Still Life

by Louise Penny

  ‘Just fine. But I called with a question. I’m sorry to disturb you on your leave, but this has something to do with your notary practice.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right. The office calls every day. What can I help you with?’

  ‘Did you know that Jane Neal had died?’

  ‘No, no, I hadn’t heard. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It was an accident. In the woods.’

  ‘Oh, I did hear about that when I got back. I was visiting my parents in Montreal for Thanksgiving, so I missed it. You mean, that was Jane Neal?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Weren’t the police involved?’

  ‘Yes. They seem to think Norman Stickley, in Williamsburg, was her notary. But I thought she’d come to you.’

  ‘Could you come to my office tomorrow morning?’

  ‘What time’s good for you?’

  ‘Say eleven? Clara, could you invite the police? I think they’ll be interested.’

  It took Philippe Croft a few minutes to trust it wasn’t a trap before he admitted everything. His long pale fingers picked at a pill of fluff on his sweatpants as he told his story. He’d wanted to punish his father, so he’d taken the old bow and arrows and gone hunting. He’d fired just once. But that was enough. Instead of the stag he knew he’d killed, he found Jane Neal, spread-eagled. Dead. He could still see those eyes. They followed him.

  ‘You can let them go now,’ said Gamache, quietly. ‘They’re someone else’s nightmare.’

  Philippe had simply nodded and Gamache was reminded of Myrna, and the pain we choose to carry around. He wanted to take Philippe in his arms and tell him he wouldn’t be fourteen for ever. Just to hold on.

  But Gamache didn’t. He knew that while the intention was kind, the act would be seen as an assault. An insult. Instead he stuck out his large, steady hand to the boy. After a moment Philippe slipped his own pale hand in, as though he’d never shook hands with a man before, and squeezed.

  Gamache and Beauvoir arrived back in the village to find Agent Lacoste fending off Yolande. She’d been sent to Jane Neal’s cottage, warrant in hand. She’d managed to get Yolande out and to lock the door, and was now practicing her impression of a Palace Guard, immutable in the face of provocation.

  ‘I’ll sue your ass. I’ll get you fired, you ugly little tramp.’ Spying Beauvoir, Yolande turned on him. ‘How dare you kick me out of my own home?’

  ‘Did you show Ms Fontaine the warrant, Agent?’

  ‘I did, sir.’

  ‘Then you know’, Beauvoir turned to Yolande, ‘that this is now a homicide investigation. I take it you want to find out who killed your aunt?’

  It was a low blow, but almost always effective. Who could say no?

  ‘No. I don’t care. Will it bring her back? Tell me it’ll bring her back and I’ll let you into my home.’

  ‘We’re already in, and this isn’t a negotiation. Now, I need to speak with you and your husband. Is he home?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Well, why don’t we just go and see.’

  When they’d pulled up in Gamache’s car they’d seen Yolande going after Lacoste, who seemed to have been stuffed.

  ‘Poor woman.’ Gamache smiled. ‘This will make a story she can bore her rookies with one day. Listen, we’re both anxious to get into that house, but I’d like to get a couple of things out of the way first. Go and interview Yolande and try to get André as well. I want to speak with Myrna Landers.’

  ‘Why?’

  Gamache told him.

  ‘I need to know what Timmer Hadley said that day you were sitting with her.’

  Myrna locked the door to her bookshop and poured them each a cup of tea. Then she sat down in the comfortable chair opposite him. ‘I think you’ll be disappointed. I can’t see that it matters to anyone now, alive or dead.’

  ‘You’d be surprised.’

  ‘I dare say.’ She sipped her tea and looked out the window into the dusk, her mind going back to that afternoon just a few months ago. Seemed like years. Timmer Hadley a skeleton draped with flesh. Her eyes bright in the head made huge by a shriveled body. They’d sat together, Myrna perched on the side of the bed, Timmer wrapped in blankets and hot-water bottles. The big old brown album between them. The photos falling out, their glue long since turned to grit. One that had slipped out was of a young Jane Neal and her parents and sister.

