Still Life

SEVEN

Gamache walked through the bistro, nodding to Gabri who was setting tables. Each business connected to the next in the row of shops and at the back of the bistro he found the door into the next store. Myrna's Livres, Neufs et Usages.

And there he found himself, holding a worn copy of Being. He'd read Being when it first came out a few years before. The title always reminded him of the day his daughter Annie had come home from first grade with her English homework which was to name three types of beans. She'd written, 'green beans, yellow beans and human beans'.

He turned the book over and looked at the back, with its 'blurb' and brief bio of the author, the famous McGill University doctor and geneticist, Dr Vincent Gilbert. Dr Gilbert glared back, strangely stern for a man who wrote about compassion. This particular book was about his work with Brother Albert Mailloux at 'La Porte', mostly with men and women with Down's syndrome. It was really a meditation on what he'd learned watching these people. What he'd learned about them and the nature of humanity and what he'd learned about himself. It was a remarkable study of arrogance and humility and, above all, forgiveness.

The walls of the shop were lined with bookcases, all ordered and labeled and filled with books, some new, some already read, some French, most English. Myrna had managed to make it feel more like the library in a cultured and comfortable country home than a store. She'd set up a couple of rocking chairs beside an open fire, with a couch facing it. Gamache sank into one of the rockers and reminded himself of the beauty of Being.

'Now there's a good book,' said Myrna, dropping into the chair opposite. She'd brought a pile of used books and some price stickers. 'We haven't actually met. I'm Myrna Landers. I saw you at the public meeting.'

Gamache got up and shook her hand, smiling. 'I saw you too.'

Myrna laughed. 'I'm hard to miss. The only black in Three Pines and not exactly a slip of a woman.'

'You and I are well matched.' Gamache smiled, rubbing his stomach.

She picked a book out of her pile. 'Have you read this?'

She held a worn copy of Brother Albert's book, Loss. Gamache shook his head and figured it probably wasn't the cheeriest of reads. She turned it over in her huge hands and seemed to caress it.

'His theory is that life is loss,' said Myrna after a moment. 'Loss of parents, loss of loves, loss of jobs. So we have to find a higher meaning in our lives than these things and people. Otherwise we'll lose ourselves.'

'What do you think of that?'

'I think he's right. I was a psychologist in Montreal before coming here a few years ago. Most of the people came through my door because of a crisis in their lives, and most of those crises boiled down to loss. Loss of a marriage or an important relationship. Loss of security. A job, a home, a parent. Something drove them to ask for help and to look deep inside themselves. And the catalyst was often change and loss.'

'Are they the same thing?'

'For someone not well skilled at adapting they can be.'

'Loss of control?'

'That's a huge one, of course. Most of us are great with change, as long as it was our idea. But change imposed from the outside can send some people into a tailspin. I think Brother Albert hit it on the head. Life is loss. But out of that, as the book stresses, comes freedom. If we can accept that nothing is permanent, and change is inevitable, if we can adapt, then we're going to be happier people.'

'What brought you here? Loss?'

'That's hardly fair, Chief Inspector, now you've got me. Yes. But not in a conventional way, since of course I always have to be special and different.' Myrna put back her head and laughed at herself. 'I lost sympathy with many of my patients. After twenty-five years of listening to their complaints I finally snapped. I woke up one morning bent out of shape about this client who was forty-three but acting sixteen. Every week he'd come with the same complaints, "Someone hurt me. Life is unfair. It's not my fault." For three years I'd been making suggestions, and for three years he'd done nothing. Then, listening to him this one day, I suddenly understood. He wasn't changing because he didn't want to. He had no intention of changing. For the next twenty years we would go through this charade. And I realised in that same instant that most of my clients were exactly like him.'

'Surely, though, some were trying.'

'Oh, yes. But they were the ones who got better quite quickly. Because they worked hard at it and genuinely wanted it. The others said they wanted to get better, but I think, and this isn't popular in psychology circles'-here she leaned forward and whispered, conspiratorially-'I think many people love their problems. Gives them all sorts of excuses for not growing up and getting on with life.'

Myrna leaned back again in her chair and took a long breath.

'Life is change. If you aren't growing and evolving you're standing still, and the rest of the world is surging ahead. Most of these people are very immature. They lead "still" lives, waiting.'

'Waiting for what?'

'Waiting for someone to save them. Expecting someone to save them or at least protect them from the big, bad world. The thing is no one else can save them because the problem is theirs and so is the solution. Only they can get out of it.'

"'The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings."'

