A Better Man
- Автор: Пенни Луиза
- Серия: Chief Inspector Gamache #15
- Год: 2019
- Язык: английский
- Год: St. Martin's Publishing Group
- ISBN: 9781466873711
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «A Better Man». Краткое содержание книги:
It's Gamache's first day back as head of the homicide department, a job he temporarily shares with his previous second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir. Floodwaters are rising across the province. In the middle of the turmoil, a father approaches Gamache, pleading for help in finding his daughter.
As crisis piles upon crisis, Gamache tries to hold off the encroaching chaos, and realizes the search for Vivienne Godin should be abandoned. But with a daughter of his own, he finds himself developing a profound, and perhaps unwise, empathy for her distraught father.
Increasingly hounded by the question, how would you feel..., he resumes the search.
As the rivers rise, and the social media onslaught against Gamache becomes crueler, a body is discovered. And in the tumult, mistakes are made.
In the next novel in this constantly surprising series that deepens and darkens as it evolves (The New York Times Book Review), Gamache must face a horrific possibility, and a burning question.
What would you do if your child's killer walked free?
“Not bad at all,” said Gabri.
Clara felt her heart squeeze and a sort of panic wash over her. She was expecting an immediate and passionate, “They’re brilliant! She’s wrong!”
Not this muted reply.
She looked over at Reine-Marie, whose head was tilted, as though maybe that would help. There was a strained look on her face, like a child with the beginnings of indigestion.
“These are the ones that didn’t make the cut, right? The ones you were less happy with?” Reine-Marie asked, barely meeting Clara’s eyes.
“Yes,” she said. She lied.
The tiny oils on the easel in her studio were almost exact replicas of the series she’d sent to the collective show in New York.
The critics, the other artists, even the gallery owners could all be dismissed. The crap on social media certainly could be. Or if not outright dismissed, at least explained.
Jealousy. Nothing more.
But now her own friends, her cheering section, were tilting their heads, squinting their eyes, and offering faint praise.
Damn, thought Clara. Damn.
That Oddly woman had poisoned the well. Turned even her most ardent supporters against her. Or, at least, against her art. Which was almost the same thing, so deeply intertwined were the woman and her creations. An attack on one felt like an attack on the other.
She felt her world sinking, and Clara Morrow was far from certain she could keep her head above the swiftly rising tide of opinion.
Ruth put a thin, veined hand on Armand’s. “You did your best, you know.”
He looked down at her hand, then into her rheumy eyes.
“But he got away. Thanks in large part to me.”
“Not on purpose.”
“Does it matter?”
“You’re a cop, doesn’t intent always matter? If you didn’t intend to hurt…”
He wondered if this was Ruth’s way of apologizing for posting that video. Knowing now the pain she’d caused.
“That could be true,” he said. “But Vivienne is dead, and her killer is free.”
“Not for long. Homer’s going to kill the man who killed his daughter, isn’t he?”
“He’s going to try.”
“Will you stop him?”
“I’ll try.”
“In a halfhearted way?”
Armand turned to her in surprise. “No. With all my heart.”
“Why?”
She looked at him with genuine curiosity. As did the duck. But then, ducks were often curious.
Why would he stop Homer?
“Because it’s not for us to be judge, jury, and executioner.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cliché. And in the real world, when the system fails?”
“Then we have to look somewhere else for a solution.”
“You mean revenge.”
“For some, yes.”
“And others?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“You mean giving up? Just”—she waved her hand—“letting it go and getting on with life?”
“I mean grabbing hold of something other than rage and revenge. You came over to the house this afternoon.”
“Yes,” said Ruth. “What of it?”
“You said something to Homer.”
“So?”
“I think that’s why you visited him. To offer Homer that option, a way out. If not to forgiveness, perhaps to peace. It was a quote from St. Francis, to a woman who’d lost her child in a river. The thing is, I looked it up, or tried, and couldn’t find it anywhere.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, does it exist?”
“Does it matter? Isn’t the power in the belief and not the proof?” She looked at him, hard. “Wouldn’t you want to believe, Armand? If it had been Annie?”
In the silence that followed, he met her eyes.
“Clare, Clare,” she said, her voice shaky and her eyes steady, “do not despair. Between the bridge and the water, I was there.”
“Does she always carry the duck around?” Dominica Oddly asked Reine-Marie as they left to walk home.
The cold April night air seeped past Dominica’s light coat and into her bones. She wrapped her arms around herself.
“Always,” said Reine-Marie. “Would you leave your child behind?”
“Child…?” Dominica began to dismiss the statement but then heard Rosa muttering and saw the resemblance between mother and duck.
They took a few steps in silence before Reine-Marie spoke again.
“You do know how much your review hurt Clara, don’t you?”
“It was brutal,” said Olivier.
“I was just telling the truth.”
“All truth with malice in it,” said Ruth.
“But it’s still the truth.”
“Maybe,” said Reine-Marie. “But you need to also own the malice.”
Jean-Guy dropped back to where Armand and Isabelle were walking, a few paces behind the others.
Isabelle was tired, and her limp was more pronounced.
“I asked her”—Jean-Guy indicated Dominica Oddly—“about Tracey’s pottery. She said it was quite good. Showed actual promise.”
“Jesus,” said Isabelle, “don’t tell Clara that. Her head’ll explode.”
“I was thinking that might be another motive,” said Jean-Guy. “To kill Vivienne.”
“How?” asked Isabelle.
“If Tracey knew he was about to be a success?” said Jean-Guy. “He sure wouldn’t want to share it with Vivienne.”
“But isn’t ‘success’ relative? Even successful ceramicists couldn’t make much money, could they?” asked Isabelle.
“They can make hundreds of thousands, even millions, if they become collectible,” said Jean-Guy, as though he knew that from experience.
“Does she think Tracey’s likely to be that successful?” asked Armand.
“Not sure. She said it’s possible. Takes a lot of luck, of course.”
“I wonder,” said Isabelle, then lapsed into silence.
“Wonder what?”
“If a scandal could be considered luck.”
“A scandal like being a murder suspect. Shit.” Beauvoir broke away and jogged up to Dominica Oddly. “I have a question for you.”
“Yes?”
“If an up-and-coming artist is accused of murder, then let go on a technicality, what would that do to his career?”
“Are you kidding?” she asked. Staring at him. “You’re not seriously thinking—”
“The question. Please answer it.”
They’d stopped, and now Armand and Isabelle joined them.
Dominica Oddly thought about it, but not for long. “He wouldn’t be the first artist to benefit from something like that. The cult of celebrity can be pretty perverse. Just look at—”
“Tracey,” Jean-Guy reminded her, before the lecture began. “Would getting away with murder help him?”
She nodded. “Probably. But how would he know he’d get away with it?”
“Maybe it didn’t matter,” said Isabelle.
“Would matter to him,” said Oddly. “His art might start selling for tens of thousands, or more, but what good would it do him if he’s executed?”
“We don’t actually kill prisoners in Canada,” said Lacoste.
“Are you sure?” asked Oddly.
“What’re you thinking?” Gamache asked Lacoste.
“Who would benefit,” she whispered to Gamache and Beauvoir, “if Vivienne was murdered and her suddenly famous artist husband was convicted?”
“Pauline Vachon,” said Beauvoir. “You think she’s that clever?”
“You met her, what do you think?”
Myrna and Billy helped Clara clean up, though most of it had already been done by the others.
“You okay?” Myrna asked her friend.
“Just fine.”