Still Life (20 page)

‘I need to tell you something,’ said Clara.

‘I hope it’s not a weather forecast.’ Gamache grinned. Clara looked confused. ‘Go on,’ he encouraged. ‘Something to do with the blind or the deer trail?’

‘No, I’ll have to think about that some more. That was pretty disturbing and I don’t even have vertigo.’ She smiled at him warmly and he hoped he wasn’t blushing. He’d really thought he’d gotten away with that one. Well, one less person who thought he was perfect. ‘What did you want to say?’

‘It’s about Andre Malenfant. You know, Yolande’s husband. At lunch I went up to speak with Yolande, and I heard him laugh at me. It was an unusual sound. Sort of hollow and penetrating. Rancid. Jane described a laugh like that from one of the boys who threw manure.’ Gamache absorbed this information, staring into the fire and sipping his cider, feeling the warm sweet liquid move through his chest and spread into his stomach.

‘You’re thinking his son Bernard was one of those boys.’

‘That’s it. One of those boys wasn’t there. But Bernard was.’

‘We interviewed Gus and Claude. Both deny being there at all, not surprisingly.’

‘Philippe apologised for throwing the manure, but that might not mean anything. Every kid’s afraid of Bernie. I think Philippe would have confessed to murder if it would save him a thrashing from that boy. He has them all terrified.’

‘Is it possible Philippe wasn’t even there?’

‘Possible, not probable. But I do know absolutely that Bernard Malenfant was throwing manure at Olivier and Gabri, and enjoying it.’

‘Bernard Malenfant was Jane Neal’s grand-nephew,’ said Gamache slowly, working through the connections.

‘Yes,’ agreed Clara, taking a handful of beer nuts. ‘But they weren’t close, as you know. Don’t know the last time she saw Yolande socially. There was a rift.’

‘What happened?’

‘I don’t know the specifics,’ said Clara, hesitantly. ‘I only know it had something to do with the house. Jane’s home. It’d belonged to her parents, and there was some sort of dispute. Jane said she and Yolande had been close once. Yolande used to visit her as a kid. They’d play rummy and cribbage. There was another game too with the Queen of Hearts. Every night she’d put the card on the kitchen table and tell Yolande to memorise it because in the morning it would have changed.’

‘And did it?’

‘That’s just it. It did. Every morning Yolande would come down and was sure the card was different. Still the Queen of Hearts, but the pattern would be changed.’

‘But was the card actually different? I mean, did Jane change it herself?’

‘No. But Jane knew that a child couldn’t possibly memorise every detail. And, more than that, she knew every child longs to believe in magic. So sad.’

‘What?’ asked Gamache.

‘Yolande. I wonder what she believes in today.’

Gamache remembered his talk with Myrna and wondered whether Jane could possibly have been sending another message to young Yolande. Change happens and it’s nothing to be afraid of.

‘When would Jane have seen Bernard? Would she have known him?’

‘She may actually have seen him quite often in the last year or so, but from a distance,’ said Clara. ‘Bernard and the other kids from the area now catch the school bus from Three Pines.’

‘Where?’

‘Up by the old schoolhouse, so the bus doesn’t have to go through the village. Some parents drop the kids off really early when it suits them and the kids have to wait. So they sometimes wander down the hill into the village.’

‘What happens when it’s cold or there’s a storm?’

‘Most parents stay with the kids in their car, keeping them warm, until the bus arrives. But then it was discovered that some parents just dropped the kids off anyway. Timmer Hadley would take them in until the bus showed up.’

‘That was nice,’ said Gamache. Clara looked slightly taken aback. ‘Was it? I guess it was, now that I think of it. But I suspect there was some other reason for it. She was afraid of being sued if a kid died of exposure or something. Frankly, I’d rather freeze to death than go into that house.’

‘Why?’

‘Timmer Hadley was a hateful woman. Look at poor Ben.’ Clara tossed her head in Ben’s direction and Gamache looked just in time to catch Ben staring at them again. ‘Crippled by her. Needy, manipulative woman. Even Peter was terrified of her. He used to spend school holidays at Ben’s. To keep Ben company and try to protect him from that woman in that monstrosity of a house. Do you wonder I love him?’ For an instant he wasn’t sure if Clara meant Peter or Ben. ‘Peter’s the most wonderful man in the world and if even he hated and feared Timmer there was something really wrong.’

