A World of Curiosities

Jean-Guy, Amelia, and Ruth come to dinner at the Gamache household, and Reine-Marie shares more about the story of Anne Lamarque: She was initially arrested on accusations of running a brothel, but when the church learned about the rumors of the grimoire, they added witchcraft charges. Anne’s husband and customers testified against her, claiming she had bewitched them. After she was found guilty, Anne was abandoned in a remote forest, far outside of Montreal, and left to die. However, according to legend, she made her way through the forest, and was able to settle and establish a community with other women who had also been banished for witchcraft. Some believe that this community eventually became Three Pines.

After dinner, Olivier and his partner, Gabri, come to the house and ask to see the elephant. They confirm that it is the same one from their inn, although it now has markings etched into it that were not there before. They also confirm that the elephant disappeared after a guest named Lillian Virginia Mountweazel had stayed with them 18 months earlier. Gamache and Jean-Guy also review the autopsy report for Patricia Godin and find that, based on her injuries, she was likely strangled first and then hung after she was already dead, so that the murder would be mistaken for a suicide. Gamache decides to launch a full-scale homicide investigation into Patricia’s death.

Gamache and Jean-Guy are discussing Gamache’s plan to have Amelia pose as a person with a drug addiction and gain Sam’s trust when they realize Fiona is nearby and may have overheard them. Later that night, Gamache arranges a secret meeting with Amelia and tells her the plan is off; if Fiona knows, she’d likely tell Sam, and that could leave Amelia in danger. He wants Amelia to leave Three Pines, and she agrees, although she is nervous about Fiona, especially. “I think you might be wrong about [Sam’s] sister” (210), she tells Gamache.

The next morning, Gamache and Jean-Guy return to Monsieur Godin’s house and confirm that he was right to believe that his wife was murdered. As they begin searching the house, Gamache casually questions Godin. He learns that Godin is a retired plumber and that he thus has the skills to break into the sealed room in Myrna’s loft. Godin recalls that about a month before Patricia died, a man had come to the house to ask if they had any old documents and to contact him if they ever came across anything. He and Gamache still can’t figure out where the Pierre Stone letter came from, or how it got to Billy. Not only did Patricia not have Billy’s address, but there was also no way for her to know that Pierre was Billy’s ancestor. Increasingly, Gamache feels that he is “leaving with more questions than when he’d arrived” (215).

Gamache meets with an art curator, Dr. Louissaint, and she inspects the painting found in the sealed room. She confirms that the nails used to secure the canvas to the frame date back to the 1600s; she also confirms that someone painted over a paint-by-numbers copy of The Paston Treasure and added their own details. Dr. Louissant remarks that the painting has an unsettling effect: “It seemed an attack, even as it just lay there on the cold concrete floor” (219). She happens to catch a glimpse of the elephant and looks at it closely. She notices the unusual etchings on it, and points out something to Gamache that he failed to notice: Similar symbols are marked all over the painting in very fine lines.

Gamache is determined to figure out more about the strange markings on the painting and sends images of them to a colleague who specializes in code breaking. He also confirms that these markings are not present in the original Paston Treasure. Gamache is growing more and more worried, and he can’t shake the feeling that Sam and possibly Fiona are somehow involved. He forces himself to wonder if he could have been wrong about Fiona all of this time: “Did he […] have it backward? That yes, there was a psychopath in that family, but it wasn’t the boy” (225).

As Dr. Louissaint continues inspecting the painting, she confirms that more than one person worked on it. She also notes that she doesn’t know what sort of printer could have generated a print of this size onto canvas; her assistant chimes in that she once heard of a project hosted by Corrections Canada, in which they wanted to print large-scale copies of paintings so that inmates could work on them in groups. However, if the painting was created in a prison, how it got into the sealed room is even more baffling.

Meanwhile, Gamache gets a call from Jean-Guy, who has been searching the Godin house and has found a book of poems, inside which is a ticket, used as a bookmark, to an art exhibition in England that included The Paston Treasure. Jean-Guy has confirmed with Godin that Patricia never went to England or attended such an exhibition; he also doesn’t know how the book got into the house. As Gamache recalls the poem that the ticket was marking and recalls a hymn that Mongeau hummed, he suddenly has a horrifying idea.

At Three Pines, Gamache is clearly distressed, and Mongeau tries to find out what is wrong. However, Gamache refuses to give the minister any information. He also tells Reine-Marie that he wants her to go to England, ostensibly to visit the museum where The Paston Treasure is housed, and see what she can learn about it. Reine-Marie correctly deduces that Gamache has an ulterior motive: getting her away from Three Pines. He even decides to send Agent Amelia Choquet with her.

Summoned back to Three Pines, Jean-Guy arrives at Gamache’s house, where Gamache alludes to a fearful possibility that is still not entirely clear. He has noticed that the painting depicts a piece of sheet music for the hymn “By the Waters of Babylon,” and he also fears that the exhibition ticket tucked in the book of poems is another clue. Meanwhile, Myrna tries to warn Harriet that Sam is unstable and dangerous, but Harriet does not heed her aunt’s warning: “She shut down. Shut [Myrna] out. She was a past master at hiding her feelings” (239).

Jean-Guy meets with Sam alone and asks him directly if Sam snuck into the Gamache house. Sam denies this, and Jean-Guy believes him; however, moments later, Jean-Guy accidentally gets a glimpse of Sam’s phone, which contains photos taken inside Gamache’s bedroom. Meanwhile, Myrna laments to Gamache that she failed to persuade Harriet to see that Sam is dangerous.

Harriet is in fact unsettled by Myrna’s warning, and she confides in Fiona. Fiona reassures Harriet that there is nothing wrong with Sam and that he cares deeply for Harriet. Meanwhile, Sam explains to Jean-Guy that that he was never in the Gamache house and that it was Fiona who took the photos and sent them to him. Sam thinks Fiona is angry with him and has been taunting him by displaying her close bond with the Gamache family. This is hurtful to Sam because he is lonely, longs for a family, and knows that the Gamaches dislike and distrust him. “I stare at the pictures Fiona sent,” Sam says, “and pretend it’s my home” (249).

Sympathetic to Sam, Jean-Guy believes his story. Gamache also asks Myrna (who has in the past provided psychological services to prisoners in maximum-security wards) if prisoners were ever given the opportunity to participate in art projects. She confirms that this project was piloted, but that it usually ended in violent altercations.

Gamache brings together everyone from the village to look at the painting together: He is growing more and more desperate, but he still can’t decode the painting. Reine-Marie does solve one clue: She points out that the name of the guest who took the elephant, Lillian Mountweazel, is a term used to refer to something being a fraud or a fake. Ruth, the elderly poet, is the one to realize that the markings etched all over the painting and carved into the elephant are in shorthand (an abbreviated method of writing that relies on symbols to allow someone to quickly capture a message or dictation). One of Gamache’s assistants is quickly set to the task of translating the shorthand. Meanwhile, Reine-Marie and Amelia board their flight to England. Gamache has checked in with the maximum-security unit of the prison and is reassured that everything is normal and that no one is missing.

Later that night, Jean-Guy finds Gamache sitting alone in front of the painting, "look[ing] more than startled. He look[s] frightened” (260). It seems that Gamache has arrived at some sort of horrifying conclusion about who is behind the painting and the elaborate system of clues.