* * *
“It’s become quite a draw,” said Alphonse. “People come from all over to see it. Some call it mystical.”
He said it with a snort, but Constable Stuart was unconvinced. He’d heard what the cook had said. The warning. Not to tell his drunken tale again.
“What happened to you in the garden, Alphonse?”
* * *
Clara went back to Peter’s paintings. Not the one with the checkerboard snake, but the other two.
She didn’t know for sure, but she suspected they’d also been painted in the Garden of Cosmic Speculation. The palette was the same, the urgency the same.
Like the first one, these were explosions of color. Clashing, almost frantic. Unlikely, unattractive combinations of color. Peter seemed to have painted them with abandon, desperate to grab hold of something fleeting, to capture it.
“It looks as though his brain exploded onto the page,” said Jean-Guy, standing beside Gamache.
What had Peter seen, Clara wondered, in the Garden of Cosmic Speculation? What had he felt?
* * *
Alphonse looked behind him, toward the swinging door into the kitchen, then leaning his elbows on the counter, he lowered his voice.
“This is to go no further, understand?”
Constable Stuart lied, and nodded.
“It was sometime last fall. I went there in the early evening to shoot rabbits.”
And out came the story.
He paused after describing the first, failed attempt to kill the hare.
“I’d done it many times before, mind. Since I was a boy.”
“Had you been to the garden before?” Stuart asked.
Alphonse nodded. “Killed lots of rabbits there. But never seen one quite like this.”
“How was it different?”
Alphonse studied the constable. He no longer seemed like a waiter in a roadside diner. He was inches from Constable Stuart’s face, and he looked ancient. But not frail. He looked like a seaman who’d turned his face into the wind all his life. Navigating. Searching.
Until he’d found what he sought. Dry land.
“Shall I tell you?” he asked.
And Constable Stuart wondered, yet again, if he really wanted the answer.
He nodded.
“I watched as he stood on his hind legs, this hare. Straight up. Huge. Gray. He didn’t move. Even when I raised my rifle again. He just stood there. I could see his chest. I could see him breathing. I could see his heart beating. And then I noticed something behind him.”
“A movement? The owner?”
“No. Not a man. But another hare. Almost as big. Just standing there too. I’d been so taken with the one I hadn’t noticed the others.”
“Others?”
“Must’ve been twenty. All standing on their hind legs. Straight upright. In a perfect circle. Not moving.”
Constable Stuart felt himself grow very quiet. Very still. The old man’s eyes were on him, like searchlights.
“The wife says I was drunk, and I’d had a few. But not more than usual. She says I was seeing double. Triple. She says I was seeing things.”
He dropped his eyes and his head and spoke into the hacked and stained old counter.
“And she was right. I saw something.”
“What?”
* * *
“What’s that?” Clara asked, leaning closer to the vile colors.
“What?” asked Reine-Marie, getting to within inches of the painting.
“There, by that zigzag.”
“They’re stairs, I think,” said Armand.
“No, I don’t mean the zigzag, I mean beside it.” Clara spoke urgently, as though it would disappear at any moment.
“It’s a stone,” said Jean-Guy.
Clara peered closer.
* * *
“The hares were made of stone.”
The two men stared into each other’s eyes.
“It’s a sculpture garden,” said Constable Stuart. “They probably were stone.”
“No.”
Alphonse spoke softly, almost regretfully. And Constable Stuart understood then that this man hadn’t been searching for dry land. He’d been searching for company. One person. Who’d believe him.
“I saw the old one move. I saw his heart beat. And I saw him turn to stone.”
* * *
“It’s a circle of stones,” said Armand, also leaning in.
Their eyes were adjusting to Peter’s wild colors, until what had appeared to be chaos became a design.