Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #1)

‘How should I know?’

‘Well, why don’t we just go and see.’

When they’d pulled up in Gamache’s car they’d seen Yolande going after Lacoste, who seemed to have been stuffed.

‘Poor woman.’ Gamache smiled. ‘This will make a story she can bore her rookies with one day. Listen, we’re both anxious to get into that house, but I’d like to get a couple of things out of the way first. Go and interview Yolande and try to get André as well. I want to speak with Myrna Landers.’

‘Why?’

Gamache told him.

‘I need to know what Timmer Hadley said that day you were sitting with her.’

Myrna locked the door to her bookshop and poured them each a cup of tea. Then she sat down in the comfortable chair opposite him. ‘I think you’ll be disappointed. I can’t see that it matters to anyone now, alive or dead.’

‘You’d be surprised.’

‘I dare say.’ She sipped her tea and looked out the window into the dusk, her mind going back to that afternoon just a few months ago. Seemed like years. Timmer Hadley a skeleton draped with flesh. Her eyes bright in the head made huge by a shriveled body. They’d sat together, Myrna perched on the side of the bed, Timmer wrapped in blankets and hot-water bottles. The big old brown album between them. The photos falling out, their glue long since turned to grit. One that had slipped out was of a young Jane Neal and her parents and sister.

Timmer told Myrna about Jane’s parents, prisoners of their own insecurities and fears. Those fears passed on to the sister Irene, who had also become a social climber and searched for security in objects and the approval of others. But not Jane. And then came the story Gamache had asked about:

‘This was taken on the last day of the county fair. The day after the dance. You can see how happy Jane is,’ Timmer had said, and it was true. Even in the grainy photo she glowed, even more in comparison to the glum faces of her parents and sister.

‘She’d become engaged to her young man that night,’ said Timmer, wistfully. ‘What was his name? Andreas. He was a lumberjack, of all things. Doesn’t matter. She hadn’t told her parents yet, but she had a plan. She’d elope. They made a wonderful couple. Rather odd to look at, until you got to know them and saw how good they were together. They loved each other. Except,’ and here Timmer’s brow had clouded, ‘Ruth Kemp went to Jane’s parents, here at the fair, and told them what Jane planned to do. She did it in secret but I overheard. I was young, and my big regret to this day was not going to Jane right away to warn her. But I didn’t.’

‘What happened?’ Myrna asked.

‘They took Jane home and broke up the relationship. Spoke to Kaye Thompson, who employed Andreas, and threatened to take away the mills’ business from her operation if this lumberjack so much as looked at Jane. You could do that in those days. Kaye’s a good woman, a fair woman, and she explained it all to him, but it broke his heart. He apparently tried to see Jane, but couldn’t.’

‘And Jane?’

‘She was told she couldn’t see him. No debate. She was only seventeen, and not a very headstrong person. She gave in. It was a horrible thing.’

‘Did Jane ever know it was Ruth who did it?’

‘I never told her. Perhaps I should have. Seemed there was enough pain, but probably I was just afraid.’

‘Did you ever say anything to Ruth?’

‘No.’

Myrna looked down at the photograph in Timmer’s translucent hand. A moment of joy caught just before it was extinguished.

‘Why did Ruth do it?’

‘I don’t know. For sixty years I’ve wondered that. Maybe she wonders the same thing. There’s something about her, something bitter, that resents happiness in others, and needs to ruin it. That’s probably what makes her a great poet, she knows what it is to suffer. She gathers suffering to her. Collects it, and sometimes creates it. I think that’s why she likes to sit with me, she feels more comfortable in the company of a dying woman than a thriving one. But perhaps I’m being unfair.’

Listening to Myrna’s narrative, Gamache thought he would’ve liked to meet Timmer Hadley. But too late. He was, though, about to meet Jane Neal, or at least get as close as he would ever come to doing so.

Beauvoir stepped into the perfect home. So perfect it was lifeless. So perfect a tiny part of him found it attractive. He shoved that part down and pretended it didn’t exist.

Yolande Fontaine’s home gleamed. Every surface glowed with polish. In his stockinged feet he was shown into the living room, a room whose only blemish sat in an overstuffed chair and read the sports section. André didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge his wife. Yolande made her way to him. Actually, to his pile of dumped newspaper, forming a teepee village on the tasteful area rug. She picked up the paper, folded it, and put it in a neat stack on the coffee table, all the edges lining up. Then she turned to Beauvoir.