Ruth, who had a crooked smile on her crooked face.
“Was the moon lit, or were you?” asked Reine-Marie, and Ruth laughed.
Still, as Reine-Marie drove off the island of Montréal toward the Eastern Townships, she could imagine them. Not on the village green, but deep in the woods. In a copse. Nine young women, sisters, in a circle, dancing. Holding hands, vigorous, healthy, joyous.
“A beautiful image, isn’t it?” asked Ruth, as though she shared Reine-Marie’s vision. “Now, imagine someone else, standing just off to the side. Watching.”
Reine-Marie saw the circle of happy, robust young goddesses. And in the background another young woman was watching. Waiting. To be invited in.
Waiting. Forever.
“The tenth muse,” Reine-Marie said. “But if she existed, if she was one of the sisters, why was she left out?”
“Not just excluded, but erased,” said Ruth. “Her very existence denied.”
“Why?” asked Reine-Marie.
“How the fuck should I know?” And the old woman turned to look at the woods rushing by.
* * *
Armand Gamache read the email from Reine-Marie about their meeting with Professor Massey. She explained that Professor Massey had given her a yearbook. She’d attached an old photo of Clara and Peter in Massey’s studio. She’d hoped to find a picture of Professor Norman too, but the editors had decided not to have photos of the professors that year—instead they’d reproduced one of their pieces of art.
Gamache sighed, disappointed. A photo, even an old one, would have been helpful.
He clicked on one of the attachments. And smiled. There was Clara. Unmistakable. Beaming. Her gladness all the more evident for the apparent world-weariness of those around her on the sofa. And standing behind the sofa was a very young Peter, one keen eye looking out through a haze of smoke that Gamache chose to believe was cigarette.
And then he opened the second attachment.
And inhaled. Not a gasp, exactly. Not that dramatic. But a sharp breath.
A face had appeared. A portrait. Distorted. Not abstract, like a Picasso, but distended as though bloated with emotion. And what this man felt was obvious. There was nothing subtle about the painting.
He was howling with rage. Not at the gods. Not toward Heaven and Fate. His focus was closer, more personal. It was just over the shoulder of the observer.
Gamache felt the urge to turn around. To see if there was indeed someone or something back there.
But this ghastly portrait wasn’t screaming a warning, it wasn’t some horror movie heroine. This was outrage.
Gamache felt a pit in his stomach. An ache. Not the ill-formed nausea he’d felt when first looking at Peter’s gaudy works. This was focused and formed and unmistakable.
Madness spilled from the portrait. Uncontrollable, unharnessed. Something chained had broken free.
It was in the mouth. It was in the eyes. It was in every brush stroke.
Gamache looked at the lower right corner.
Norman. It was a self-portrait. By Professor Norman.
And then he looked closer.
His phone rang. It was Reine-Marie.
“Armand, I think there’s something I forgot to put in my message,” she began. “Not really forgot, but I wasn’t precise.”
“I was just about to call you,” he said. “Do you see it?”
“See what?”
She was sitting in their garden, in one of the Adirondack chairs, Henri stretched out on the grass beside her. She’d just fed and walked him, then poured herself a gin and tonic. The glass sat in one of the rings on the wide arm.
“The portrait you sent,” he said. “Do you have the yearbook?”
“Yes, it’s on the table here. Pretty awful. I mean, I think the painting’s probably brilliant, but what it says about the man? It’s a self-portrait, isn’t it?”
“Oui,” said Gamache. “Can you find it again, please, and look at the signature?”
“You mean it’s not by Professor Norman?” she said.
“Just tell me what you see.”
He heard vague sounds as she put the phone down and did as he’d asked. Then she was back.
“Norman,” she read.
“Look closer.”
“I’m sorry, Armand. It still says Norman. Just a moment.”
He heard more sounds, then silence. Then footsteps and a crackle as the phone was picked up.
“I got my device. Hold on, I’m bringing up the camera and the photographs. I can zoom in.”
He waited.
“Oh.” Was all he heard. And all he needed to hear.
“What did you want to tell me?” he asked.
