Still Life

  ‘And did it?’

  ‘That’s just it. It did. Every morning Yolande would come down and was sure the card was different. Still the Queen of Hearts, but the pattern would be changed.’

  ‘But was the card actually different? I mean, did Jane change it herself?’

  ‘No. But Jane knew that a child couldn’t possibly memorise every detail. And, more than that, she knew every child longs to believe in magic. So sad.’

  ‘What?’ asked Gamache.

  ‘Yolande. I wonder what she believes in today.’

  Gamache remembered his talk with Myrna and wondered whether Jane could possibly have been sending another message to young Yolande. Change happens and it’s nothing to be afraid of.

  ‘When would Jane have seen Bernard? Would she have known him?’

  ‘She may actually have seen him quite often in the last year or so, but from a distance,’ said Clara. ‘Bernard and the other kids from the area now catch the school bus from Three Pines.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Up by the old schoolhouse, so the bus doesn’t have to go through the village. Some parents drop the kids off really early when it suits them and the kids have to wait. So they sometimes wander down the hill into the village.’

  ‘What happens when it’s cold or there’s a storm?’

  ‘Most parents stay with the kids in their car, keeping them warm, until the bus arrives. But then it was discovered that some parents just dropped the kids off anyway. Timmer Hadley would take them in until the bus showed up.’

  ‘That was nice,’ said Gamache. Clara looked slightly taken aback. ‘Was it? I guess it was, now that I think of it. But I suspect there was some other reason for it. She was afraid of being sued if a kid died of exposure or something. Frankly, I’d rather freeze to death than go into that house.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Timmer Hadley was a hateful woman. Look at poor Ben.’ Clara tossed her head in Ben’s direction and Gamache looked just in time to catch Ben staring at them again. ‘Crippled by her. Needy, manipulative woman. Even Peter was terrified of her. He used to spend school holidays at Ben’s. To keep Ben company and try to protect him from that woman in that monstrosity of a house. Do you wonder I love him?’ For an instant he wasn’t sure if Clara meant Peter or Ben. ‘Peter’s the most wonderful man in the world and if even he hated and feared Timmer there was something really wrong.’

  ‘How did he and Ben meet?’

  ‘At Abbot’s, the private boys’ school near Lennoxville. Ben was sent there when he was seven. Peter was also seven. The two youngest kids there.’

  ‘What did Timmer do that was so bad?’ Gamache’s brow knitted, imagining the two frightened boys.

  ‘For one, she sent a scared little boy away from home to boarding school. Poor Ben was totally unprepared for what awaited him. Have you ever been to boarding school, Inspector?’

  ‘No. Never.’

  ‘You’re lucky. It’s Darwinism at its most refined. You adapt or die. You learn that the skills that allow you to survive are cunning, cheating, bullying, lying. Either that or just plain hiding. But even that didn’t last for long.’

  Peter had painted for Clara a pretty clear picture of life at Abbot’s. Now she saw the doorknob turning slowly, slowly. And the door to the boys’ unlockable dorm room opening slowly, slowly. And the tiptoes of upper classmen sneaking in to do more damage. Peter had learned the monster wasn’t under the bed after all. It broke Clara’s heart every time she thought of those little boys. She looked over at their table and saw two grown men, graying, craggy heads leaning so close they almost touched. And she wanted to rush over there and keep all bad things away from them.

  ‘Matthew ten, thirty-six.’

  Clara brought herself back to Gamache, who was looking at her with such tenderness she felt both exposed and protected at the same time. The dorm door closed.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘A biblical quote. My first chief, Inspector Comeau, used to quote it. Matthew Chapter Ten, verse Thirty-six.’

  ‘I could never forgive Timmer Hadley for doing that to Ben,’ said Clara quietly.

  ‘But Peter was there too,’ Gamache said, also quietly. ‘His parents sent him.’

  ‘True. His mother’s also a piece of work, but he was better equipped. And still it was a nightmare. Then there were the snakes. One holiday Ben and Peter were playing cowboys in the basement when they came across a nest of snakes. Ben said they were everywhere in the basement. And mice too. But everyone has mice around here. Not everyone has snakes.’

