Still Life

  Agent Yvette Nichol raced around her home, looking for her wallet.

  ‘Oh, come on, Dad, you must have seen it,’ she pleaded, watching the wall clock and its pitiless movement.

  Her father felt frozen in place. He had seen her wallet. He’d taken it earlier in the day and slipped twenty dollars in. It was a little game they played. He gave her extra money and she pretended not to notice, though every now and then he’d come home from the night shift at the brewery and there’d be an éclair in the fridge with his name on it, in her clear, almost childlike, hand.

  He’d taken her wallet a few minutes ago to slip the money in, but when the call had come through for his daughter to report for a homicide case he’d done something he never dreamed he’d do. He hid it, along with her Sûreté warrant card. A small document she’d worked years to earn. He watched her now, throwing cushions from the sofa on to the floor. She’ll tear the place apart looking for it, he realised.

  ‘Help me, Dad, I’ve got to find it.’ She turned to him, her eyes huge and desperate. Why’s he just standing in the room not doing anything? she wondered. This was her big chance, the moment they’d talked about for years. How many times had they shared this dream of her one day making it on to the Sûreté? It had finally happened, and now, thanks to a lot of hard work and, frankly, her own natural talents as an investigator, she was actually being handed the chance to work on homicide with Gamache. Her Dad knew all about him. Had followed his career in the papers.

  ‘Your Uncle Saul, now he had a chance to be on the police force, but he washed out,’ her father had told her, shaking his head. ‘Shame on him. And you know what happens to losers?’

  ‘They lose their lives.’ Yvette knew the right answer to that. She’d been told the family story since she’d had ears to hear.

  ‘Uncle Saul, your grandparents. All. Now you’re the bright one in the family, Yvette. We’re counting on you.’

  And she’d exceeded every expectation, by qualifying for the Sûreté. In one generation her family had gone from victims of the authorities in Czechoslovakia, to the ones who made the rules. They’d moved from one end of the gun to the other.

  She liked it there.

  But now the only thing standing between the fulfillment of all their dreams and failure, like stupid Uncle Saul, was her missing wallet and her warrant card. The clock was ticking. She’d told the Chief Inspector she’d be at his place in fifteen minutes. That was five minutes ago. She had ten minutes to get across town, and to pick up coffee on the way.

  ‘Help me,’ she pleaded, dumping the contents of her purse on to the living-room floor.

  ‘Here it is.’ Her sister Angelina came out of the kitchen holding the wallet and the warrant card. Nichol practically fell on Angelina and, kissing her, she rushed to put her coat on.

  Ari Nikulas was watching his beloved youngest child, trying to memorise every inch of her precious face and trying not to give in to the wretched fear nesting in his stomach. What had he done, planting this ridiculous idea into her head? He’d lost no family in Czechoslovakia. Had made it up to fit in, to sound heroic. To be a big man in their new country. But his daughter had believed it, had believed there had once been a stupid Uncle Saul and a slaughtered family. And now it had gone too far. He couldn’t tell her the truth.

  She flew into his arms and kissed him on his stubbled cheek. He held her for a moment too long and she paused, looking into his tired, strained eyes.

  ‘Don’t worry, Dad. I won’t let you down.’ And she was off.

  He’d just had time to notice how a tiny curl of her dark hair hooked on to the side of her ear, and hung there.

  Yvette Nichol rang the doorbell within fifteen minutes of hanging up the phone. Standing awkwardly on the stoop she looked around. This was an attractive quartier, within an easy walk of the shops and restaurants along Rue Bernard. Outremont was a leafy neighborhood populated by the intellectual and political elite of French Quebec. She’d seen the Chief Inspector at headquarters, bustling through the halls, always with a group of people in his slipstream. He was very senior and had a reputation for acting as a mentor to the people lucky enough to work with him. She counted herself fortunate.

  He opened the door promptly, just fixing his tweed cap to his head and gave her a warm smile. He held out his hand and after a slight hesitation she shook it.