It took Reine-Marie a moment to tear her eyes, and her mind, away from what she’d just seen.
She lowered the device, dropping the madman to her lap.
“Professor Norman taught art theory at the college,” she said. “But according to Professor Massey, he didn’t teach the traditional theories about perspective and aesthetics and the nature of art. He taught his own theories.”
“Yes,” said Gamache. “About the place of a muse in an artist’s life.”
“But Professor Norman wasn’t advising the students to get a muse,” she said. “He was teaching them about the tenth muse.”
Armand drew his brows together, trying to remember.
“The tenth muse? I thought there were just the nine sisters.”
“There’s a theory that a tenth muse existed,” said Reine-Marie. “That’s the theory Professor Norman was teaching. Armand, none of the original muses represented painting or sculpture.”
“But they must have,” he said.
She shook her head, even though he couldn’t see her. “No. Poetry, dance, history even. The word ‘museum’ comes from ‘muse.’ ‘Music’ and even ‘amuse’ come from the word ‘muse.’ But there was no muse for art itself.”
“Hardly seems possible,” he said, though he believed her.
“Professor Massey admitted he couldn’t remember the details, if he ever knew them, but he did know that Professor Norman’s theory was that there was in fact a muse for art. The tenth muse. And to be a successful artist you needed to find her.”
“Are you saying that Norman believed this tenth muse actually exists? Is living somewhere?”
“I’m not saying it. Professor Massey wasn’t even saying it. But Sébastien Norman was apparently teaching it to his students. But there’s something else. Something Ruth said.”
“I’m ready,” he said, and sounded so stoic Reine-Marie smiled.
“She quoted Degas saying the muses work all day and get together to dance all night.”
“Nice image.”
“Ruth wondered what it would be like to be standing in the forest, watching. Eternally excluded.”
Another image sprang to mind. Of a shadowy figure. Among the trees. Longing to belong.
Instead she was rejected.
And eventually that pain turned to bitterness, and the bitterness turned to anger, and the anger became rage.
Until that rage became madness.
And the madness became a portrait.
Gamache dropped his eyes to the image on his device. Now, because of the angle, the face appeared to be shrieking at Gamache’s chest. His breast pocket.
Where the small book sat. Th
e book about the balm. Of Gilead.
That made the wounded whole.
Had the tenth muse, and the pursuit of her, driven Professor Norman mad? Or was he already mad, and she was his salvation? His balm.
Would she make him whole?
Gamache stared at that distorted face.
If ever there was a sin-sick soul, this was it.
TWENTY-EIGHT
“That was Reine-Marie,” Gamache said when he got back to the group in Chartrand’s office. Peter’s canvases were now rolled up and sitting civilly on the desk.
“What is it?” asked Clara, seeing his face.
“She sent this.” Gamache handed her the device. “From your yearbook.”
“Am I going to want to see it?” Clara made a face. “I wasn’t always the elegant woman I am today.”
She clicked the device while the others gathered round.
“You’re not kidding,” said Jean-Guy.
“That’s not me, dickhead,” said Clara, and for the first time Beauvoir saw evidence of Ruth as Clara’s muse.
The madman glared out at them. Disfigured with wrath.
“Poor man.” Myrna was the first to react. She, alone among them, was familiar with madness. If not immune to it.
Her “poor man” reminded Gamache of something Marcel Chartrand had said when looking at Peter’s paintings.
Poor Peter, he’d said.
While Peter’s lip painting hadn’t achieved the horror of this portrait, there was a similarity. Like looking at a younger self. And seeing where it was heading.
“Professor Norman?” Myrna asked, and Gamache nodded.
“A self-portrait,” he said. “Look at the signature.”
They did.
“Enlarge it,” he said.
They did.
And then they looked at him, confused.
“But it doesn’t say Norman,” said Clara.
And it didn’t. Only in enlarging it was the signature clear.
No Man.
“I need some fresh air,” said Clara. She looked as though someone had just put a pillowcase over her head. Disoriented, she put down the device, picked it up again, then gave it to Myrna.
She turned full-circle, looking around for the door, and finding it, she left.