Still Life

by Louise Penny

  A blonde woman with a great big smile greeted Chief Inspector Gamache at the door.

  ‘M. Gamache, I’m Yolande Fontaine,’ her hand was out and pumping before he’d even slipped his into it. He felt a practiced eye sweep over him, assessing. He’d called to make sure she was in the office before leaving Three Pines and clearly he, or his Burberry, measured up.

  ‘Now, please have a seat. What kind of property are you interested in?’ She maneuvered him into an orange-upholstered cupped chair. Bringing out his warrant card he handed it across the desk and watched the smile fade.

  ‘What’s that goddamned kid done now? Tabernacle. Her impeccable French had disappeared as well, replaced by street French, twangy and harsh, the words covered in grit.

  ‘No, Madame. Is your aunt Jane Neal? Of Three Pines?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I have bad news. Your aunt was found dead today.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she responded, with all the emotion one greets a stain on an old T-shirt. ‘Heart?’

  ‘No. It wasn’t a natural death.’

  Yolande Fontaine stared as though trying to absorb the words. She clearly knew what each individual word meant, but put together they didn’t make any sense.

  ‘Not natural? What does that mean?’

  Gamache looked at the woman sitting in front of him. Lacquered nails, blonde hair puffed up and soldered into place, her face made up as though for a ball, at noon. She’d be in her early thirties, he figured, but perversely the heavy make-up made her look about fifty. She didn’t appear to be living a natural life.

  ‘She was found in the woods. Killed.’

  ‘Murdered?’ she whispered.

  ‘We don’t know. I understand you’re her closest relative. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes. My mother was her younger sister. She died of breast cancer four years ago. They were very close. Like this.’ Here Yolande attempted to cross her fingers but the nails kept knocking into each other making it look like a finger puppet version of All Star Wrestling. She gave up and looked at Gamache knowingly.

  ‘When can I get into the house?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘In Three Pines. Aunt Jane always said it would be mine.’ Gamache had seen enough grief in his time to know that people handle it in different ways. His own mother, upon waking up next to her husband of fifty years dead in the bed, called her hairdresser first to cancel her appointment. Gamache knew better than to judge people based upon what they do when presented with bad news. Still, it was an odd question.

  ‘I don’t know. We haven’t even been in yet.’

  Yolande became agitated.

  ‘Well, I have a key. Can I go in before you, just to kind of tidy up?’

  He wondered briefly whether this was a real estate agent’s learned response.

  ‘No.’

  Yolande’s face became hard and red, matching her nails. This was a woman not used to hearing ‘no’, and a woman without mastery of her anger.

  ‘I’m calling my lawyer. The house is mine and I do not give you permission to enter. Got it?’

  ‘Speaking of lawyers, do you happen to know who your aunt used?’

  ‘Stickley. Norman Stickley.’ Her voice brittle. ‘We use him too from time to time for house transactions around Williamsburg.’

  ‘May I have his co-ordinates, please?’

  While she wrote them down in a florid hand Gamache glanced around and noticed some of the listings on the ‘For Sale’ board were estates, beautiful, sprawling ancestral homes. Most were more modest. Yolande had a lot of condos and trailer homes. Still, someone had to sell them, and it probably took a far better salesperson to sell a trailer home than a century home. But you’d have to sell a lot of trailers to make ends meet.

  ‘There,’ she shoved it across her desk. ‘You’ll hear from my lawyer.’

  Gamache found Olivier waiting for him in the car. ‘Am I late?’ he asked, checking his watch. It said 1.10.

  ‘No, a little early, in fact. I just had to pick up some shallots for tonight’s dinner.’ Gamache noticed a distinct and very pleasant odor in the car. ‘And, to be honest, I didn’t figure the interview with Yolande would take long.’

  Olivier smiled as he pulled the car on to rue Principale. ‘How’d it go?’

  ‘Not quite as I expected,’ admitted Gamache. Olivier gave a bark of a laugh.

  ‘She’s quite a piece of work is our Yolande. Did she cry hysterically?’

  ‘Actually, no.’

