Still Life (Three Pines Mysteries)

by Louise Penny

  ‘Thanksgiving?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it. We were talking about great art, and I said I thought art became art when the artist put something of themselves into it. I asked Jane what she’d put into this work, and do you remember what she said?’

  ‘Sorry, I can’t.’

  ‘She agreed that she’d put something in it, that there was some message in this work. She wondered if we’d figure it out. In fact, I remember she looked directly at Ben when she spoke, as though you’d understand. I’d wondered why at the time, but now it makes sense. This is for your mother.’

  ‘You think?’ Ben moved closer to Clara and stared at the picture.

  ‘Well, that doesn’t make any sense,’ said Agent Nichol, who’d wandered over from her post by the door, drawn to the laughter as though to a crime. Gamache started making his way toward her, hoping to cut her off before she said something totally offensive. But his legs, while long, were no match for her mouth.

  ‘Who was Yolande to Timmer? Did they even know each other?’ Nichol pointed at the face of the blonde woman in the stands next to the acrylic Peter and Clara. ‘Why would Jane Neal put in a niece she herself despised? This can’t be what you said, a tribute to Mrs Hadley, with that woman there.’

  Nichol was clearly enjoying getting one up on Clara. And Clara, despite herself, could feel her anger rising. She stared speechless at the smug young face on the other side of the easel. And what made it worse was that she was right. There was the big blonde woman, undeniably in Fair Day, and Clara knew that if anything Timmer disliked Yolande even more than Jane did.

  ‘May I see you, please?’ Gamache placed himself between Clara and Nichol, cutting off the young woman’s triumphant stare. Without another word he turned and walked toward the exit, Nichol hesitating an instant then following.

  ‘There’s a bus for Montreal tomorrow morning at six from St Rémy. Take it.’

  He had no more to say. Agent Yvette Nichol was left shaking with rage on the cold dark stoop of Arts Williamsburg. She wanted to pound on the closed door. It seemed all her life doors were being shut in her face and here she was again, on the outside. Throbbing with fury she took two steps over to the window and looked in, at the people milling around, at Gamache talking to that Morrow woman and her husband. But there was someone else in the picture. After a moment she realised it was her own reflection.

  How was she going to explain this to her father? She’d blown it. Somehow, somewhere, she’d done something wrong. But what? But Nichol was beyond reasoning. All she could think of was walking into her miniscule home with the immaculate front yard in east end Montreal, and telling her father she’d been kicked off the case. Shame on you. A phrase from the investigation floated into her head.

  You’re looking at the problem.

  That meant something. Something significant she was sure. And then, finally, she understood.

  The problem was Gamache.

  There he was talking and laughing, smug and oblivious to the pain he caused. He was no different than the police her father had told her about in Czechoslovakia. How could she have been so blind? With relief she realised she needn’t tell her father anything. After all, it wasn’t her fault.

  Nichol turned away, the sight too painful, of people having fun and her own lonely reflection.

  An hour later the party had emigrated from Arts Williamsburg to Jane’s home. The wind was picking up and the rain was just beginning. Clara stationed herself in the middle of the living room, just as Jane might have, so that as everyone arrived she could see their reactions.

  ‘Oh. My. God.’ was heard a lot, as was ‘Holy shit’ and ‘Tabarouette’. ‘Tabarnouche’ and ‘Tabernacle’ bounced off the walls. Jane’s living room had become a shrine to multilingual swearing. Clara felt pretty much at home. A beer in one hand and cashews in the other, she watched as the guests arrived and were swept away by amazement. Most of the downstairs walls had been exposed and there, swooping and swirling before them, was the geography and history of Three Pines. The cougars and lynx, long since disappeared, the boys marching off to the Great War, and straight on to the modest stained-glass window of St Thomas’s, commemorating the dead. There were the dope plants growing outside the Williamsburg police station, a happy cat sitting on the window looking down at the healthy growth.

  The first thing Clara did, of course, was find herself on the wall. Her face poked out from a bush of Old Garden Roses, while Peter was found crouching behind a noble statue of Ben in shorts, standing on his mother’s lawn. Peter was in his Robin Hood outfit and sported a bow and arrow, while Ben stood bold and strong, staring at the house. Clara looked quite closely to see whether Jane had painted snakes oozing out of the old Hadley home, but she hadn’t.