  Timmer told Myrna about Jane’s parents, prisoners of their own insecurities and fears. Those fears passed on to the sister Irene, who had also become a social climber and searched for security in objects and the approval of others. But not Jane. And then came the story Gamache had asked about:

  ‘This was taken on the last day of the county fair. The day after the dance. You can see how happy Jane is,’ Timmer had said, and it was true. Even in the grainy photo she glowed, even more in comparison to the glum faces of her parents and sister.

  ‘She’d become engaged to her young man that night,’ said Timmer, wistfully. ‘What was his name? Andreas. He was a lumberjack, of all things. Doesn’t matter. She hadn’t told her parents yet, but she had a plan. She’d elope. They made a wonderful couple. Rather odd to look at, until you got to know them and saw how good they were together. They loved each other. Except,’ and here Timmer’s brow had clouded, ‘Ruth Kemp went to Jane’s parents, here at the fair, and told them what Jane planned to do. She did it in secret but I overheard. I was young, and my big regret to this day was not going to Jane right away to warn her. But I didn’t.’

  ‘What happened?’ Myrna asked.

  ‘They took Jane home and broke up the relationship. Spoke to Kaye Thompson, who employed Andreas, and threatened to take away the mills’ business from her operation if this lumberjack so much as looked at Jane. You could do that in those days. Kaye’s a good woman, a fair woman, and she explained it all to him, but it broke his heart. He apparently tried to see Jane, but couldn’t.’

  ‘And Jane?’

  ‘She was told she couldn’t see him. No debate. She was only seventeen, and not a very headstrong person. She gave in. It was a horrible thing.’

  ‘Did Jane ever know it was Ruth who did it?’

  ‘I never told her. Perhaps I should have. Seemed there was enough pain, but probably I was just afraid.’

  ‘Did you ever say anything to Ruth?’

  ‘No.’

  Myrna looked down at the photograph in Timmer’s translucent hand. A moment of joy caught just before it was extinguished.

  ‘Why did Ruth do it?’

  ‘I don’t know. For sixty years I’ve wondered that. Maybe she wonders the same thing. There’s something about her, something bitter, that resents happiness in others, and needs to ruin it. That’s probably what makes her a great poet, she knows what it is to suffer. She gathers suffering to her. Collects it, and sometimes creates it. I think that’s why she likes to sit with me, she feels more comfortable in the company of a dying woman than a thriving one. But perhaps I’m being unfair.’

  Listening to Myrna’s narrative, Gamache thought he would’ve liked to meet Timmer Hadley. But too late. He was, though, about to meet Jane Neal, or at least get as close as he would ever come to doing so.

  Beauvoir stepped into the perfect home. So perfect it was lifeless. So perfect a tiny part of him found it attractive. He shoved that part down and pretended it didn’t exist.

  Yolande Fontaine’s home gleamed. Every surface glowed with polish. In his stockinged feet he was shown into the living room, a room whose only blemish sat in an overstuffed chair and read the sports section. André didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge his wife. Yolande made her way to him. Actually, to his pile of dumped newspaper, forming a teepee village on the tasteful area rug. She picked up the paper, folded it, and put it in a neat stack on the coffee table, all the edges lining up. Then she turned to Beauvoir.

  ‘Now, Inspector, would you like a coffee?’

  Her change in attitude almost gave him whiplash, then he remembe

red. They were in her home. Her territory. It was safe for the lady of the manor to make an appearance.

  ‘No, thank you. I just need some answers.’

  Yolande inclined her head slightly, a gracious gesture to a working man.

  ‘Did you take anything out of Miss Neal’s home?’

  This question brought a rise, but not from Yolande. André lowered his paper and scowled. ‘And what business is it of yours?’

  ‘We now believe Miss Neal was murdered. We have a warrant to search her home and seal it off.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means no one but the police are allowed in.’

  A look was exchanged between husband and wife, the first since Beauvoir had arrived. It wasn’t a loving, supportive glance, more a question from him and a confirmation from her. Beauvoir was convinced. They’d done something in that home.

  ‘Did you take anything?’ he repeated.

  ‘No,’ said Yolande.

  ‘If you’re lying, I’ll have you charged with interfering with the investigation and that, M. Malenfant, won’t look good on your already impressive record.’ Malenfant smiled. He didn’t care.

  ‘What’ve you been doing in there for five days, Ms. Fontaine?’

