‘So there’s Jane’s picture,’ said Clara, hauling a medium-size canvas out from the storage room and putting it on an easel. ‘Not everyone liked it.’
Nichol was on the verge of saying, ‘No kidding’, but remembered her pledge.
‘Did you like it?’ Beauvoir asked.
‘Not at first, but the longer I looked the more I liked it. Something sort of shimmered into place. It went from looking like a cave drawing to something deeply moving. Just like that.’ And Clara snapped her fingers.
Gamache thought he’d have to stare at it for the rest of his life before it looked anything other than ridiculous. And yet, there was something there, a charm. ‘There are Nellie and Wayne,’ he said pointing, surprised, to two purple people in the stands.
‘Here’s Peter.’ Clara pointed to a pie with eyes and a mouth, but no nose.
‘How’d she do it? How could she get these people so accurately with two dots for eyes and a squiggly line for a mouth?’
‘I don’t know. I’m an artist, have been all my life, and I couldn’t do that. But there’s more to it than that. There’s a depth. Though I’ve been staring at it for more than an hour now and that shimmering thing hasn’t happened again. Maybe I’m too needy. Maybe the magic only works when you’re not looking for it.’
‘Is it good?’ Beauvoir asked.
‘That’s the question. I don’t know. Peter thinks it’s brilliant, and the rest of the jury, with one exception, was willing to risk it.’
‘What risk?’
‘This might surprise you, but artists are temperamental so-and-sos. For Jane’s work to be accepted and shown, someone else’s had to be rejected. That someone will be angry. As will his relatives and friends.’
‘Angry enough to kill?’ Beauvoir asked.
Clara laughed. ‘I can absolutely guarantee you the thought has crossed and even lodged in all our artistic brains at one time or another. But to kill because your work was rejected at Arts Williamsburg? No. Besides, if you did, it would be the jury you’d murder, not Jane. And, come to think of it, no one except the jury knew this work had been accepted. We’d only done the judging last Friday.’ It seems so long ago now, thought Clara.