  ‘Well, that is a surprise. I would’ve thought given an audience, and the police at that, she’d make the most of her role as sole survivor. She’s a triumph of image over reality. I’m not even sure if she knows what reality is anymore, she’s so busy creating this image of herself.’

  ‘Image as what?’

  ‘A success. She needs to be seen as a happy and successful wife and mother.’

  ‘Don’t we all?’

  Here Olivier gave him an arch and openly gay look. Gamache caught it and realised what he’d said. He raised his eyebrow to Olivier as though returning the look and Olivier laughed again.

  ‘I meant’—Gamache smiled—‘we all have our public images.’

  Olivier nodded. It was true. Especially true in the gay community, he thought, where you had to be entertaining, clever, cynical and, above all, attractive. It was exhausting looking so bored all the time. It was one of the things that made him flee to the country. He felt in Three Pines he had a shot at being himself. What he hadn’t counted on was it taking so long to figure out who ‘he’ was.

  ‘That’s true. But it goes deeper with Yolande, I think. She’s like a Hollywood set. This big fake front and all sort of empty and ugly behind. Shallow.’

  ‘What was her relationship with Miss Neal?’

  ‘Well, apparently they were quite close when Yolande was small, but there was a rupture of sorts. No idea what it was. Yolande eventually pisses everyone off, but it must have been pretty big. Jane even refused to see Yolande.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘Not a clue. Clara might know. Timmer Hadley could certainly have told you, but she’s dead.’

  There it was again. Timmer’s death, so close to Jane’s.

  ‘And yet Yolande Fontaine seems to think Miss Neal left everything to her.’

  ‘Well, she might have. For some blood is thicker, etc.’

  ‘She seemed particularly anxious to get into Miss Neal’s home before we do. Does that make any sense to you?’

  Olivier considered. ‘Can’t say. I don’t think anyone can answer that question since no one has ever been into Jane’s home.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Gamache thought he must have misheard.

  ‘Funny, I’m so used to it I never even thought to mention it. Yes. That’s the only thing that was weird about Jane. She’d have us into the mudroom and kitchen. But never, ever, beyond the kitchen.’

  ‘Surely Clara—’

  ‘Not even Clara. Not Timmer. Nobody.’

  Gamache made a note to make that the first activity after lunch. They arrived back with a few minutes to spare. Gamache settled into the bench on the green and watched Three Pines go about its life and its singular death. Ben joined him for a few minutes chat then dragged Daisy back home. Before heading to the Bistro for lunch Gamache reflected on what he’d heard so far, and who would want to kill kindness.

  Beauvoir had set up a large stand with paper and magic markers. Gamache took a seat next to him in Olivier’s private back room and looked out through the wall of French doors. He could see tables, their umbrellas down, and beyond them the river. Bella Bella. He agreed.

  The room filled with hungry and cold Sûreté officers. Gamache noticed Agent Nichol was sitting by herself and wondered why she chose her isolated position. Beauvoir reported first between bites of a ham sandwich, made with thick-sliced ham carved from what must have been a maple-cured roast, with honey-mustard sauce and slabs of aged cheddar on a

fresh croissant.

  ‘We scoured the site and found’—Beauvoir checked his notebook, smearing a bit of mustard on the page—‘three old beer bottles.’

  Gamache raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s it?’

  ‘And fifteen million leaves.’

  ‘This is the wound.’ Beauvoir drew a circle using a red magic marker. The officers watched without interest. Then Beauvoir raised his hand again and completed the drawing, marking in four lines radiating from the circle, as though marking compass points. Several officers lowered their sandwiches. Now they were interested. It looked like a crude map of Three Pines. Contemplating the macabre image Gamache wondered if the killer could possibly have done that intentionally.

  ‘Would an arrow make this wound?’ Beauvoir asked. No one seemed to know.

  If an arrow had made that wound, thought Gamache, then where was it? It should be in the body. Gamache had an image from Notre Dame de Bon Secours, the church he and Reine-Marie attended sporadically. The walls were thick with murals of saints in various stages of pain and ecstasy. One of those images floated back to him now. St Sebastien, writhing, falling, his body stuffed full of arrows. Each one pointing out of his martyred body like accusing fingers. Jane Neal’s body should have had an arrow sticking out of it, and that arrow should have pointed to the person who did this. There should not have been an exit wound. But there was. Another puzzle.