  ‘I’m Chief Inspector Gamache.’

  ‘It’s an honour.’

  As the passenger door of the unmarked car was opened for him, Gamache caught the unmistakable fragrance of Tim Horton’s coffee in cardboard cups and another aroma. Brioche. The young agent had done her homework. Only while on a murder case did he drink fast-food coffee. It was so associated in his mind with the teamwork, the long hours, the standing in cold, damp fields, that his heart raced every time he smelt industrial coffee and wet cardboard.

  ‘I downloaded the preliminary report from the scene. A hard copy is in the file back there.’ Nichol waved toward the back seat while negotiating Blvd St Denis to the autoroute which would take them over the Champlain Bridge and into the countryside.

  The rest of the trip was made in silence, as he read the scant information, sipped coffee, ate pastry and watched the flat farmlands around Montreal close in and become slowly rolling hills, then larger mountains, covered with brilliant autumn leaves.

  About twenty minutes after turning off the Eastern Townships autoroute they passed a small pockmarked sign telling them Three Pines was two kilometers off this secondary road. After a tooth-jarring minute or two along the washboard dirt road they saw the inevitable paradox. An old stone mill sat beside a pond, the mid morning sun warming its fieldstones. Around it the maples and birches and wild cherry trees held their fragile leaves, like thousands of happy hands waving to them upon arrival. And police cars. The snakes in Eden. Though, Gamache knew, the police were not the evil ones. The snake was already here.

  Gamache walked straight toward the anxious crowd that had gathered. As he approached he could see the road dip down, gently sloping into a picturesque village. The growing crowd stood on the brow of the hill, some looking into the woods, where they could just make out the movement of officers in bright yellow jackets, but most were looking at him. Gamache had seen their expression countless times, people desperate for news they desperately didn’t want to hear.

  ‘Who is it? Can you tell us what happened?’ A tall, distinguished man spoke for the others.

  ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t even seen for myself yet. I’ll tell you as soon as I can.’

  The man looked unhappy with the answer but nodded. Gamache checked his watch: 11 a.m., Thanksgiving Sunday. He turned from the crowd and walked to where they were staring, to the activity in the woods and the one spot of stillness he knew he’d find.

  A yellow plastic tape circled the body and within that circle the investigators worked, bowing down like some pagan ritual. Most had been with Gamache for years, but he always kept one position open for a trainee.

  ‘Inspector Jean Guy Beauvoir, this is Agent Yvette Nichol.’

  Beauvoir gave a relaxed nod. ‘Welcome.’

  At thirty-five years old, Jean Guy Beauvoir had been Gamache’s second in command for more than a decade. He wore cords and a wool sweater under his leather jacket. A scarf was rakishly and apparently randomly whisked around his neck. It was a look of studied nonchalance which suited his toned body but was easily contradicted by the cord-tight tension of his stance. Jean Guy Beauvoir was loosely wrapped but tightly wound.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Nichol wondered whether she would ever be as comfortable at a murder scene as these people.

  ‘Chief Inspector Gamache, this is Robert Lemieux,’ Beauvoir introduced a young officer standing respectfully just outside the police cordon. ‘Agent Lemieux was the duty officer with the Cowansville Sûreté. He got the call and came here immediately. Secured the scene then called us.’

  ‘Well done.’ Gamache shook his hand. ‘Anything strike you wh
en you arrived?’

  Lemieux looked dumbfounded by the question. At best he’d hoped to be allowed to hang around and watch, and not be shooed away from the scene. He’d never expected to meet Gamache, never mind actually answer a question.

  ‘Bien sûr, I saw that man there. An Anglais, I suspected by his clothes and his pallor. The English, I have noticed, have weak stomachs.’ Lemieux was pleased to pass this insight on to the Chief Inspector even though he’d just made it up. He had no idea whether Les Anglais were more prone to pallor than the Quebecois, but it sounded good. It had also been Lemieux’s experience that the English had no clothes sense, and this man in his plaid flannel shirt could not possibly be francophone. ‘His name is Benjamin Hadley.’

