Still Life

‘Wow, this is fabulous!’ Clara hopped on to the platform. ‘What a view. Good thing the weather cleared. I hear tomorrow’s supposed to be sunny. Why’re you here?’

‘Why are you?’

‘I couldn’t concentrate on my work and I suddenly knew I had to come here. Well, not here but down there, to where Jane died. I feel I owe Jane.’

‘Hard to get on with life and not feel guilty.’

‘That must be it.’ She turned and looked at him, impressed. ‘So what brought you here?’

‘I came looking for that.’ He pointed over the side of the platform, trying to sound nonchalant. White lights were dancing in front of his eyes, a familiar prelude to vertigo. He forced himself to look over the edge. The sooner this was over the better.

‘What?’ Clara stared into the woods beyond where Jane had been killed. Gamache could feel himself getting annoyed. Surely she could see it. Was that a crack? The sun was casting long shadows and strange light, and some of it just caught at the edge of the forest, and then she saw it.

‘The opening through the woods, over there. Is that it?’

‘It’s a deer trail,’ said Gamache, inching back from the edge and reaching behind him for the tree trunk. ‘Made by deer year after year. They’re like the railways in Switzerland. Very predictable. They always use the same path, for generations. Which is why the blind was built here.’ He was almost forgetting to panic. ‘To watch the deer move along the trail, and shoot them. But the trail is almost invisible. We had trained investigators searching this whole area yesterday and none of them saw it. None realised there was a tiny path through the woods. I didn’t. You’d have to know it was there.’

‘I knew it was there but I’d completely forgotten,’ said Clara. ‘Peter brought me here a long time ago. Right up to this blind. But you’re right. Only locals would know that this is where to find deer. Did Jane’s killer shoot her from here?’

‘No, this hasn’t been used in years. I’ll get Beauvoir along, but I’m sure. The killer shot her from the woods. He was either there because he was waiting for deer -’

‘Or he was there waiting for Jane. Incredible view form up here.’ Clara turned her back on the deer trail and looked in the opposite direction. ‘You can see Timmer’s home from here.’

Gamache, surprised by the change in topic, also turned, slowly, cautiously. Sure enough there were the slate roofs of the old Victorian home. Solid and beautiful in its own way with its red stone walls and huge windows.

‘Hideous.’ Clara shivered and made for the ladder. ‘Horrible place. And in case you’re wondering,’ she turned to climb down and looked at Gamache, her face in darkness now, ‘I understand what you were saying. Whoever killed Jane was local. But there’s more.’

‘“When thou hast done, thou hast not done, for I have more”,’ quoted Gamache. ‘John Donne,’, he explained, feeling a little giddy at the thought of finally escaping.

Clara was halfway down the hole in the floor, ‘I remember, from school. Frankly, Ruth Zardo’s poetry comes more to mind:

I’ll keep it all inside; festering, rotting; but I’m really a nice person, kind, loving.‘Get out of my way, you motherfucker.’ Oops, sorry . . .’

‘Ruth Zardo, did you say?’ said Gamache stunned. Clara had just quoted from one of his favorite poems. Now he knelt down and continued it:

‘ that just slipped out, escaped, I’ll try harder, just watch, I will. You can’t make me say anything. I’ll just go further away, where you will never find me, or hurt me, or make me speak.

You mean Ruth Zardo wrote that? Wait a minute . . . ’

He thought back to the notary’s office earlier in the day and his discomfort when he’d heard the names of Jane’s executors. Ruth Zardo nee Kemp. Ruth Zardo is the Governor-General award-winning poet Ruth Kemp? The gifted writer who defined the great Canadian ambivalence of kindness and rage? Who put voice to the unspeakable? Ruth Zardo. ‘Why does that particular Zardo poem remind you of what we’re seeing?’

‘Because as far as I know Three Pines is made up of good people. But that deer trail suggests one of us is festering. Whoever shot Jane knew they were aiming at a person and wanted it to look like a hunting accident, like someone was waiting for a deer to come down the trail and shot Jane by accident. But the problem is that with a bow and arrow you have to be too close. Close enough to see what you’re aiming at.’