  ‘Let’s leave this and move on. Next report.’

  The lunch progressed, the officers sitting around listening and thinking out loud, in an atmosphere that encouraged collaboration. He strongly believed in collaboration, not competition, within his team. He realised he was in a minority within the leadership of the Sûreté. He believed a good leader was also a good follower. And he invited his team to treat each other with respect, listen to ideas, support each other. Not everyone got it. This was a deeply competitive field, where the person who got results got promoted. And being second to solve a murder was useless. Gamache knew the wrong people were being rewarded within the Sûreté, so he rewarded the team players. He had a near-perfect solution rate and had never risen beyond the rank he now held and had held for twelve years. But he was a happy man.

  Gamache bit into a grilled chicken and roasted vegetable baguette and decided he was going to enjoy mealtimes in this place. Some of the officers took a beer, but not Gamache, who preferred ginger beer. The pile of sandwiches quickly disappeared.

  ‘The coroner found something odd,’ reported Isabelle Lacoste. ‘Two bits of feather imbedded in the wound.’

  ‘Don’t arrows have feathers?’ asked Gamache. He again saw St Sebastien and his arrows, all with feathers.

  ‘They used to,’ said Nichol quickly, glad of the opportunity to show expertise. ‘Now they’re plastic.’

  Gamache nodded. ‘I didn’t know that. Anything else?’

  ‘There was very little blood, as you saw, consistent with instant death. She was killed where she was found. The body wasn’t moved. Time of death, between six-thirty and seven this morning.’

  Gamache told them what he’d learned from Olivier and Yolande and handed out assignments. First up was searching Jane Neal’s home. Just then Gamache’s cell phone rang. It was Yolande Fontaine’s lawyer. Gamache never raised his voice, but his frustration was obvious.

  ‘We won’t be getting into Jane Neal’s home just yet,’ he reported after clicking his cell closed. ‘Ms Fontaine’s lawyer has unbelievably found a justice willing to sign an injunction stopping us from searching the home.’

  ‘Until?’ Beauvoir asked.

  ‘Until it’s proven to be murder or Ms Fontaine is proven not to have inherited the home. The new priorities are as follows. Find Jane Neal’s will, get information on local archers, and I want to know why a hunter, if he accidentally shot Miss Neal, would bother removing the arrow. And we need to find out more about Timmer Hadley’s death. I’ll get us an Incident Room somewhere in Three Pines. I’m also going to speak with the Morrows. Beauvoir, I’d like you with me. You too, Agent Nichol.’

  ‘It’s Thanksgiving,’ said Beauvoir. Gamache stopped in his tracks. He’d forgotten.

  ‘Who here has plans for Thanksgiving dinner?’

  All hands went up. He did too, come to that. Reine-Marie had asked their best friends over for dinner. Intimate, so he’d certainly be missed. And he doubted the treatment center excuse would fly with them.

  ‘Change of plans. We’ll be on the road back to Montreal by four—that’s in an hour and a half. Cover as much ground as you can between now and then. We don’t want this going cold because the turkey wouldn’t wait.’

  Beauvoir opened the wooden gate leading up the winding path to the cottage door. Hydrangea, turning pink now in the cold weather, bloomed around the house. The walk itself was lined with old garden roses, under-planted with some purple flower Gamache thought might be lavender. He made a mental note to ask Mrs Morrow, at a better time. The foxgloves and hollyhocks he knew immediately. His only regret about their apartment in Outremont was having only window boxes to plant. He’d love a garden exactly like this. It perfectly suited the modest brick home he was approaching. The deep blue door was opened by Peter even before they’d knocked and they stepped into a small mudroom with its collection of outdoor coats on pegs and boots stuffed under a long wooden bench.

  ‘The Burlington news says rain’s on the way,’ said Peter as he took their coats and led them through to the big country kitchen. “Course, they’re almost always wrong. We seem to have a microclimate here. Must be the mountains.’