  On the far side of the circle, half sitting against a maple tree, Gamache could see a middle-aged man. Tall, slim, looking very, very ill. Beauvoir followed Gamache’s gaze.

  ‘He found the body,’ said Beauvoir.

  ‘Hadley? As in Hadley’s Mills?’

  Beauvoir smiled. He couldn’t imagine how he knew this, but he did. ‘That’s the one. You know him?’

  ‘No. Not yet.’ Beauvoir cocked his eyebrow at his chief and waited. Gamache explained, ‘The mill has faded writing at the top.’

  ‘Hadley’s Mills.’

  ‘Well deduced, Beauvoir.’

  ‘A wild guess, sir.’

  Nichol could have kicked herself. She’d been everywhere Gamache had been and he had noticed that and she hadn’t. What else did he see? What else didn’t she? Damn. She looked suspiciously at Lemieux. He seemed to be ingratiating himself to the Chief Inspector.

  ‘Merci, Agent Lemieux,’ she said, putting out her hand while the Chief Inspector’s back was turned, watching the wretched ‘Anglais’. Lemieux took it, as she hoped he would. ‘Au revoir.’ Lemieux stood uncertainly for a moment, looking from her to Gamache’s broad back. Then he shrugged and left.

  Armand Gamache turned his attention from the living to the dead. He walked a few paces and knelt down beside the body that had brought them there.

  A clump of hair had fallen into Jane Neal’s open eyes. Gamache wanted to brush it away. It was fanciful, he knew. But he was fanciful. He had come to allow himself a certain latitude in that area. Beauvoir, on the other hand, was reason itself, and that made them a formidable team.

  Gamache stared quietly at Jane Neal. Nichol cleared her throat, thinking perhaps he’d forgotten where he was. But he didn’t react. Didn’t move. He and Jane were frozen in time, both staring, one down, one up. Then his eyes moved along her body, to the worn camel-hair cardigan, the light-blue turtleneck. No jewelry. Was she robbed? He’d have to ask Beauvoir. Her tweed skirt was where you’d expect it to be, in someone who’d fallen. Her leotards, patched in at least one place, were otherwise unmarred. She might have been robbed, but she hadn’t been violated. Except for being killed, of course.

  His deep brown eyes lingered on her liver-spotted brown hands. Rough, tanned hands that had known seasons in a garden. No rings on her fingers, or sign there had ever been. He always felt a pang when looking at the hands of the newly dead, imagining all the objects and people those hands had held. The food, the faces, the doorknobs. All the gestures they’d made to signal delight or sorrow. And the final gesture, surely, to ward off the blow that would kill. The most poignant were the hands of young people who would never absently brush a lock of gray hair from their own eyes.

  He stood up with Beauvoir’s help and asked, ‘Was she robbed?’

  ‘We don’t think so. Mr Hadley says she never wore jewelry, and rarely carried a handbag. He thinks we’ll find it in her home.’

  ‘Her house key?’

  ‘No. No key. But again, Mr Hadley says people don’t lock up around here.’

  ‘They will now.’ Gamache stooped over the body and stared at the tiny wound, hardly large enough, you’d have thought, to drain the life from a whole human being. It was about the size of the tip of his little finger.

  ‘Any idea what did this?’

  ‘It’s hunting season, so perhaps a bullet, though it doesn’t look like any bullet wound I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘It’s actually bow-hunting season. Guns don’t start for two weeks,’ said Nichol.

  The two men looked at her. Gamache nodded and the three of them stared at the wound as though perhaps with enough concentration it would talk.

  ‘So where’s the arrow?’ Beauvoir asked.

  ‘Is there an exit wound?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Beauvoir. ‘We haven’t let the medical examiner move her.’

  ‘Let’s get her over here,’ said Gamache as Beauvoir waved to a young woman in jeans, field coat and carrying a medical bag.