  The home was quickly filling with laughter and shrieks and howls of recognition. And sometimes a person was moved to tears they couldn’t explain. Gamache and Beauvoir worked the room, watching and listening.

  ‘… but what gets me is the delight in the images,’ Myrna was saying to Clara. ‘Even the deaths, accidents, funerals, bad crops, even they have a kind of life. She made them natural.’

  ‘Hey, you,’ Clara called out to Ben who came over eagerly. ‘Look at yourself.’ She waved at his image on the wall.

  ‘Very bold.’ He smiled. ‘Chiseled, even.’

  Gamache looked over at Ben’s image on Jane’s wall, a strong man, but staring at his parent’s home. Not for the first time he thought Timmer Hadley’s death might have been quite timely for her son. He might finally get away from her shadow. Interestingly, though, it was Peter who was standing in shadow. Ben’s shadow. Gamache wondered what that could mean. He was beginning to appreciate that Jane’s home was a kind of key to the community. Jane Neal had been a very observant woman.

  Elise Jacob arrived at that moment, nodding to Gamache as she walked in. ‘Phew, what a night, -’ but her eyes quickly refocused to the wall behind him. Then she spun around to examine the wall behind her.

  ‘Christ,’ said the lovely, soignée woman, waving to Gamache and the room in general as though perhaps she was the first to notice the drawings. Gamache simply smiled and waited for her to gather herself.

  ‘Did you bring it?’ he asked, not altogether sure her ears were working yet.

  ‘C’est brillant,’ she whispered. ‘Formidable. Magnifique. Holy shit.’

  Gamache was a patient man and he gave her a few minutes to absorb the room. Besides, he realised he had developed a kind of pride about the home, as though he had had something to do with its creation.

  ‘It’s genius, of course,’ said Elise. ‘I used to work as a curator at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Ottawa before retiring down here.’ Gamache again marveled at the people who chose to live in this area. Was Margaret Atwood a garbage collector perhaps? Or maybe Prime Minister Mulroney had picked up a second career delivering the mail. No one was who they seemed. Everyone was more. And one person in this room was very much more.

  ‘Who’d have thought the same woman who painted that dreadful Fair Day did all this?’ Elise continued. ‘I guess we all have bad days. Still, you’d have thought she’d have chosen a better one to submit.’

  ‘It was the only one she had,’ said Gamache, ‘or at least the only one not on construction material.’

  ‘That’s strange.’

  ‘To say the least,’ agreed Gamache. ‘Did you bring it?’ he repeated.

  ‘Sorry, yes, it’s in the mudroom.’

  A minute later Gamache was setting Fair Day on to its easel in the center of the room. Now all of Jane’s art was together.

  He stood very still and watched. The din increased as the guests drank more wine and recognised more people and events on the walls. The only one behaving at all oddly was Clara. Gamache watched as she wandered over to Fair Day then back to the wall. Then over to Fair Day and back to the same spot on the wall. Then back to the easel. But this time with more purpose. Then she practically ran to the wall. And stood there fo
r a very long time. Then she very slowly came back to Fair Day as though lost in thought.

  ‘What is it?’ Gamache asked, coming to stand beside her.

  ‘This isn’t Yolande,’ Clara pointed to the blonde woman next to Peter.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Over there,’ Clara pointed to the wall she’d been examining. ‘That’s Yolande as painted by Jane. There are similarities, but: not many.’

  Gamache had to see for himself, though he knew Clara . would be right. Sure enough the only thing she’d been wrong about was saying there were similarities. There were none, as far as he could tell. The Yolande on the wall, even the child, was clearly Yolande. Physically, but also emotionally. She radiated contempt and greed and something else. Cunning. The woman on the wall was all those things. And just a little: needy. In the painting on the easel the woman in the stands was simply blonde.

  ‘Then who is she?’ he asked when he got back.

  ‘I don’t know. But I do know one thing. Have you noticed that Jane never made up a face? Everyone on these walls was someone she knew, someone from the village.’

  ‘Or a visitor,’ said Gamache.