Myrna leaned forward, animated, 'That's it. The fault lies with us, and only us. It's not fate, not genetics, not bad luck, and it's definitely not Mom and Dad. Ultimately it's us and our choices. But, but'-now her eyes shone and she almost vibrated with excitement-'the most powerful, spectacular thing is that the solution rests with us as well. We're the only ones who can change our lives, turn them around. So all those years waiting for someone else to do it are wasted. I used to love talking about this with Timmer. Now there was a bright woman. I miss her.' Myrna threw herself back in her chair. 'The vast majority of troubled people don't get it. The fault is here, but so is the solution. That's the grace.'

'But that would mean admitting there was something wrong with them. Don't most unhappy people blame others? That's what was so stark, so scary about that line from Julius Caesar. Who among us can admit that the problem is us?'

'You got it.'

'You mentioned Timmer Hadley. What was she like?'

'I only met her near the end of her life. Never knew her when she was healthy. Timmer was a smart woman, in every way. Always well turned out, trim, elegant, even. I liked her.'

'Did you sit with her?'

'Yes. Sat with her the day before she died. Took a book to read but she wanted to look at old pictures so I got her album down and we flipped through it. There was a picture of Jane in it, from centuries ago. She must have been sixteen, maybe seventeen. She was with her parents. Timmer didn't like the Neals. Cold, she said, social climbers.'

Myrna suddenly stopped, on the verge of saying something else.

'Go on,' prompted Gamache.

'That's it,' said Myrna.

'Now, I know that wasn't all she said. Tell me.'

'I can't. She was doped up with morphine and I know she would never have said anything had she been in her right mind. Besides, it has nothing to do with Jane's death. It happened over sixty years ago.'

'The funny thing about murder is that the act is often committed decades before the actual action. Something happens, and it leads, inexorably, to death many years later. A bad seed is planted. It's like those old horror films from the Hammer studios, of the monster, not running, never running, but walking without pause, without thought or mercy, toward its victim. Murder is often like that. It starts way far off.'

'I still won't tell you what Timmer said.'

Gamache knew he could persuade her. But why? If the lab tests exonerated the Crofts, then he'd come back, but otherwise she was right. He didn't need to know, but, God knew, he really wanted to know.

'I'll tell you what,' he said. 'I won't press. But one day I might ask again and you'll need to tell me.'

'Fair enough. You ask again, and I'll tell you.'

'I have another question. What do you think of the boys who threw the manure?'

'We all do stupid, cruel things as children. I remember I once took a neighbor's dog and shut it in my house, then told the little girl her dog had been picked up by the dog catcher and destroyed. I still wake up at three in the morning seeing her face. I tracked her down about ten years ago to say I was sorry but she'd been killed in a car accident.'

'You have to forgive yourself,' said Gamache, holding up Being.

'You're right, of course. But maybe I don't want to. Maybe that's something I don't want to lose. My own private hell. Horrible, but mine. I'm quite thick at times. And places.' She laughed, brushing invisible crumbs from her caftan.

'Oscar Wilde said there's no sin except stupidity.'

'And what do you think of that?' Myrna's eyes lit up, happy to so obviously turn the spotlight on him. He thought a moment.

'I've made mistakes that have allowed killers to take more lives. And each of those mistakes, upon looking back, was stupid. A conclusion jumped to, a false assumption held too firmly. Each wrong choice I make puts a community at risk.'

'Have you learned from your mistakes?'

'Yes, teacher, I believe I have.'

'Then that's all you can ask of yourself, Grasshopper. I'll make you a deal. I'll forgive myself if you forgive yourself.'

'Deal,' said Gamache, and wished it was that easy.

Ten minutes later Armand Gamache was sitting at the table by the Bistro window looking out on to Three Pines. He'd bought just one book from Myrna, and it wasn't Being or Loss. She'd seemed slightly surprised when he put the book next to her till. He now sat and read, a Cinzano and some pretzels in front of him, and every now and then he'd lower the book to stare through the window and through the village and into the woods beyond. The clouds were breaking up, leaving patches of early evening sunshine on the small mountains that surrounded Three Pines. Once or twice he flipped through the book, looking for illustrations. Finding what he was looking for he ear-marked them and continued reading. It was a very pleasant way to pass the time.

A manila file hitting the table brought him back to the Bistro.

'The autopsy report.' The coroner, Sharon Harris, sat down and ordered a drink.

He lowered his book and picked up the dossier. After a few minutes he had a question. 'If the arrow hadn't hit her heart, would it still have killed her?'

