Still Life

  ‘Stop,’ snapped Ruth, waving her cane at Peter who was about to unscrew the Tanqueray cap. ‘That’s mine. Don’t touch it. Don’t you have booze to offer your guests?’ she demanded, elbowing Peter aside and shoving the bottles back into their paper sleeves. Cradling them she hobbled to the mudroom and laid them on the floor below her cloth coat as a mother might lay a particularly precious child.

  ‘Pour me a Scotch,’ she called from there.

  Strangely, Clara felt more comfortable with this Ruth than the momentarily generous one. It was the devil she knew.

  ‘You said there were books you wanted to sell?’ said Myrna, drifting into the living room, a red wine in one hand and a bunch of Allsorts in the other.

  Clara followed, grateful to be away from Peter’s eloquent back. ‘The murder mysteries. I want to buy some more but I need to get rid of the old ones first.’ The two women inched along the floor-to-ceiling bookcases across from the fireplace, Myrna every now and then selecting one. Clara had very specific tastes. Most of them were British and all were of the village cozy variety. Myrna could spend happy hours browsing bookcases. She felt if she could just get a good look at a person’s bookcase and their grocery cart, she’d pretty much know who they were.

  This was not the first time she’d stood in front of these books. Every few months the frugal couple would sell some off and replace them with others, also used and also from Myrna’s shop. The titles drifted by. Spy novels, gardening, biography, literature, but mostly mysteries. The books were a jumble. Some order had been attempted at one stage, the art restoration books were alphabetical, though one had been replaced incorrectly. Without thinking, Myrna put it in its proper alphabetical home. Myrna could guess who had taken a stab at order but the rest had succumbed to everyday literary glee.

  ‘There.’ Myrna looked at her pile when they reached the end of the bookcase. From the kitchen came the promise of comfort food. Clara’s mind followed her nose, and she again saw Peter, frozen in his anger. Why hadn’t she told him about the blind and the trail right away?

  ‘I’ll give you a dollar each for them,’ said Myrna.

  ‘How about trading them for others?’ It was a familiar and practiced dance. The two women engaged each other and emerged, both satisfied. Ruth had joined them and was reading the back of a Michael Innes.

  ‘I’d make a good detective.’ Into the stunned silence Ruth explained: ‘Unlike you, Clara, I see people the way they really are. I see the darkness, the anger, the pettiness.’

  ‘You create it, Ruth,’ Clara clarified.

  ‘It’s true,’ Ruth roared with laughter and unexpectedly hugged Clara in a grip that was disconcertingly strong. ‘I’m obnoxious and disliked -’

  ‘I hadn’t heard,’ said Myrna.

  ‘It can’t be denied. Those are my best qualities. The rest is window dressing. Actually, the real mystery is why more people don’t commit murder. It must be terrible to be human. I heard in the Societé des Alcools that that great oaf Gamache had actually searched the Croft place. Ridiculous.’

  They drifted back into the kitchen where dinner was on the table in steaming casseroles, ready for each to help themselves. Ben poured Clara a glass of red wine and sat down next to her. ‘What have you been talking about?’

  ‘I’m not really sure.’ Clara smiled into Ben’s kind face.

  ‘Ruth said Gamache had searched the Croft place. Is that true?’

  ‘He didn’t tell you this afternoon?’ Down the table, Peter snorted.

  ‘Oh yeah, big to-do,’ said Olivier, trying to ignore Peter slapping food on to his plate from the serving spoons. ‘Turned the place upside down and apparently found something.’

  ‘But they won’t arrest Matthew, surely?’ said Clara, her fork stopped halfway to her mouth.

  ‘Could Matthew have killed Jane?’ Ben asked, offering more chili con carne around. He meant the question for the whole group, but he naturally and instinctively turned to Peter.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ said Olivier when Peter failed to reply.

  ‘Why not?’ Ben turned again to Peter. ‘Accidents happen.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Peter conceded. ‘Though I think he’d own up to it.’

  ‘But, this was no ordinary mistake. I think it’d be only natural to run away.’

  ‘Do you?’ Myrna asked.

