Louise Penny: Still Life (Three Pines Mysteries)

A clump of hair had fallen into Jane Neal’s open eyes. Gamache wanted to brush it away. It was fanciful, he knew. But he was fanciful. He had come to allow himself a certain latitude in that area. Beauvoir, on the other hand, was reason itself, and that made them a formidable team.

Gamache stared quietly at Jane Neal. Nichol cleared her throat, thinking perhaps he’d forgotten where he was. But he didn’t react. Didn’t move. He and Jane were frozen in time, both staring, one down, one up. Then his eyes moved along her body, to the worn camel-hair cardigan, the light-blue turtleneck. No jewelry. Was she robbed? He’d have to ask Beauvoir. Her tweed skirt was where you’d expect it to be, in someone who’d fallen. Her leotards, patched in at least one place, were otherwise unmarred. She might have been robbed, but she hadn’t been violated. Except for being killed, of course.

His deep brown eyes lingered on her liver-spotted brown hands. Rough, tanned hands that had known seasons in a garden. No rings on her fingers, or sign there had ever been. He always felt a pang when looking at the hands of the newly dead, imagining all the objects and people those hands had held. The food, the faces, the doorknobs. All the gestures they’d made to signal delight or sorrow. And the final gesture, surely, to ward off the blow that would kill. The most poignant were the hands of young people who would never absently brush a lock of gray hair from their own eyes.

He stood up with Beauvoir’s help and asked, ‘Was she robbed?’

‘We don’t think so. Mr Hadley says she never wore jewelry, and rarely carried a handbag. He thinks we’ll find it in her home.’

‘Her house key?’

‘No. No key. But again, Mr Hadley says people don’t lock up around here.’

‘They will now.’ Gamache stooped over the body and stared at the tiny wound, hardly large enough, you’d have thought, to drain the life from a whole human being. It was about the size of the tip of his little finger.

‘Any idea what did this?’

‘It’s hunting season, so perhaps a bullet, though it doesn’t look like any bullet wound I’ve ever seen.’

‘It’s actually bow-hunting season. Guns don’t start for two weeks,’ said Nichol.

The two men looked at her. Gamache nodded and the three of them stared at the wound as though perhaps with enough concentration it would talk.

‘So where’s the arrow?’ Beauvoir asked.

‘Is there an exit wound?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Beauvoir. ‘We haven’t let the medical examiner move her.’

‘Let’s get her over here,’ said Gamache as Beauvoir waved to a young woman in jeans, field coat and carrying a medical bag.

‘Monsieur l’Inspecteur,’ said Dr Sharon Harris, nodding and kneeling. ‘She’s been dead about five hours, perhaps slightly less. That’s just a guess.’ Dr Harris rolled Jane over. Dried leaves clung to the back of her sweater. A retching noise was heard and Nichol looked over to see Ben Hadley, his heaving back turned to them, throwing up.

‘Yes, there’s an exit wound.’

‘Thank you, doctor. We’ll leave you to it. Now, walk with me, Beauvoir, you too, Agent Nichol. Tell me what you know.’

In all the years Jean Guy Beauvoir had worked with Gamache, through all the murders and mayhem, it never ceased to thrill him, hearing that simple sentence. ‘Tell me what you know.’ It signaled the beginning of the hunt. He was the alpha dog. And Chief Inspector Gamache was Master of the Hunt.

‘Her name’s Jane Neal. Aged seventy-six. Never been married. We got this information from Mr Hadley who says she was the same age as his mother who died a month ago.’

‘That’s interesting. Two elderly women die within a month of each other in this tiny village. I wonder.’

‘I wondered too, so I asked. His mother died after a long battle with cancer. They could see it coming for a year.’

‘Go on.’

‘Mr Hadley was walking in the woods at about eight this morning, a regular occurrence. Miss Neal’s body was lying across the path. Impossible to miss.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He says he recognised her immediately. He knelt down and shook her. He thought she’d had a stroke or heart attack. Says he was about to begin CPR when he noticed the wound.’

‘Didn’t he notice she was staring blank-eyed and was cold as marble?’ Nichol was feeling more confident.

‘Would you?’

‘Of course. You couldn’t miss it.’

‘Unless . . .’ Here Gamache was inviting her to argue against herself. She didn’t want to. She wanted to be right. Clearly he thought she wasn’t.

‘Unless. Unless I was in shock, I suppose.’ She had to admit that was a remote possibility.

‘Look at the man. It’s been three hours since he found her and he’s still sick. He just threw up. This woman was important to him,’ said Gamache, looking over at Ben Hadley. ‘Unless he’s faking it.’

‘Sorry, sir?’

‘Well, it’s easy enough to stick a finger down your throat and throw up. Makes quite an impression.’ Gamache turned to Beauvoir. ‘Do any others know about the death of Miss Neal?’

‘There was a group of villagers on the road, sir,’ said Nichol. Gamache and Beauvoir looked at her. She’d done it again, she realised. In an effort to impress and redeem herself she’d in fact done the opposite. She’d answered a question not directed at her, interrupting a senior officer with information obvious to a three-year-old. Inspector Gamache had seen those people as well as she had. Damn! Nichol knew with a creeping chill that in trying to impress them with her brilliance she was having the opposite effect. She was proving herself a fool.

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Inspector Beauvoir?’

‘I’ve tried to keep this a sterile site.’ He turned to Nichol.

‘No outsiders, and none of our people talking about the crime outside our perimeter.’ Nichol blushed a deep red. She hated that he felt he had to explain it to her, and she hated even more that she needed the explanation.

‘But—’ Beauvoir shrugged.

‘Time to speak with Mr Hadley,’ said Gamache, walking with a measured pace in his direction.

Ben Hadley had been watching them, understanding clearly that the boss had arrived.

‘Mr Hadley, I’m Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Quebec.’

Ben had been expecting a francophone, perhaps even a unilingual French detective, so he’d spent a few minutes practicing his French, and how to describe his movements. Now this immaculate man with the trimmed moustache, the deep-brown eyes looking at him over the rim of his half-moon glasses, the three-piece suit (could that possibly be a Burberry coat?), the tweed cap with graying, groomed hair underneath, was extending his large hand—as though this was a slightly formal business occasion—and speaking English with a British accent. Yet he’d heard snippets of his conversation with his colleagues and that was definitely in fast and fluid French. In Quebec it was far from unusual that people spoke both languages, even fluently. But it was unusual to find a francophone speaking like a hereditary member of the House of Lords.

‘This is Inspector Jean Guy Beauvoir and Agent Yvette Nichol.’ They all shook hands, though Nichol was slightly leery, not sure what he’d wiped his face with after throwing up.

‘How can I help?’

‘Let’s walk,’ Gamache pointed down the path through the woods, ‘just a little away from here.’

‘Thank you,’ said Ben, genuinely grateful.

‘I’m sorry about the death of Miss Neal. Was she a close friend?’

‘Very. She actually taught me at the school house here.’

Gamache was watching him attentively, his dark brown eyes on Ben’s face, taking in what was being said, without judgment or accusation. Ben could feel himself relax for the first time in hours. Gamache said nothing, just waited for Ben to continue.