  ‘Decorating.’ She swept her arm around the living room. It screamed cheap ‘taste’. The curtains struck him as a little odd, then he noticed she’d put the pattern on both sides, so it showed outside as well as in the home. He’d never seen that before, but wasn’t surprised. Yolande Fontaine only really existed with an audience. She was like those novelty lamps that came on when you clapped your hands. She switched to life with applause, or the sharp clap of rebuke. Any reaction, as long as it was directed at her, was sufficient. Silence and solitude drained her of life.

  ‘This is a lovely room,’ he lied. ‘Is the rest of the home as - elegant?’

  She heard his clapping and sprung into action. ‘Come with me,’ she said, practically dragging him around the tiny home. It was like a hotel room, sterile and anonymous. It seemed Yolande had become so self-absorbed she no longer existed. She’d finally absorbed herself.

  He saw a door ajar off the kitchen and made a guess. Reaching out he opened it and in a bound he was down the stairs and looking at an unholy mess.

  ‘Don’t go down there, that’s Andre’s area.’ He ignored her and quickly moved around the dank room until he found what he’d been looking for. A pair of still-wet Wellingtons and a bow leaning against the wall.

  ‘Where were you on the morning Jane Neal was killed?’ Beauvoir asked André, once they’d returned to the living room.

  ‘Sleeping, where else?’

  ‘Well, how about hunting?’

  ‘Mebbe. Dunno. I got a license you know.’

  ‘That wasn’t the question. Were you hunting last Sunday morning?’

  André shrugged. ,

  ‘I saw a dirty bow in the basement.’ So like André, he thought, not to clean his equipment. But looking at the antiseptic home Beauvoir could see why André might yearn for mud. And disorder. And time away from Lemon Pledge.

  ‘And you think it’s still wet and dirty from last week?’ André hooted.

  ‘No, from today. You hunt on Sundays, don’t you? Every Sunday, including one week ago, the day Jane Neal was killed. Let me make this clear. This is now a murder investigation. Who’s the most likely suspect in any murder? A family member. Who’s the next most likely suspect? Someone who benefits from the death. And if that person has the opportunity as well, we might as well start making your bed in the penitentiary right now. You two win. We know you’re in debt.’ He took a calculated guess, ‘You believed you inherited everything, and you, André, know how to shoot a bow and arrow well enough to kill. Am I making myself clear?’

  ‘Look, Inspector,’ André rose from the chair, dropping the sports section a page at a time on the floor. ‘I went hunting and I bagged a deer the day Jane Neal was killed. You can ask Boxleiter at the abattoir, he dressed it for me.’

  ‘But you were out hunting today. Isn’t the limit one deer?’

  ‘What, now you’re a game warden? Yes. I went out today. I’ll kill as many deer as I want.’

  ‘And your son, Bernard? Where was he last Sunday?’

  ‘Sleeping.’

  ‘Sleeping like you were sleeping?’

  ‘Look, he’s fourteen, that’s what kids do on weekends. He sleeps, he wakes up long enough to piss me off and eat the food I put in the fridge, and then he goes back to bed. Wish I had his life.’

  ‘What do you do for a living?’

  ‘I’m unemployed. I was an astronaut, but I got laid off.’ And André roared at his own cleverness, a putrid laugh that seemed to deaden the room even further. ‘Yeah, they hired a one-armed black lesbian to replace me.’

  Beauvoir left their home wanting to call his wife and tell her how much he loved her, and then tell her what he believed in, and his fears and hopes and disappointments. To talk about something real and meaningful. He dialed his cell phone and got her. But the words got caught somewhere south of his throat. Instead he told her the weather had cleared, and she told him about the movie she’d rented. Then they both hung up. Driving back to Three Pines Beauvoir noticed an odor clinging to his clothes. Lemon Pledge.

  He found the chief standing outside Miss Neal’s home, the key pressed into the palm of his hand. Gamache had waited for him. Finally, exactly a week after her death, the two men walked into Jane Neal’s home.

  ELEVEN

  ‘Tabernacle’, whispered Beauvoir, then after a pause during which neither man breathed. ‘Christ.’

  They stood on the threshold of Jane’s living room, frozen in place. Riveted as to a particularly gruesome accident. But what held them fast was no mere accident, it was more aggressive, more intentional.