'If it had come close to the heart, yes. But', Dr Harris leaned forward and bent the autopsy report down so she could see it, upside down, 'she was hit straight through the heart. You see? Whoever did it must have been a great shot. That wasn't a fluke.'

'And yet I suspect that's exactly the conclusion we're going to reach, that it was a fluke. A hunting accident. Not the first in Quebec history.'

'You're right, lots of hunting accidents every season with rifles. But arrows? You'd have to be a good hunter to get her through the heart and good hunters don't often make mistakes like that. Not archers. They aren't the usual yahoos.'

'What are you saying, doctor?'

'I'm saying if the death of Miss Neal was an accident the killer had very bad Karma. Of all the accidental hunting deaths I've investigated as medical examiner none has involved a good bow hunter.'

'You mean if a good hunter did this it was on purpose?'

'I'm saying a good bow hunter did this and good bow hunters don't make mistakes. You connected the dots.' She smiled warmly then nodded to the people at the next table. Gamache remembered she lived in the area.

'You have a home at Cleghorn Halt, don't you? Is it close by?'

'About twenty minutes from here toward the Abbey. I know Three Pines quite well from the Tours Des Arts. Peter and Clara Morrow live here, right? Just over there?' She pointed through the window across the green to their red-brick home.

'That's right. Do you know them?'

'Just their art. He's a member of the Royal Academy of Canada, quite a distinguished artist. Does the most amazing works, very stark. They look like abstracts, but they're actually just the opposite, they're hyper-realism. He takes a subject, say that glass of Cinzano,' she picked it up, 'and he gets really close.' She leaned in until her eyelashes were licking the moisture on the outside of his glass. 'Then he takes a microscope device and gets even closer. And he paints that.' She put his glass back on the table. 'They're absolutely dazzling. Takes him for ever, apparently, to do a single piece. Don't know where he finds the patience.'

'How about Clara Morrow?'

'I have one of her works. I think she's fabulous, but very different from him. Her art is quite feminist, a lot of female nudes and allusions to goddesses. She did the most wonderful series on Sophia's Daughters.'

'The Three Graces, Faith, Hope and Charity?'

'Very impressive, Chief Inspector. I have one of that series. Hope.'

'Do you know Ben Hadley?'

'Of Hadley Mills? Not really. We've been at a few functions together. Arts Williamsburg has an annual garden party, often on his mother's property, and he's always there. I guess it's his property now.'

'He never married?'

'No. Late forties and still single. I wonder if he'll marry now.'

'What makes you say that?'

'It just seems often the case. No woman could come between mother and son, though I don't think Ben Hadley had the hots for Mommy. Anytime he spoke of her it was of how she'd somehow put him down. Some of his stories were horrible, though he never seemed to notice. I always admired that.'

'What does he do?'

'Ben Hadley? I don't know. I always had the impression he did nothing, sort of emasculated by Mom. Very sad.'

'Tragic.' Gamache was remembering the tall, ambling, likeable professor type, slightly befuddled all the time. Sharon Harris picked up the book he'd been reading and read the back cover.

'Good idea.' She placed it back on the table, impressed. Seems she'd been lecturing Gamache on things he already knew. It probably wasn't the first time. After she left Gamache went back to his book, flipping to the dog-eared page and staring at the illustration. It was possible. Just possible. He paid for his drink, shrugged into his field coat and left the warmth of the room to head into the cold and damp and approaching dark.

Clara stared at the box in front of her and willed it to speak. Something had told her to start work on a big wooden box. So she had. And now she sat in her studio and stared, trying to remember why building a big box had seemed such a good idea. More than that. Why had it seemed an artistic idea? In fact, what the hell was the idea anyway?

She waited for the box to speak to her. To say something. Anything. Even nonsense. Though why Clara thought the box, should it choose to speak, would say anything other than nonsense was another mystery. Who listens to boxes anyway?

Clara's art was intuitive, which wasn't to say it wasn't skilled and trained. She'd been to the best art college in Canada, even taught there for a while, until its narrow definition of 'art' had driven her away. From downtown Toronto to downtown Three Pines. That had been decades ago and so far she'd failed to set the art world on fire. Though waiting for messages from boxes could be a reason. Clara cleared her mind and opened it to inspiration. A croissant floated through it, then her garden, which needed cutting down, then she had a tiny argument with Myrna about the prices Myrna would no doubt offer for some of Clara's used books. The box, on the other hand, remained mute.