  ‘I think so,’ said Ben. ‘I mean, I’m not sure how I’d react if I threw a rock, say, and it hit someone in the head and killed them, and no one saw. Can I say for sure I would admit to it? Don’t get me wrong, I really hope I’d call for help and take what’s coming. But can I stand here today and say for sure? No. Not till it happens.’

  ‘I think you would,’ said Peter, quietly. Ben could feel his throat constrict. Compliments always made him want to cry and left him deeply embarrassed.

  ‘It goes back to what we were talking about Friday night. That quote of yours, Clara,’ said Myrna. ‘Conscience and cowardice are the same thing.’

  ‘Oscar Wilde, actually. He was more cynical than me. I think that’s true for some people, but fortunately not the majority. I think most people have a pretty good moral compass.’ To her left she heard Ruth snort. ‘Sometimes it just takes time to get your bearings, especially after a shock. When I try to see it from Gamache’s point of view, it makes sense. Matthew’s a skilled bow hunter. He knew there were deer in that area. He had the ability and the knowledge.’

  ‘But why not admit to it?’ Myrna wanted to know. ‘Sure, I agree with you totally, Ben. At first it would be understandable for Matthew to run, but after a while wouldn’t he admit to it? I couldn’t live carrying that secret.’

  ‘You just have to get better at keeping secrets,’ said Gabri.

  ‘I think it must have been a stranger,’ said Ben. ‘God knows, the woods are full of them right now. All those hunters from Toronto and Boston and Montreal, firing away like maniacs.’

  ‘But,’ Clara turned to him, ‘how would a hunter from Toronto know where to stand?’

  ‘What do you mean? They go into the woods and stand. There’s not much to it, that’s why so many morons hunt.’

  ‘But in this case the hunter knew exactly where to stand. This afternoon I was at the deer blind, you know, the one behind the schoolhouse, just by where Jane was killed. I went up and looked out. Sure enough, there was the deer trail. That’s why the blind was built right there—’

  ‘Yeah, by Matthew Croft’s father,’ said Ben.

  ‘Really?’ Clara was momentarily off balance. ‘I didn’t know that. Did you?’ She appealed to the rest of the table.

  ‘What was the question? I wasn’t listening,’ admitted Ruth.

  ‘Some detective,’ said Myrna.

  ‘Matthew’s father built the blind,’ said Clara to herself.

  ‘Anyway, Gamache is pretty sure it hadn’t been used for a while—’

  ‘Blinds aren’t generally used by bow hunters,’ said Peter in a flat voice. ‘Only guns.’

  ‘So what’s your point?’ Ruth was getting bored.

  ‘A stranger, a hunter visiting from somewhere else, wouldn’t know to go there.’

  Clara let the implication of what she said sink in.

  ‘Whoever killed Jane was local?’ Olivier asked. Up until that moment they’d all assumed the killer had been a visiting hunter who’d run away. Now, maybe not.

  ‘So it might have been Matthew Croft after all,’ said Ben.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Clara forged ahead. ‘The very things that argue for Matthew having done it also argue against it. An experienced bow hunter wouldn’t kill a person by accident. It’s the sort of accident he isn’t likely to have. A bow hunter standing by the deer trail would be too close. He’d know if it was a deer coming along, or—or not.’

  ‘Or Jane, you mean.’ Ruth’s normally flinty voice was now as hard as the Canadian Shield. Clara nodded. ‘Bastard,’ said Ruth. Gabri took her hand and for once in her life Ruth didn’t pull away.

/>   Across the table, Peter laid down his knife and fork and stared at Clara. She couldn’t quite make out the look on his face, but it wasn’t admiration.

  ‘One thing is true, whoever killed Jane was a very good bow hunter,’ she said. ‘A poor one wouldn’t have got off that shot.’

  ‘There are a lot of very good bow hunters around here, unfortunately,’ said Ben. ‘Thanks to the Archery Club.’

  ‘Murder,’ said Gabri.

  ‘Murder,’ confirmed Clara.

  ‘But who would want Jane dead?’ Myrna asked.

  ‘Isn’t it normally gain of some kind?’ Gabri asked.

  ‘Money, power.’