  ‘Actually,’ said Ruth, joining their conversation, ‘there are no visitors. People who moved away and would come home to visit, yes, but they’re considered villagers. Everyone on the walls she knew.’

  ‘And everyone in Fair Day she knew, except her.’ Clara pointed a cashew at the blonde woman. ‘She’s a stranger. But there’s more. I’ve been wondering what’s wrong with Fair Day. It’s clearly Jane’s, but it’s not. If this was the first thing she’d done I’d say she just hadn’t found her style. But this was the last.’ Clara leaned into the work, ‘Everything in it is strong, confident, purposeful. But taken as a whole it doesn’t work.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said Elise. ‘It doesn’t.’

  The circle around Fair Day was growing, the guests attracted by the mystery.

  ‘But it worked when we were judging it, right?’ Clara turned to Peter. ‘It’s her. Jane didn’t paint her.’ Clara pointed a ramrod straight ‘J’accuse’ finger at the blonde in the stands next to Peter. As though sucked down a drain, all heads leaned into the center of the circle, to peer at the face.

  ‘That’s why this picture doesn’t work,’ continued Clara. ‘It did before this face was changed. Whoever changed it changed the whole picture without realising it.’

  ‘How do you know Jane didn’t paint this face?’ Gamache asked, his voice becoming official. Across the room Beauvoir heard it and went over, taking out his notepad and pen as he arrived.

  ‘First of all, it’s the only face in here that doesn’t look alive.’ Gamache had to agree with that. ‘But that’s subjective. There’s actual proof if you want.’

  ‘It would make a nice change.’

  ‘Look.’ Clara pointed again at the woman. ‘Jesus, now that I look more closely I must have been blind not to see it before. It’s like this huge carbuncle.’ Try as they might none of them could see what she meant.

  ‘For God’s sake, just tell us, before I spank you,’ said Ruth.

  ‘There.’ Clara zigzagged her finger around the woman’s face, and sure enough, looking more closely, they could see a tiny smudging. ‘It’s like a wart, a huge blemish on this work.’ She pointed to nearly invisible fuzzy marks. ‘That’s done by a rag and mineral spirits, right, Ben?’

  But Ben was still peering almost cross-eyed at Fair Day.

  ‘And look at that, those brush strokes. All wrong. Look at Peter’s face beside her. Totally different strokes.’ Clara waved her whole arm back and forth then up and down. ‘Up and down. Jane doesn’t do up and down strokes. Lots of sideways, but no straight up and down. Look at this woman’s hair. Up and down strokes. A dead giveaway. Do you notice the paint?’ She turned to Peter, who seemed uncomfortable.

  ‘No. Nothing strange about the paints.’

  ‘Oh, come on. Look. The whites are different. Jane used Titanium white here, here and here. But over here,’ she pointed to the woman’s eyes, ‘this is Zinc white. That’s Ochre Yellow.’ Clara was pointing to the woman’s vest. ‘Jane never used Ochre, only Cadmium. So obvious. You know, we’ve done so much art, teaching it, and even sometimes picking up extra money restoring things for the McCord, that I can tell you who painted what, just by their brush strokes, never mind their choice of brushes and paints.’

  ‘Why would someone paint in a face?’ Myrna asked.

  ‘That’s the question,’ agreed Gamache.

  ‘And not the only one. Why add a face, yes, great question, but whoever did it also took out a face. You can tell by the smudges. They didn’t just paint on top of the existing face, the one Jane did, they actually erased that whole face. I don’t get it. If Jane, or anyone, wanted to erase a face it would be easiest to just paint over the existing one. You can do that with acrylic, in fact, everyone does that with acrylic. You almost never bother erasing. Just paint over your mistakes.’

  ‘But if they did that could you remove that face and find the original underneath?’ Gamache asked.

  ‘It’s tricky,’ said Peter, ‘but a good art restorer could.

  It’s like we’re doing upstairs here, taking off one layer of paint to find the image underneath. With a canvas, though, you can also do it with x-ray. It’s a little blurry, but you might get an idea of who’s there. Now, well, it’s destroyed.’

  ‘Whoever did this didn’t want the face found,’ said Clara. ‘So she removed hers and painted in another woman’s.’