  ‘Are the snakes still there?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Every time Clara had gone into Timmer’s home she’d see snakes, curled in dark corners, slithering under chairs, hanging from the beams. It might have been just her imagination. Or not. Eventually Clara had refused to go into the house at all until Timmer’s last weeks when volunteers were needed. Even then, she only went with Peter, and never to the bathroom. She knew the snakes were curled behind the sweating tank. And never, ever into the basement. Never close to that door off the kitchen where she could hear the sliding and slithering and smell the swamp.

  Clara upgraded to a Scotch and the two of them stared out the window at the Victorian turrets just visible above the trees on the hill.

  ‘Yet Timmer and Jane were best of friends,’ said Gamache.

  ‘True. But then, Jane got along with everyone.’

  ‘Except her niece Yolande.’

  ‘That’s hardly revealing. Even Yolande doesn’t get along with Yolande.’

  ‘Do you have any idea why Jane didn’t let anyone beyond the kitchen?’

  ‘Not a clue,’ said Clara, ‘but she invited us to cocktails in her living room for the night of the Arts Williamsburg vernissage, to celebrate Fair Day.’

  ‘When did she do that?’ Gamache asked, leaning forward.

  ‘Friday, at dinner, after she’d heard she’d been accepted for the show.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Gamache, leaning his elbows on the table, as though preparing to crawl across it and into her head. ‘Are you telling me on the Friday before she died she invited everyone to a party inside her home? For the first time in her life?’

  ‘Yes. We’d been to dinner and to parties in her home thousands of times, but always in the kitchen. This time she specified the living room. Is that important?’

  ‘I don’t know. When’s the show opening?’

  ‘In two weeks.’ They sat in silence, thinking about the show. Then Clara noticed the time. ‘I need to go. People coming for dinner.’ He stood up with her and she smiled at him. ‘Thank you for finding the blind.’ He gave her a small bow and watched her wind her way through the tables, nodding and waving to people, until she’d reached Peter and Ben. She kissed Peter on the top of his head and the two men stood as one, and all three left the Bistro, like a family.

  Gamache picked up The Boys’ Big Book of Hunting from the table and opened the front cover. Scrawled inside in a big, round, immature hand was ‘B. Malenfant’.

  When Gamache arrived back at the B. & B., he found Olivier and Gabri getting ready to head over to the Morrows for a pot luck dinner.

  ‘There’s a shepherd’s pie in the oven for you, if you want,’ Gabri called as they left.

  Upstairs, Gamache tapped on Agent Nichol’s door and suggested they meet downstairs in twenty minutes to continue their talk from that morning. Nichol agreed. He also told her they’d be eating in that night, so she could dress casually. She nodded, thanked him, and shut the door, going back to what she’d been doing for the last half-hour, desperately trying to decide what to wear. Which of the outfits she’d borrowed from her sister Angelina was perfect? Which said smart, powerful, don’t mess with me, future chief inspector? Which one said ‘Like me’? Which one was right?

  Gamache climbed the next flight to his room, opened the door and felt drawn toward the brass bed piled high with a pure white duvet and white down pillows. All he wanted to do was
to sink into it, close his eyes, and fall fast and deeply asleep. The room was simply furnished, with soothing white walls and a deep cherry wood chest of drawers. An old oil portrait dominated one wall. A faded and well-loved oriental throw rug sat on the wood floor. It was a soothing and inviting room and almost more than Gamache could stand. He wavered in the middle of the room then walked determinedly to the ensuite bathroom. His shower revived him, and after getting into casual clothing he called Reine-Marie, gathered his notes, and was back in the living room in twenty minutes.

  Yvette Nichol came down half an hour later. She’d decided to wear the ‘power’ outfit. Gamache didn’t look up from his reading when she walked in.

  ‘We have a problem.’ Gamache lowered his notebook and looked at her, cross-legged and cross-armed across from him. She was a station of the cross. ‘Actually, you have a problem. But it becomes my problem when it affects this investigation.’

  ‘Really, sir? And what would that be?’

  ‘You have a good brain, Agent.’

  ‘And that’s a problem?’

