Still Life (22 page)

‘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. Passe. 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, homemade 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
cafe 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 gotten 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
cafe 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.

‘I’m sorry,’ Clara said, a dish towel in her hand, taking the warm, wet plates from Peter’s hand. ‘I should have told you about my conversation with Gamache.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘That’s not good enough, Clara. Can it be that you don’t trust me?’

He searched her face, his icy-blue eyes keen and cold. She knew she should hold him, should tell him how much she loved him and trusted him and needed him. But something held her back. There it was again. A silence between them. Something else unsaid. Is this how it starts? Clara wondered. Those chasms between couples, filled not with comfort and familiarity, but with too much unsaid, and too much said.

Once again her lover closed up. Became stone. Still and cold.

Ben had walked in on them at that moment, and caught them in an act more intimate than sex. Their anger and pain was fully exposed. Ben stammered and stumbled and
bumbled and finally left, looking like a child who had walked in on his parents.

That night, after everyone had left, Clara said the things she knew Peter had longed to hear. How much she trusted him and loved him. How sorry she was, and how grateful she was for his patience in the face of her own pain at Jane’s death. And she asked for his forgiveness. And he gave it, and they’d held each other until their breathing became deep and even and in sync.

But still, something had been left unsaid.

The next morning Clara rose early, let Lucy out, and made Peter pancakes, maple syrup and bacon. The unexpected smell of cured Canadian bacon, fresh coffee and woodsmoke woke Peter. Lying in bed he resolved to try to move beyond the hard feelings of the day before. Still, it had confirmed for Peter that feelings were too dangerous to expose. He showered, put on clean clothes and his game face, and went downstairs.

‘When do you think Yolande’ll move in?’ Clara asked Peter over breakfast.

‘I guess after the will has been read. A few days, maybe a week.’

‘I can’t believe Jane would leave her home to Yolande, if for no other reason than she knew how much I hate her.’

‘Maybe it wasn’t about you, Clara.’

Zing. And maybe, thought Clara, he’s still pissed off. ‘I’ve been watching Yolande for the last couple of days. She keeps lugging stuff into Jane’s place.’

Peter shrugged. He was getting tired of comforting Clara.

‘Didn’t Jane make a new will?’ she tried again.

‘I don’t remember that.’ Peter knew Clara enough to know this was a ruse, an attempt to take his mind off his hurt and to get him on her side. He refused to play.