  The room was warm and comfortable, with shiny dark wood counters and open shelving revealing crockery and tins and glasses. Rag throw rugs looked as though they had literally been thrown here and there on the vinyl floor, lending the room a relaxed charm. A huge bouquet, almost an island, sat at one end of the pine dining table. Clara sat at the other, wrapped in a multi-coloured afghan. She looked wan and disconnected.

  ‘Coffee?’ Peter wasn’t at all sure of the etiquette, but all three declined.

  Clara smiled slightly and rose, holding out her hand, the afghan slipping off her shoulder. So ingrained, Gamache knew, was our training to be polite that even in the midst of a terrible personal loss people still smiled.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said to Clara.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’d like you to sit over there,’ Gamache whispered to Nichol, pointing to a simple pine chair by the mudroom door, ‘and take notes.’

  Notes, Nichol said to herself. He’s treating me like a secretary. Two years in the Sûreté du Quebec and I’m asked to sit and take notes. The rest of them sat at the kitchen table. Neither Gamache nor Beauvoir took out their notebooks, she observed.

  ‘We think Jane Neal’s death was an accident,’ Gamache began, ‘but we have a problem. We can’t find a weapon, and no one’s come forward, so I’m afraid we’re going to have to investigate this as a suspicious death. Can you think of anyone who would want to harm your friend?’

  ‘No. Not a soul. Jane ran bake sales and rummage sales for the ACW here at St Thomas’s. She was a retired schoolteacher. She led a quiet, uneventful life.’

  ‘Mrs Morrow?’

  Clara thought a moment, or appeared to. But her brain was numb, incapable of giving a clear answer.

  ‘Does anyone gain by her death?’ Gamache thought maybe a clearer question would help.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Clara rallied, feeling a fool for feeling so much. ‘She was comfortable, I think, though we never talked about it. Out here a little money goes a long way, thankfully. She grew her own vegetables but she gave most of them away. I always thought she did it more for fun than necessity.’

  ‘How about her home?’ Beauvoir asked.

  ‘Yes, that would be worth quite a lot,’ said Peter. ‘But quite a lot by Three Pines standards, not by Montreal standards. She could get, maybe, a hundred and fifty thousand for it. Perhaps a little more.’

  ‘Could there be another way someone could gain by her death?’

  ‘Not an obvious one.’

  Gamache made to get up. ‘We need what we call an Incident Room. A private place we can make our temporary headquarters here in Three Pines. Can you think of a suitable spot?’

  ‘The railway station. It’s not used for that anymore. The volunteer fire department has its headquarters there. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind sharing it.’

  ‘We need something more private, I’m afraid.’

  ‘There’s the old schoolhouse,’ Clara suggested.

  ‘The one where Miss Neal worked?’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Peter. ‘We passed it walking down this morning. It’s owned by the Hadleys, but the archery club uses it these days.’

  ‘Archery club?’ Beauvoir asked, hardly able to believe his ears.

  ‘We’ve had one here for years. Ben and I started it years ago.’

  ‘Is it locked? Do you have a key?’

  ‘I have a key somewhere, I guess. Ben has one too, I think. But it’s never locked. Maybe it should have been.’ He looked at Clara, seeking her thoughts or comfort. He only found a blank face. Gamache nodded to Beauvoir who picked up his cell phone and placed a call while the others spoke.

  ‘I’d like to call a community meeting in the morning,’ said Gamache, ‘at St Thomas’s at eleven-thirty. But we need to get the word out.’

  ‘That’s easy. Tell Olivier. They’ll have the whole province there, and the cast of Cats. And his partner Gabri’s the choir director.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ll need music,’ said Gamache.

  ‘Neither do I, but you do need to get in. He has a set of keys.’

  ‘The archery club is open but the church is locked?’

  ‘The minister’s from Montreal,’ explained Peter.

  Gamache said his goodbyes and the three of them walked across the now familiar village green. Instinctively, they kicked their feet slightly as they walked through the fallen leaves, sending up a slight flutter and a musky autumn scent.

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