The studio was growing cold and Clara wondered whether Peter, sitting across the hall in his own studio was also cold. He would almost certainly, she thought with a twang of envy, be working too hard to notice. He never seemed to suffer from the uncertainty that could freeze her, leave her stuck and frozen in place. He just kept putting one foot in front of the other, producing his excruciatingly detailed works that sold for thousands in Montreal. It took him months to do each piece, he was so painfully precise and methodical. She'd given him a roller for his birthday one year and told him to paint faster. He didn't seem to appreciate the joke. Perhaps because it wasn't entirely a joke. They were constantly broke. Even now, with the autumn chill seeping in through the cracks around the windows, Clara was loath to turn on the furnace. Instead she'd put on another sweater, and even that was probably worn and pilled. She longed for crisp new bed linens and one can in their kitchen with a name brand and enough firewood to see them through the winter without worry. Worry. It wears you down, she thought as she put on another sweater and sat down again in front of the big silent box.

Again Clara cleared her mind, opened it wide. And lo and behold, an idea appeared. Fully formed. Whole and perfect and disturbing. Within moments she was out the front door and chugging up rue du Moulin. As she approached Timmer's home she instinctively crossed to the other side and averted her eyes. Once beyond it she re-crossed the road and made her way past the old schoolhouse, still bedecked in yellow police tape. Then she plunged into the woods, wondering for a moment at the folly of her actions. It was getting on dusk. The time when death waits in the woods. Not in the form of a ghost, Clara hoped, but in an even more sinister guise. A man with a weapon designed to make ghosts. Hunters crept into the woods at dusk. One had killed Jane. Clara slowed down. This was perhaps not the brightest idea she'd had. Actually, it was the box's idea, so she could blame it if she was killed. Clara heard a movement ahead. She froze.

The woods were darker than Gamache had expected. He'd entered by a route he was unfamiliar with and spent a moment looking around, getting his bearings. He had his cell phone with him in case he got lost, but he knew the cellular grid was unreliable at best in the mountains. Still, it was some comfort. He turned full circle, slowly, and spotted a small flash of yellow. The police tape circling the spot where Jane had died. He made for it, the woods still soaked from the day's downpour, and drenching his legs and feet as he went. Just outside the cordon he stopped again and listened. He knew it was the hunting hour, he'd just have to trust that it wasn't his time. Trust, and be very, very careful. Gamache spent ten minutes searching before he found it. He smiled as he made his way to the tree. How often had his mother chastised him as a child for staring down at his feet, instead of looking up? Well, she'd been right again. When they'd first searched the site he'd been looking on the ground when what he wanted wasn't down there. It was up in the trees.

A box.

Now Gamache stood at the foot of the tree contemplating the wooden structure twenty feet up. Nailed to the trunk was a series of wooden planks, rungs, their nails long since rusted and bleeding a deep orange into the wood. Gamache thought of his warm seat by the window in the Bistro. His amber Cinzano and pretzels. And the fireplace. And he started climbing. Hauling himself up one rung at a time he remembered something else, as one trembling hand reached up and strangled the next rung. He hated heights. How could he have forgotten? Or had he perhaps hoped this time would be different? As he clung to the slimy, creaky, narrow slats and looked up to the wooden platform a zillion feet above, he froze.

Had the noise come from ahead or behind? Clara wondered. It was like sirens in the city, the noise seems omnipresent. And now she heard it again. She turned and looked behind her. Back there the trees were mostly pines and held their dark needles, making the woods prickly and black. Ahead, into the red sunset, the woods were more mixed, with maples and cherry. Clara made instinctively for the light, not sure whether she should make a lot of noise, like in the spring to warn the bears, or be as quiet as possible. She supposed it depended on what she thought was with her in the woods. A bear, a deer, a hunter, or a ghost. She wished she had a box to consult. Or Peter. Yes, Peter was almost always better than a box.

Gamache willed his hands to move to the next rung. He remembered to breathe and even hummed a little song of his own devising. To ward away terror. He climbed toward the dark patch above him. Breathe, reach, step. Breathe, reach, step. Finally he made it and his head poked through the small square cut in the floor. It was as the book described. A blind. You'd have to be blind drunk to want to sit up there, thought Gamache. He hauled himself through the hole and to his feet, feeling a wave of relief, which was replaced a moment later by blinding terror. He dropped to his knees and scrambled to the tree trunk, hugging it to himself. The fragile box was perched twenty feet up the tree and hung out five feet into the air, hovering there with only a rickety old rail between Gamache and oblivion. Gamache dug his hands into the bark, feeling the wood pinch his palm, glad for the pain to concentrate on. His horrible fear, and the terrible betrayal, wasn't that he'd trip and fall, or even that the wooden blind would tumble to the ground. It was that he'd throw himself over the edge. That was the horror of vertigo. He felt pulled to the edge and over as if an anchor was attached to his leg. Unaided, unthreatened, he would essentially kill himself. He could see it all happen and the horror of it took his breath away and for a moment he gripped the tree, closed his eyes, and fought to breathe deeply, regularly, from his solar plexus.

