Still Life

'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.