Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #1)

‘To hide something’ said Clara, kneeling down beside him. His fingers had found a small corner of the wallpaper that was already peeling back

‘Exactly.’ Carefully Gamache pulled back one the corner and it rolled off, exposing about a foot of wall, and more wallpaper underneath.

‘Could she have put two layers on?’ Clara asked , feeling herself deflating.

‘I don’t think she had time,’ said Gamache. Clara leaned in closer.

‘Peter, look at this.’ He joined them on his knees and peered at the exposed wall. ‘This isn’t wallpaper,’ he said, looking at Clara, stunned.

‘ I didn’t think so,’ said Clara

‘Well, what is it, for God’s sake?’ said Gamache.

‘It’s Jane’s drawing,’ said Clara. ‘Jane drew this.’

Gamache looked again and could see it. The bright colors, the childish strokes. He couldn’t tell what is was, not enough had been revealed, but it had indeed been put there by Miss Neal.

‘Is it possible?’ he asked Clara as the two stood and looked around the room.

‘Is what possible?’ asked Beauvoir. ‘Voyons, what are you talking about?’

‘The wallpaper,’ said Gamache. ‘I was wrong. It wasn’t meant to distract, it was meant to cover up. Where you see wallpaper, that’s where she drew.’

‘But it’s everywhere,’ protested Beauvoir. ‘She couldn’t—’ He stopped, seeing the look on the chief’s face. Maybe she did. Was it possible, he wondered, joining the others and turning around and around. All the walls? The ceiling? The floors even? He realised he’d far underestimated Les Anglais and their potential for insanity.

‘And upstairs?’ he asked. Gamache caught his eye and it was as though the world paused for an instant. He nodded.

‘C’est incroyable,’ whispered the two men together. Clara was beyond speech, and Peter was already over at another seam across the room, tugging.

‘There’s more here,’ he called, standing up.

‘This was her shame,’ said Gamache, and Clara knew the truth of it.

Within an hour Peter and Clara had spread tarpaulins and moved the furniture. Before leaving, Gamache gave his approval for them to remove the wallpaper and as much of the covering paint as possible. Clara called Ben and he readily volunteered. She was delighted. She would have called Myrna, who would definitely have been a far harder worker than Ben, but this was a job that called for delicacy and the touch of an artist, and Ben had that.

‘Any idea how long this’ll take?’ asked Gamache.

‘Honestly? Including the ceiling and the floors? Probably a year.’

Gamache frowned.

‘It’s important, isn’t it?’ said Clara, reading his expression.

‘Could be. I don’t know, but I think it is.’

‘We’ll go as fast as we dare. Don’t want to ruin the images underneath. But I think we can get a lot of the stuff off, enough to see what’s underneath.’

Fortunately Yolande, proving slapdash to the end, hadn’t prepped the wall, so the paper was peeling off already. Nor had she used primer under the painted bits, to Peter and Clara’s great relief. They started after lunch and continued with only a break for beer and chips mid-afternoon. In the evening Peter rigged up some floodlights and they continued, except Ben who felt maybe his elbow was acting up.

At about seven a tired and bedraggled Peter and Clara decided to break for food and joined Ben by the fireplace. He’d at least managed to lay it and light it, and now they found him, his feet on the hassock, sipping red wine and reading Jane’s latest copy of The Guardian Weekly. Gabri arrived with Szechwan take-out. He’d heard rumors of the activity and wanted desperately to see for himself. He’d even rehearsed.

The huge man, made even more enormous by his coat and scarves, swept into the room. Stopping dead in the center, and making sure he held his audience, he looked around and declared, ‘Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.’

His appreciative audience roared their approval, took the food and kicked him out feeling that Jane and Oscar Wilde made one dead person too many in the room.

They worked into the night, and finally gave it up around midnight, too tired to trust themselves anymore and both slightly nauseous from inhaling paint remover. Ben had long since gone home.

The next morning, in the light of day, they saw they’d done about four square feet upstairs and a quarter of one wall downstairs. It looked as though Gamache had been right. Jane had covered every inch of her home. And Yolande had covered that. By midday a little more had been uncovered. Clara stood back to admire the few feet of wallpaper she’d stripped and Jane’s work underneath. Enough was emerging now to make it quite exciting. There seemed to be a pattern and purpose to Jane’s work. But what that purpose might be wasn’t clear, yet.