A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15) - Louise Penny Page 0,115
she asked, and was relieved to see him smile.
“Not to the art world. Way too dangerous.”
“Yes. I’ve heard the critics can be brutal.”
“It’s the artists who scare me.” Then his smile faded. “Ceramics,” he reminded her. “Pottery. Much of a market?”
“For art pottery? Not the kind we eat off of?”
“Oui.”
She considered. “There’s always a market at the high end. But you have to be very, very good. And very, very lucky. Lucie Rie, for instance. Highly collectible. Modern, but inspired by ancient Roman pottery. Grayson Perry in the UK is huge. Won the Turner Prize for his ceramics. Elisabeth Kley is a New York artist. Festive yet—”
“How about this?”
He brought out his phone and clicked on Photos.
Dominica Oddly felt a spike of annoyance. She wasn’t used to being interrupted. Most people were in awe of her and hung on every word.
But she realized they were not, in all probability, actually talking about pottery. They were discussing murder.
She leaned in.
Up came a picture of a vase. Then a bowl. Then another piece. One after another appeared. She asked him to stop scrolling as she examined a few. Enlarging them.
“Huh,” she finally said, looking up. “Whose is it?”
“A fellow named Carl Tracey. Ever heard of him?”
“No.” She stepped back and examined his face. “Is he the one who killed the girl?”
“We think so, yes. What do you think?”
* * *
“What do you think?” Clara asked.
She’d taken some of her friends into her studio, to show them copies of the miniatures that had been savaged by the critics. Including, and especially, the critic in her living room.
“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