Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #1)

‘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.’