Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #1)

‘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.’