‘How did he and Ben meet?’

‘At Abbot’s, the private boys’ school near Lennoxville. Ben was sent there when he was seven. Peter was also seven. The two youngest kids there.’

‘What did Timmer do that was so bad?’ Gamache’s brow knitted, imagining the two frightened boys.

‘For one, she sent a scared little boy away from home to boarding school. Poor Ben was totally unprepared for what awaited him. Have you ever been to boarding school, Inspector?’

‘No. Never.’

‘You’re lucky. It’s Darwinism at its most refined. You adapt or die. You learn that the skills that allow you to survive are cunning, cheating, bullying, lying. Either that or just plain hiding. But even that didn’t last for long.’

Peter had painted for Clara a pretty clear picture of life at Abbot’s. Now she saw the doorknob turning slowly, slowly. And the door to the boys’ unlockable dorm room opening slowly, slowly. And the tiptoes of upper classmen sneaking in to do more damage. Peter had learned the monster wasn’t under the bed after all. It broke Clara’s heart every time she thought of those little boys. She looked over at their table and saw two grown men, graying, craggy heads leaning so close they almost touched. And she wanted to rush over there and keep all bad things away from them.

‘Matthew ten, thirty-six.’

Clara brought herself back to Gamache, who was looking at her with such tenderness she felt both exposed and protected at the same time. The dorm door closed.

‘Pardon?’

‘A biblical quote. My first chief, Inspector Comeau, used to quote it. Matthew Chapter Ten, verse Thirty-six.’

‘I could never forgive Timmer Hadley for doing that to Ben,’ said Clara quietly.

‘But Peter was there too,’ Gamache said, also quietly. ‘His parents sent him.’

‘True. His mother’s also a piece of work, but he was better equipped. And still it was a nightmare. Then there were the snakes. One holiday Ben and Peter were playing cowboys in the basement when they came across a nest of snakes. Ben said they were everywhere in the basement. And mice too. But everyone has mice around here. Not everyone has snakes.’

‘Are the snakes still there?’

‘I don’t know.’ Every time Clara had gone into Timmer’s
home she’d see snakes, curled in dark corners, slithering under chairs, hanging from the beams. It might have been just her imagination. Or not. Eventually Clara had refused to go into the house at all until Timmer’s last weeks when volunteers were needed. Even then, she only went with Peter, and never to the bathroom. She knew the snakes were curled behind the sweating tank. And never, ever into the basement. Never close to that door off the kitchen where she could hear the sliding and slithering and smell the swamp.

Clara upgraded to a Scotch and the two of them stared out the window at the Victorian turrets just visible above the trees on the hill.

‘Yet Timmer and Jane were best of friends,’ said Gamache.

‘True. But then, Jane got along with everyone.’

‘Except her niece Yolande.’

‘That’s hardly revealing. Even Yolande doesn’t get along with Yolande.’

‘Do you have any idea why Jane didn’t let anyone beyond the kitchen?’

‘Not a clue,’ said Clara, ‘but she invited us to cocktails in her living room for the night of the Arts Williamsburg
vernissage,
to celebrate
Fair Day.’

‘When did she do that?’ Gamache asked, leaning forward.

‘Friday, at dinner, after she’d heard she’d been accepted for the show.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Gamache, leaning his elbows on the table, as though preparing to crawl across it and into her head. ‘Are you telling me on the Friday before she died she invited everyone to a party inside her home? For the first time in her life?’

‘Yes. We’d been to dinner and to parties in her home thousands of times, but always in the kitchen. This time she specified the living room. Is that important?’

‘I don’t know. When’s the show opening?’

‘In two weeks.’ They sat in silence, thinking about the
show. Then Clara noticed the time. ‘I need to go. People coming for dinner.’ He stood up with her and she smiled at him. ‘Thank you for finding the blind.’ He gave her a small bow and watched her wind her way through the tables, nodding and waving to people, until she’d reached Peter and Ben. She kissed Peter on the top of his head and the two men stood as one, and all three left the Bistro, like a family.

Gamache picked up
The Boy’s Big Book of Hunting
from the table and opened the front cover. Scrawled inside in a big, round, immature hand was ‘B. Malenfant’.

When Gamache arrived back at the B. & B., he found Olivier and Gabri getting ready to head over to the Morrows for a pot luck dinner.