It worked. Slowly the terror ebbed, the certainty of flinging himself to his own death diminished. He opened his eyes. And there he saw it. What he'd come for. What he'd read about in the Bistro from the book he'd bought second-hand from Myrna. The Boys' Big Book of Hunting. He'd read about blinds, the structures hunters built so they could see the deer coming, and shoot them. But that wasn't what had called Gamache from the safety and warmth of the village. He'd come looking for something else mentioned in the book. And from where he sat he could see it in the middle distance.

But now he heard a sound. An almost certainly human sound. Dare he look down? Dare he let go of the trunk and crawl to the edge of the blind and look over? There it was again. A kind of hum. A familiar tune. What was it? Cautiously he released the tree and, sprawling on his stomach on the platform, he inched to the edge.

He saw the top of a familiar head. Actually he saw a mushroom of hair.

Clara had decided that she should go with the worst-case scenario, but then couldn't decide which one was the worst. A bear, a hunter or a ghost? Thoughts of bear reminded her of Winnie the Pooh and the Heffalump. She started to hum. A tune Jane always hummed.

'What do you do with a drunken sailor?' Gamache called from above.

Below, Clara froze. Was that God? But surely God would know exactly what to do with a drunken sailor? Besides, Clara couldn't believe God's first words to her would be any question other than, 'What on earth were you thinking?'

She looked up and saw a box. A talking box. Her knees went weak. So they did speak after all.

'Clara? It's Armand Gamache. I'm up in the blind.' Even from this great height in the dusk he could see her confusion. Now he saw a huge smile on her face.

'A blind? I'd forgotten that was there. May I come up?' But she was already climbing the rungs like an immortal six-year-old. Gamache was both impressed and appalled. Another body, no matter how slim, could be just enough to bring down the entire structure.

'Wow, this is fabulous!' Clara hopped on to the platform. 'What a view. Good thing the weather cleared. I hear tomorrow's supposed to be sunny. Why're you here?'

'Why are you?'

'I couldn't concentrate on my work and I suddenly knew I had to come here. Well, not here but down there, to where Jane died. I feel I owe Jane.'

'Hard to get on with life and not feel guilty.'

'That must be it.' She turned and looked at him, impressed. 'So what brought you here?'

'I came looking for that.' He pointed over the side of the platform, trying to sound nonchalant. White lights were dancing in front of his eyes, a familiar prelude to vertigo. He forced himself to look over the edge. The sooner this was over the better.

'What?' Clara stared into the woods beyond where Jane had been killed. Gamache could feel himself getting annoyed. Surely she could see it. Was that a crack? The sun was casting long shadows and strange light, and some of it just caught at the edge of the forest, and then she saw it.

'The opening through the woods, over there. Is that it?'

'It's a deer trail,' said Gamache, inching back from the edge and reaching behind him for the tree trunk. 'Made by deer year after year. They're like the railways in Switzerland. Very predictable. They always use the same path, for generations. Which is why the blind was built here.' He was almost forgetting to panic. 'To watch the deer move along the trail, and shoot them. But the trail is almost invisible. We had trained investigators searching this whole area yesterday and none of them saw it. None realised there was a tiny path through the woods. I didn't. You'd have to know it was there.'

'I knew it was there but I'd completely forgotten,' said Clara. 'Peter brought me here a long time ago. Right up to this blind. But you're right. Only locals would know that this is where to find deer. Did Jane's killer shoot her from here?'

'No, this hasn't been used in years. I'll get Beauvoir along, but I'm sure. The killer shot her from the woods. He was either there because he was waiting for deer -'

'Or he was there waiting for Jane. Incredible view form up here.' Clara turned her back on the deer trail and looked in the opposite direction. 'You can see Timmer's home from here.'

Gamache, surprised by the change in topic, also turned, slowly, cautiously. Sure enough there were the slate roofs of the old Victorian home. Solid and beautiful in its own way with its red stone walls and huge windows.