  ‘Gain, or trying to protect something you’re afraid of losing,’ said Myrna. She’d been listening to this conversation, thinking it was just a desperate attempt by grieving friends to take their minds off the loss by turning it into an intellectual game. Now she began to wonder. ‘If something you value is threatened, like your family, your inheritance, your job, your home—’

  ‘We get the idea,’ Ruth interrupted.

  ‘You might convince yourself killing is justified.’

  ‘So if Matthew Croft did it,’ said Ben, ‘it was on purpose.’

  Suzanne Croft looked down at her dinner plate. Congealing Chef Boyardee mini-ravioli formed pasty lumps in a puddle of thick, cold sauce. On the side of her plate a single piece of pre-sliced brown Wonder Bread balanced, put there more in hope than conviction. Hope that maybe this sickness in her stomach would lift long enough for her to take a bite.

  But it sat there, whole.

  Across from her Matthew lined up his four squares of mini-ravioli in a precise little road, marching across his plate. The sauce made ponds on either side. The children got the most food, then Matthew, and Suzanne took what was left. Her conscious brain told her it was a noble maternal instinct. Deep down inside she knew it was a more personal instinct for martyrdom that guided the portions. An unsaid but implied contract with her family. They owed her.

  Philippe sat beside Matthew in his usual place. His dinner plate was clean, all the ravioli gobbled down and the sauce soaked up by the bread. Suzanne considered exchanging her untouched plate for his, but something stopped her hand. She looked at Philippe, plugged in to his Discman, eyes closed, lips pursed in that insolent attitude he’d adopted in the last six months, and she decided the deal was off. She also felt a stirring that suggested she didn’t actually like her son. Love, yes. Well, probably. But like?

  Normally, in fact habitually for the past few months, Matthew and Suzanne had had to fight with Philippe to get him to remove the Discman, Matthew arguing with him in English and Suzanne speaking with him in her mother tongue, French. Philippe was bilingual and bicultural and equally deaf to both languages.

  ‘We’re a family,’ Matthew had argued, ‘and NSYNC isn’t invited to dinner.’

  ‘Who?’ Philippe had huffed. ‘It’s Eminem.’ As though that was somehow significant. And Philippe had given Matthew that look, not of anger or petulance, but of dismissal. Matthew might as well have been what? Not the refrigerator. He seemed to have a good relationship with the fridge, his bed, the TV, and his computer. No, he looked at his dad as though he was NSYNC. Passé. Discarded. Nothing.

  Philippe would eventually take the Discman off, in exchange for food. But tonight was different. Tonight both his mom and dad were happy to have him plugged in and removed. He’d eaten greedily, as though this slop was the best food he’d ever been given. Suzanne had even felt resentment about that. Every night she worked hard to give them good, home-made dinners. Tonight all she could manage was to open two cans, from their emergency supply, and warm them up. And tonight Philippe wolfed it down as though it was gourmet food. She looked at her son and wondered if he did it on purpose, to insult her.

  Matthew leaned closer to his plate and fine tuned the ravioli road. Each tiny ridge on the outside of the squares needed to fit into the opposing indentations. Or else? Or else the universe would explode in fire and their flesh would bubble and sear off, and he would see his whole family die in front of him, milliseconds before his own horrible death. There was a lot riding on Chef Boyardee.

  He looked up and caught his wife watching him. Mesmerised by the precision of his movements. Stuck on the stutter of a decimal point. The line suddenly came to him. He’d always liked it, from the moment he’d read it at Miss Neal’s. It was from Auden’s Christmas Oratorio. She’d pushed it on him. She was a lifelong admirer of Auden. Even this cumbersome, somewhat strange work, she seemed to love. And understand. For himself, he’d struggled through it, out of respect for Miss Neal. But he hadn’t liked it at all. Except for that one line. He didn’t know what made it stand out from the gazillion other lines in the epic work. He didn’t even know what it meant. Until now. He, too, was stuck on the stutter of a decimal point. His world had come down to this. To look up was to face disaster. And he wasn’t ready for that.