  ‘Monsieur l’Inspecteur,’ said Dr Sharon Harris, nodding and kneeling. ‘She’s been dead about five hours, perhaps slightly less. That’s just a guess.’ Dr Harris rolled Jane over. Dried leaves clung to the back of her sweater. A retching noise was heard and Nichol looked over to see Ben Hadley, his heaving back turned to them, throwing up.

  ‘Yes, there’s an exit wound.’

  ‘Thank you, doctor. We’ll leave you to it. Now, walk with me, Beauvoir, you too, Agent Nichol. Tell me what you know.’

  In all the years Jean Guy Beauvoir had worked with Gamache, through all the murders and mayhem, it never ceased to thrill him, hearing that simple sentence. ‘Tell me what you know.’ It signaled the beginning of the hunt. He was the alpha dog. And Chief Inspector Gamache was Master of the Hunt.

  ‘Her name’s Jane Neal. Aged seventy-six. Never been married. We got this information from Mr Hadley who says she was the same age as his mother who died a month ago.’

  ‘That’s interesting. Two elderly women die within a month of each other in this tiny village. I wonder.’

  ‘I wondered too, so I asked. His mother died after a long battle with cancer. They could see it coming for a year.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Mr Hadley was walking in the woods at about eight this morning, a regular occurrence. Miss Neal’s body was lying across the path. Impossible to miss.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He says he recognised her immediately. He knelt down and shook her. He thought she’d had a stroke or heart attack. Says he was about to begin CPR when he noticed the wound.’

  ‘Didn’t he notice she was staring blank-eyed and was cold as marble?’ Nichol was feeling more confident.

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘Of course. You couldn’t miss it.’

  ‘Unless . . .’ Here Gamache was inviting her to argue against herself. She didn’t want to. She wanted to be right. Clearly he thought she wasn’t.

  ‘Unless. Unless I was in shock, I suppose.’ She had to admit that was a remote possibility.

  ‘Look at the man. It’s been three hours since he found her and he’s still sick. He just threw up. This woman was important to him,’ said Gamache, looking over at Ben Hadley. ‘Unless he’s faking it.’

  ‘Sorry, sir?’

  ‘Well, it’s easy enough to stick a finger down your throat and throw up. Makes quite an impression.’ Gamache turned to Beauvoir. ‘Do any others know about the death of Miss Neal?’

  ‘There was a group of villagers on the road, sir,’ said Nichol. Gamache and Beauvoir looked at her. She’d done it again, she realised. In an effort to impress and redeem herself she’d in fact done the opposite. She’d answered a question not directed at her, interrupting a senior officer with information obvious to a three-year-old. Inspector Gamache had seen those people as well as she had. Damn! Nichol knew with a creeping chill that in trying to impress them with her brilliance she was having the opposite effect. She was proving herself a fool.

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘Inspector Beauvoir?’

  ‘I’ve tried to keep this a sterile site.’ He turned to Nichol.

  ‘No outsiders, and none of our people talking about the crime outside our perimeter.’ Nichol blushed a deep red. She hate
d that he felt he had to explain it to her, and she hated even more that she needed the explanation.

  ‘But—’ Beauvoir shrugged.

  ‘Time to speak with Mr Hadley,’ said Gamache, walking with a measured pace in his direction.

  Ben Hadley had been watching them, understanding clearly that the boss had arrived.

  ‘Mr Hadley, I’m Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Quebec.’

  Ben had been expecting a francophone, perhaps even a unilingual French detective, so he’d spent a few minutes practicing his French, and how to describe his movements. Now this immaculate man with the trimmed moustache, the deep-brown eyes looking at him over the rim of his half-moon glasses, the three-piece suit (could that possibly be a Burberry coat?), the tweed cap with graying, groomed hair underneath, was extending his large hand—as though this was a slightly formal business occasion—and speaking English with a British accent. Yet he’d heard snippets of his conversation with his colleagues and that was definitely in fast and fluid French. In Quebec it was far from unusual that people spoke both languages, even fluently. But it was unusual to find a francophone speaking like a hereditary member of the House of Lords.