  ‘If I was Jane Neal I’d keep people out, too,’ said Beauvoir, regaining his secular voice. For a moment. ‘Sacré.’

  Jane’s living room assaulted them with color. Huge Timothy Leary flowers daygloed, psychedelic three-dimensional silver towers and mushrooms advanced and retreated, enormous yellow Happy Faces marched around the fireplace. It was a veritable parade of bad taste.

  ‘Shit,’ whispered Beauvoir.

  The room glowed in the gathering gloom. Even the ceiling between the old timbers was wallpapered. It was more than a joke, it was a travesty. Any lover of Quebecois heritage and architecture would feel wretched in this room and Gamache, who was both, could taste his lunch in his throat.

  He hadn’t expected this. Faced with this cacophony of color he couldn’t remember what he’d expected, but certainly not this. He tore his eyes from the maniacal Happy Faces and forced himself to look down to the wide plank floors, made with timber hand-hewn by a man being chased by winter two hundred years ago. Floors like this were rare, even in Quebec, and considered by some, Gamache included, works of art. Jane Neal was fortunate enough to live in one of the tiny original fieldstone homes, made from stones literally yanked from the land as it was cleared for planting. To own a home like this was to be a custodian of Quebec history.

  With dread Gamache lowered his eyes from the walls to the floor.

  It was painted pink. Glossy pink.

  He groaned. Beside him Beauvoir almost, almost reached out to touch the Chief Inspector on the arm. He knew how upsetting this would be for any lover of heritage. It was a sacrilege.

  ‘Why?’ asked Gamache, but the Happy Faces remained mute. So did Beauvoir. He had no answer but then he was always astonished by ‘les Anglais’. This room was just one more example of their unfathomable behavior. As the silence stretched on Beauvoir felt he owed the Chief at least an attempt at an answer.

  ‘Maybe she needed a change. Isn’t that how most of our antiques ended up in other people’s homes? Our grandparents sold them to rich Anglos. Got rid of pine tables and armoirs and brass beds to buy junk from the Eaton’s catalogue.’

  ‘True,’ agreed Gamache. That was exactly how it had happened sixty, seventy years earlier, ‘but look at that.’ He pointed to a corner. An astonishing diamond-point pine armoire with its original milk paint sat filled with Port Neuf pottery. ‘And there.’ Gamache pointed to a huge oak Welsh dresser. ‘This here,’ he walked over to a side table, ‘is a faux Louis Quatorze table, made by hand by a woodworker who knew the style in France and was trying to duplicate it. A piece like this is almost priceless. No, Jean Guy, Jane Neal knew antiques and loved them. I can’t imagine why she’d collect these pieces, then turn around and paint the floor. But that wasn’t what I was asking.’ Gamache turned around slowly, surveying the room. A throbbing was starting in his right temple. ‘I was wondering why Miss Neal kept her friends out of here.’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ an amazed Beauvoir asked.

  ‘No, it isn’t. If she did this she must have liked this style. She certainly wouldn’t have been ashamed of it. So why keep them out? And let’s even suppose this was done by someone else, her parents, for example, back in the days this sort of thing was in—’

  ‘Hate to tell you, but it’s back.’ Beauvoir had just bought a lava lamp, but didn’t think he’d tell the chief about that now. Gamache brought his hands up and rubbed his face. Lowering them he still saw the acid-trip room. Shit, indeed.

  ‘All right, let’s just say her elderly and probably demented parents did this and she didn’t change it for some reason, like finances or loyalty to them or something like that, well, really it’s pretty awful, but it’s not that bad. Embarrassing at worst, but not shameful. To keep friends out of the heart of her home for decades speaks of more than embarrassment.’

  Both men looked around again. The room had beautiful proportions, Beauvoir had to admit. But that was kind of like saying a blind date had a good personality. You still wouldn’t want to introduce her to your friends. Beauvoir could understand perfectly how Jane Neal felt. He thought, perhaps, he’d return the lava lamp.

  Gamache walked slowly around the room. Was there anything here he shouldn’t see? Why had Jane Neal, a woman who loved and trusted her friends, kept them out of this room? And why did she change her mind two days before she was killed? What secret did this room hold?

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