  ‘No. That’s the problem. You’re smug and you’re arrogant.’ The soft-spoken words hit her like an assault. No one had dared speak to her like this before. ‘I started off by saying you have a good brain. You showed fine deductive reasoning in the meeting this afternoon.’

  Nichol sat up straighter, mollified, but alert.

  ‘But a good brain isn’t enough,’ continued Gamache. ‘You have to use it. And you don’t. You look, but you don’t see. You hear, but you don’t listen.’

  Nichol was pretty sure she’d seen that written on a coffee cup in the traffic division. Poor Gamache lived by philosophies small enough to fit a mug.

  ‘I look and listen well enough to solve the case.’

  ‘Perhaps. We’ll see. As I said before, that was good work, and you have a good brain. But there’s something missing. Surely you can feel it. Do you ever feel lost, as though people are speaking a foreign language, as though there’s something going on which everyone else gets, but you don’t?’

  Nichol hoped her faced didn’t reflect her shock. How did he know?

  ‘The only thing I don’t get, sir, is how you can dress me down for solving a case.’

  ‘You lack discipline,’ he persevered, trying to get her to see. ‘For instance, before we went into the Croft home, what did I say?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’ Deep down a realisation began to dawn. She might actually be in trouble here.

  ‘I told you to listen and not to speak. And yet you spoke to Mrs Croft when she arrived in the kitchen.’

  ‘Well somebody had to be nice to her. You’d accused me of being unkind and that isn’t true.’ Dear lord, don’t let me cry, she thought, as the tears welled up. She put her fists into balls in her lap. ‘I am nice.’

  ‘And that’s what that was about? This is a murder investigation. You do as you’re told. There isn’t one set of rules for you and another set for everyone else. Understand? If you’re told to be quiet and take notes that is what you do.’ The last few words were said slowly, distinctly, coldly. He wondered whether she even knew how manipulative she was. He doubted it. ‘This morning I gave you three of the four sentences that can guide us to wisdom.’

  ‘You gave me all four this morning.’ Nichol seriously questioned his sanity now. He was looking at her sternly, without anger, but certainly without warmth.

  ‘Repeat them for me, please.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know, I need help and I forget.’

  ‘I forget? Where did you get that?’

  ‘From you this morning. You said, “I forget”.’

  ‘Are you seriously telling me you thought “I forget” could be a life lesson? I clearly meant that I had forgotten the last sentence. Yes, I’m sure I said, “I forget”. But think of the context. This is a perfect example of what’s wrong with that good brain of yours. You don’t use it. You don’t think. It’s not enough to hear the words.’

  Here it comes, thought Nichol. Blah, blah, blah. You’ve got to listen.

  ‘You’ve got to listen. The words don’t just fall into some sterile bin to be regurgitated later. When Mrs Croft said there was nothing in the basement, did you notice how she spoke, the inflection, what went before, the body language, the hands and eyes? Do you remember previous investigations when suspects said the same thing?’

  ‘This is my first investigation,’ said Nichol, with triumph.

  ‘And why do you think I told you to just listen and take notes? Because you have no experience. Can you guess what the last sentence is?’

  Nichol was now literally wrapped up in herself.

  ‘I was wrong.’ Gamache suspected he was talking to himself, though he had to try. All these things he was passing on to Nichol he’d heard as a 25-year-old rookie in homicide. Inspector Comeau had sat him down and told him all these things in one session, then never spoken of it again. It was a huge mountain of a gift, and one that Gamache continued to unwrap each day. He also understood, even as Comeau was speaking, that this was a gift designed to be given away. And so when he’d become an Inspector he’d started passing it on to the next generation. Gamache knew he was only responsible for trying. What they did with it was their business. There was one more thing he had to pass on.

  ‘I asked you this morning to think about the ways you learn. What did you come up with?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Lines from Ruth Zardo’s famous poem came back to him:

  ‘I’ll just go further away, where you will never find me, or hurt me, or make me speak.’

  ‘What?’ said Nichol. This was so unfair. Here she was doing her best. Following him around, even willing to stay in the country for the sake of the investigation. And she’d solved the damn thing. And did she get any credit? No. Maybe Gamache was losing it and her solving the case had made him see how pathetic he’d become. That’s it, she thought, as her weary, wary eye spotted the island. He’s jealous. It’s not my fault. She grabbed hold of the shifting sand and scrambled out of the frigid sea just in the nick of time. She’d felt the hands brushing against her ankles, hoping to pull her under. But she made it on to her island, safe and perfect.