‘There’s a shepherd’s pie in the oven for you, if you want,’ Gabri called as they left.

Upstairs, Gamache tapped on Agent Nichol’s door and suggested they meet downstairs in twenty minutes to continue their talk from that morning. Nichol agreed. He also told her they’d be eating in that night, so she could dress casually. She nodded, thanked him, and shut the door, going back to what she’d been doing for the last half-hour, desperately trying to decide what to wear. Which of the outfits she’d borrowed from her sister Angelina was perfect? Which said smart, powerful, don’t mess with me, future chief inspector? Which one said ‘Like me’? Which one was right?

Gamache climbed the next flight to his room, opened the door and felt drawn toward the brass bed piled high with a pure white duvet and white down pillows. All he wanted to do was to sink into it, close his eyes, and fall fast and deeply asleep. The room was simply furnished, with soothing white walls and a deep cherry wood chest of drawers. An old oil portrait dominated one wall. A faded and well-loved
oriental throw rug sat on the wood floor. It was a soothing and inviting room and almost more than Gamache could stand. He wavered in the middle of the room then walked determinedly to the ensuite bathroom. His shower revived him, and after getting into casual clothing he called Reine-Marie, gathered his notes, and was back in the living room in twenty minutes.

Yvette Nichol came down half an hour later. She’d decided to wear the ‘power’ outfit. Gamache didn’t look up from his reading when she walked in.

‘We have a problem.’ Gamache lowered his notebook and looked at her, cross-legged and cross-armed across from him. She was a station of the cross. ‘Actually, you have a problem. But it becomes my problem when it affects this investigation.’

‘Really, sir? And what would that be?’

‘You have a good brain, Agent.’

‘And that’s a problem?’

‘No. That’s
the
problem. You’re smug and you’re arrogant.’ The soft-spoken words hit her like an assault. No one had dared speak to her like this before. ‘I started off by saying you have a good brain. You showed fine deductive reasoning in the meeting this afternoon.’

Nichol sat up straighter, mollified, but alert.

‘But a good brain isn’t enough,’ continued Gamache. ‘You have to use it. And you don’t. You look, but you don’t see. You hear, but you don’t listen.’

Nichol was pretty sure she’d seen that written on a coffee cup in the traffic division. Poor Gamache lived by philosophies small enough to fit a mug.

‘I look and listen well enough to solve the case.’

‘Perhaps. We’ll see. As I said before, that was good work, and you have a good brain. But there’s something missing. Surely you can feel it. Do you ever feel lost, as though people are speaking a foreign language, as though there’s something going on which everyone else gets, but you don’t?’

Nichol hoped her faced didn’t reflect her shock. How did he know?

‘The only thing I don’t get, sir, is how you can dress me down for solving a case.’

‘You lack discipline,’ he persevered, trying to get her to see. ‘For instance, before we went into the Croft home, what did I say?’

‘I can’t remember.’ Deep down a realisation began to dawn. She might actually be in trouble here.

‘I told you to listen and not to speak. And yet you spoke to Mrs Croft when she arrived in the kitchen.’

‘Well somebody had to be nice to her. You’d accused me of being unkind and that isn’t true.’ Dear lord, don’t let me cry, she thought, as the tears welled up. She put her fists into balls in her lap. ‘I am nice.’

‘And that’s what that was about? This is a murder investigation. You do as you’re told. There isn’t one set of rules for you and another set for everyone else. Understand? If you’re told to be quiet and take notes that is what you do.’ The last few words were said slowly, distinctly, coldly. He wondered whether she even knew how manipulative she was. He doubted it. ‘This morning I gave you three of the four sentences that can guide us to wisdom.’

‘You gave me all four this morning.’ Nichol seriously questioned his sanity now. He was looking at her sternly, without anger, but certainly without warmth.

‘Repeat them for me, please.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know, I need help and I forget.’

‘I forget? Where did you get that?’

‘From you this morning. You said, “I forget”.’

‘Are you seriously telling me you thought “I forget” could be a life lesson? I clearly meant that I had forgotten the last sentence. Yes, I’m sure I said, “I forget”. But think of the context. This is a perfect example of what’s wrong with
that good brain of yours. You don’t use it. You don’t think. It’s not enough to hear the words.’

Here it comes, thought Nichol. Blah, blah, blah. You’ve got to listen.