  ‘But’, Ben jumped in, ‘they gave themselves away when they erased the original face and drew a new one on top. They didn’t know Jane’s work. Her code. They made up a face not realising Jane never did that

  ‘And they used the wrong strokes,’ said Clara.

  ‘Well, that lets me out,’ said Gabri.

  ‘But why do it at all? I mean, whose face was erased?’ Myrna asked.

  There was silence for a moment while they all considered.

  ‘Can you take this face off and get an idea of the original?’ Gamache asked.

  ‘Maybe. Depends how thoroughly the original face was removed. Do you think the murderer did this?’ Clara asked.

  ‘I do. I just don’t know why.’

  ‘You said, “she”,’ said Beauvoir to Clara. ‘Why?’

  ‘I guess because the new face is female. I assumed the person who did this would paint the easiest thing and that’s what we see in the mirror every day.’

  ‘You think this is the murderer’s face?’ Beauvoir asked.

  ‘No, that wouldn’t be very smart. I think it’s the murderer’s gender, that’s all. Under pressure a white man is most likely to paint a white man, not a black man, not a white woman - but the thing he’s most familiar with. The same here.’

  It’s a good point, thought Gamache. But he also thought that if a man was painting to deceive he might very well paint a woman.

  ‘Would it take skill to do this?’ he asked.

  ‘Remove one face and replace it with another? Yes, quite a lot. Not necessarily to take the first face off, but then again most people wouldn’t know how. Would you?’ she asked Beauvoir.

  ‘No, not a clue. You mentioned mineral spirits and a rag, but the first time I ever heard of mineral spirits was a few days ago when you needed them for your work here.’

  ‘Exactly. Artists know these things, but most people don’t. Once the face is off she’d have to paint on another, using Jane’s style. That takes skill. Whoever did this is an artist, and I’d say a good one. It took us quite a while to find the mistake. We probably never would have if your Agent Nichol hadn’t been so obnoxious. She said this was Yolande. I was so pissed off I went in search of Jane’s Yolande to see if it was true. And it wasn’t. But it forced me to look more closely at the face to see who it might be. That’s when I noticed the differences. So you can tell Nichol she helped solve the case.’

  ‘Anything else you’d like us to
tell her?’ Beauvoir smiled at Clara.

  Gamache knew he wouldn’t lead Nichol to believe her rudeness had paid off, and yet he knew if he’d sent her away earlier they’d never be this far now. In a sense Clara was right but she’d failed to give herself enough credit. Her own need to prove Nichol wrong had played quite a role as well.

  ‘You thought Fair Day was good enough for the exhibition when you judged it on the Friday before Thanksgiving?’ he asked Peter.

  ‘I thought it was brilliant.’

  ‘It had changed by Thanksgiving Monday,’ said Clara, turning to Gamache and Beauvoir. ‘Remember when you two came in and I showed you Fair Day? The magic was gone then.’

  ‘Saturday and Sunday,’ said Beauvoir. Two days. Somewhere in there the murderer changed this painting. Jane Neal was killed Sunday morning.’

  They all stared at it, willing it to tell them who did this. Gamache knew that Fair Day was screaming at them. The reason for Jane Neal’s murder was in that picture. Clara could hear a tap tap tapping on the living-room window and went over to see who was out there. Staring into the darkness a branch suddenly appeared and hit the glass. Hurricane Kyla had arrived, and wanted in.

  The party broke up quickly after that, everyone racing for their homes or cars before the worst of the storm hit.

  ‘Don’t let a house fall on you,’ Gabri shouted after Ruth, who may or may not have given him the finger as she disappeared into the dark. Fair Day was taken to the B. & B. where a group now sat in the large living room sipping liqueurs and espresso. A fire had been laid and lit and outside Kyla moaned and called the leaves from the trees. Rain now whipped against the windows causing them to tremble. Inside the group instinctively huddled closer, warmed by the fire, the drinks and the company.

  ‘Who knew about Fair Day before Miss Neal was killed?’ Gamache asked. Peter and Clara were there, as were Ben, Olivier, Gabri and Myrna.

  ‘The jury,’ said Peter.