  He knew what tomorrow brought. He knew what he’d seen coming from so far off. Inexorably. Without hope of escape he waited for it to arrive. And it was almost there, on their doorstep. He looked over at his son, his little boy, who had changed so much in the last few months. They’d thought it was drugs, at first. His anger, his slipping grades, his dismissal of everything he had previously loved, like soccer, and movie night, and ‘NSYNC’. And his parents. Himself in particular, Matthew felt. For some reason Philippe’s rage was directed at him. Matthew wondered what was going on behind that euphoric face. Could Philippe possibly know what was coming, and be happy about it?

  Matthew adjusted the ravioli, just in time, before his world exploded.

  Each time the phone rang in the Incident Room activity stopped. And it rang often. Various officers checking in. Shopkeepers, neighbors, bureaucrats returning phone calls.

  The old Canadian National rail station had proven perfect for their needs. A team had worked with the volunteer fire department and cleared a space in the center of what must have been the waiting room. Glowing varnished wood went a quarter of the way up the walls and the walls themselves had held posters with fire tips and past winners of the Governor-General’s Literary Awards, a hint as to who the fire chief might be. The Sûreté officers had removed those, neatly rolling them up, and replaced them with flow charts and maps and lists of suspects. It now looked like any other incident room, in an old and atmospheric train station. It was a space that seemed used to waiting. All those hundreds, thousands, of people who’d sat in this room, waiting. For trains. To take them away, or to bring their loved ones home. And now men and women again sat in the space, waiting. This time for a report from the Sûreté lab in Montreal. The report that would send them home. The report that would destroy the Crofts. Gamache got up, pretended to stretch, and started to walk. The chief always paced, his hands clasped behind his back, his head down looking at his feet, when he got impatient. Now, as the others pretended to work the phones and gather information, Chief Inspector Gamache circled them, slowly, with a measured pace. Unhurried, unperturbed, unstoppable.

  Gamache had risen before the sun that morning. His little travel alarm said 5.55. He was always delighted when a digital clock had all the same numbers. Half an hour later, dressed in his warmest clothes, he was tiptoeing down the stairs toward the front door of the B. & B. when he heard a noise in the kitchen.

  ‘Bonjour, M. l’Inspecteur’, said Gabri coming out in a deep purple bathrobe and fluffy slippers, holding a thermos. ‘I thought you might like a café au lait, to go.’

  Gamache could have kissed him.

  ‘And’, Gabri whipped a small paper bag out from behind his back, ‘a couple of croissants.’

  Gamache could have married him. ‘Merci, infiniment, patron.’

  Minutes later Armand Gamache sat on the frosted wooden bench on the green. For half an hour he sat there in the still, peaceful, dark morning, and watched the sky change. Black became royal blue and then a hint of gold. The forecasters had finally go
tten it right. The day dawned brilliant, crisp, clear and cold. And the village awoke. One by one lights appeared in the windows. It was a tranquil few minutes, and Gamache appreciated every calm moment, pouring rich, full bodied café au lait from the thermos into the little metal cup, and burrowing into the paper bag for a flaky croissant, still warm from the oven.

  Gamache sipped and chewed. But mostly he watched.

  At ten to seven a light went on over at Ben Hadley’s place. A few minutes later Daisy could be seen limping around the yard, her tail wagging. Gamache knew from experience the last earthly acts of most dogs was to lick their master and wag their tail. Through the window Gamache could just make out movement in Ben’s home as he prepared breakfast.

  Gamache waited.

  The village stirred and by seven-thirty most homes had come to life. Lucy had been let out of the Morrow home and was wandering around, sniffing. She put her nose in the air, then slowly turned and walked then trotted and finally ran to the trail through the woods that would take her home. Back to her mother. Gamache watched the golden-feathered tail disappear into the maple and cherry forest, and felt his heart break. A few minutes later Clara came out and called Lucy. A single forlorn bark was heard and Gamache watched as Clara went into the woods and returned a moment later, followed slowly by Lucy, her head down and her tail still.

  Clara had slept fitfully the night before, waking up every few hours with that sinking feeling that was becoming a companion. Loss. It wasn’t the shriek it had been, more a moan in her marrow. She and Peter had spoken again over the dishes while the others sat in the living room, mulling over the possibility Jane had been murdered.