'Hideous.' Clara shivered and made for the ladder. 'Horrible place. And in case you're wondering,' she turned to climb down and looked at Gamache, her face in darkness now, 'I understand what you were saying. Whoever killed Jane was local. But there's more.'

'"When thou hast done, thou hast not done, for I have more",' quoted Gamache. 'John Donne,', he explained, feeling a little giddy at the thought of finally escaping.

Clara was halfway down the hole in the floor, 'I remember, from school. Frankly, Ruth Zardo's poetry comes more to mind:I'll keep it all inside; festering, rotting; but I'm really a nice person, kind, loving.'Get out of my way, you motherfucker.' Oops, sorry…'

'Ruth Zardo, did you say?' said Gamache stunned. Clara had just quoted from one of his favorite poems. Now he knelt down and continued it:' that just slipped out, escaped, I'll try harder, just watch, I will. You can't make me say anything. I'll just go further away, where you will never find me, or hurt me, or make me speak.

You mean Ruth Zardo wrote that? Wait a minute… '

He thought back to the notary's office earlier in the day and his discomfort when he'd heard the names of Jane's executors. Ruth Zardo nee Kemp. Ruth Zardo is the Governor-General award-winning poet Ruth Kemp? The gifted writer who defined the great Canadian ambivalence of kindness and rage? Who put voice to the unspeakable? Ruth Zardo. 'Why does that particular Zardo poem remind you of what we're seeing?'

'Because as far as I know Three Pines is made up of good people. But that deer trail suggests one of us is festering. Whoever shot Jane knew they were aiming at a person and wanted it to look like a hunting accident, like someone was waiting for a deer to come down the trail and shot Jane by accident. But the problem is that with a bow and arrow you have to be too close. Close enough to see what you're aiming at.'

Gamache nodded. She had understood after all. Ironic, really, that from a blind they should suddenly see so clearly.

Back in the Bistro, Gamache ordered a hot cider and went to wash up, pouring the warm water over his frozen hands and picking bits of bark from the scratches. He joined Clara in the armchairs by the fireplace. She was sipping her beer and flipping through The Boys' Big Book of Hunting. She put the book back on the table and slid it towards him.

'Very clever of you. I'd completely forgotten about blinds and trails and things like that.'

Gamache cupped his hands around the mug holding his hot, fragrant cider and waited. He felt she needed to talk. After a comfortable minute of silence she nodded into the body of the Bistro. 'Peter's over there with Ben. I'm not sure he even knows I left.'

Gamache looked over. Peter was talking to a waitress and Ben was looking over at them. But not at them. He was looking at Clara. When he caught Gamache's eye he quickly looked away, back to Peter.

'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 Boys' 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.

'You've got to listen. The words don't just fall into some sterile bin to be regurgitated later. When Mrs Croft said there was nothing in the basement, did you notice how she spoke, the inflection, what went before, the body language, the hands and eyes? Do you remember previous investigations when suspects said the same thing?'

'This is my first investigation,' said Nichol, with triumph.

'And why do you think I told you to just listen and take notes? Because you have no experience. Can you guess what the last sentence is?'

Nichol was now literally wrapped up in herself.

'I was wrong.' Gamache suspected he was talking to himself, though he had to try. All these things he was passing on to Nichol he'd heard as a 25-year-old rookie in homicide. Inspector Comeau had sat him down and told him all these things in one session, then never spoken of it again. It was a huge mountain of a gift, and one that Gamache continued to unwrap each day. He also understood, even as Comeau was speaking, that this was a gift designed to be given away. And so when he'd become an Inspector he'd started passing it on to the next generation. Gamache knew he was only responsible for trying. What they did with it was their business. There was one more thing he had to pass on.

'I asked you this morning to think about the ways you learn. What did you come up with?'

'I don't know.'

Lines from Ruth Zardo's famous poem came back to him:'I'll just go further away, where you will never find me, or hurt me, or make me speak.'

'What?' said Nichol. This was so unfair. Here she was doing her best. Following him around, even willing to stay in the country for the sake of the investigation. And she'd solved the damn thing. And did she get any credit? No. Maybe Gamache was losing it and her solving the case had made him see how pathetic he'd become. That's it, she thought, as her weary, wary eye spotted the island. He's jealous. It's not my fault. She grabbed hold of the shifting sand and scrambled out of the frigid sea just in the nick of time. She'd felt the hands brushing against her ankles, hoping to pull her under. But she made it on to her island, safe and perfect.

'We learn from our mistakes, Agent Nichol.' Whatever.