  ‘We learn from our mistakes, Agent Nichol.’ Whatever.

  EIGHT

  ‘Oh great,’ said Ruth, looking out of Peter and Clara’s mudroom door. ‘The village people.’

  ‘Bonjour, mes amours,’ cried Gabri, waltzing into the home, ‘and Ruth.’

  ‘We have bought out the health food store.’ Olivier struggled into the kitchen and deposited two shepherd’s pies and a couple of paper bags on the counter.

  ‘I was wrong,’ said Ruth, ‘it’s just a couple of old bags.’

  ‘Bitch,’ said Gabri.

  ‘Slut,’ snarled Ruth. ‘What’s in them?’

  ‘For you, my little Brillo pad ...’ Gabri grabbed the bags and, like a maniacal magician, turned them upside down with a flourish. Out spilled bags of potato chips, cans of salted cashew nuts, handmade chocolates from Maison du Chocolat Marielle, in St Rémy. There were licorice Allsorts, St André’s cheese, jelly beans and Joe Louis cakes. Lune Moons tumbled to the ground, and bounced.

  ‘Gold!’ cried Clara, kneeling down and scooping up the ridiculous, fabulous yellow cream-filled cakes. ‘Mine, all mine.’

  ‘I thought you were a chocoholic,’ said Myrna, grabbing up the perfect, delectable cream-filled sweets lovingly made by Madame Marielle.

  ‘Any port in a storm.’ Clara ripped open the cellophane around the Lune Moons and gobbled one down, miraculously getting at least half of it in her mouth. The rest nestled on her face and in her hair. ‘Haven’t had one of these in years. Decades.’

  ‘And yet they’re so becoming,’ said Gabri, surveying Clara who looked as though the POM bakery had exploded in her face.

  ‘I brought my own paper bags,’ said Ruth, pointing to the counter. Peter was there, his back turned to his guests and rigid, even f
or him. His mother would have finally been proud, of both his physical and emotional posture.

  ‘Who wants what?’ He spoke the clipped words to the shelving. Unseen behind him his guests exchanged glances. Gabri brushed the cake from Clara’s hair and cocked his head in Peter’s direction. Clara shrugged and immediately knew her betrayal of Peter. In one easy movement she’d distanced herself from his bad behavior, even though she herself was responsible for it. Just before everyone had arrived she’d told Peter about her adventure with Gamache. Animated and excited she’d gabbled on about her box and the woods and the exhilarating climb up the ladder to the blind. But her wall of words hid from her a growing quietude. She failed to notice his silence, his distance, until it was too late and he’d retreated all the way to his icy island. She hated that place. From it he stood and stared, judged and lobbed shards of sarcasm.

  ‘You and your hero solve Jane’s death?’

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ she half lied. She actually hadn’t thought at all, and if she had, she probably could have predicted his reaction. But since he was comfortably on his Inuk island, she’d retreat to hers, equipped with righteous indignation and warmed by moral certitude. She threw great logs of ‘I’m right, you’re an unfeeling bastard’ on to the fire and felt secure and comforted.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked. ‘Why didn’t you ask me along?’

  And there it was. The simple question. Peter always did have the ability to cut through the crap. Unfortunately, today, it was her crap. He’d asked the one question she was even afraid to ask herself. Why hadn’t she? Suddenly her refuge, her island, whose terrain was unremitting higher ground, was sinking.

  On that note the guests had arrived. And now Ruth had made the astonishing announcement that she too had brought something to share. Jane’s death must have shaken her to the marrow, thought Clara. On the counter stood her grief. Tanqueray gin, Martini & Rossi vermouth and Glenfiddich Scotch. It was a fortune in booze, and Ruth did not run to fortunes. Great poetry doesn’t pay the bills. In fact, Clara couldn’t remember the last time Ruth had bought her own drink. And today the elderly woman had gone all the way to the Societé des Alcools in Williamsburg and bought these bottles, then lugged them across the green to their home.