Louise Penny - Still Life (Three Pines Mysteries)

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 for 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.’