Still Life

‘When did she do that?’ Gamache asked, leaning forward.

‘Friday, at dinner, after she’d heard she’d been accepted for the show.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Gamache, leaning his elbows on the table, as though preparing to crawl across it and into her head. ‘Are you telling me on the Friday before she died she invited everyone to a party inside her home? For the first time in her life?’

‘Yes. We’d been to dinner and to parties in her home thousands of times, but always in the kitchen. This time she specified the living room. Is that important?’

‘I don’t know. When’s the show opening?’

‘In two weeks.’ They sat in silence, thinking about the show. Then Clara noticed the time. ‘I need to go. People coming for dinner.’ He stood up with her and she smiled at him. ‘Thank you for finding the blind.’ He gave her a small bow and watched her wind her way through the tables, nodding and waving to people, until she’d reached Peter and Ben. She kissed Peter on the top of his head and the two men stood as one, and all three left the Bistro, like a family.

Gamache picked up The Boys’ Big Book of Hunting from the table and opened the front cover. Scrawled inside in a big, round, immature hand was ‘B. Malenfant’.

When Gamache arrived back at the B. & B., he found Olivier and Gabri getting ready to head over to the Morrows for a pot luck dinner.

‘There’s a shepherd’s pie in the oven for you, if you want,’ Gabri called as they left.

Upstairs, Gamache tapped on Agent Nichol’s door and suggested they meet downstairs in twenty minutes to continue their talk from that morning. Nichol agreed. He also told her they’d be eating in that night, so she could dress casually. She nodded, thanked him, and shut the door, going back to what she’d been doing for the last half-hour, desperately trying to decide what to wear. Which of the outfits she’d borrowed from her sister Angelina was perfect? Which said smart, powerful, don’t mess with me, future chief inspector? Which one said ‘Like me’? Which one was right?

Gamache climbed the next flight to his room, opened the door and felt drawn toward the brass bed piled high with a pure white duvet and white down pillows. All he wanted to do was to sink into it, close his eyes, and fall fast and deeply asleep. The room was simply furnished, with soothing white walls and a deep cherry wood chest of drawers. An old oil portrait dominated one wall. A faded and well-loved oriental throw rug sat on the wood floor. It was a soothing and inviting room and almost more than Gamache could stand. He wavered in the middle of the room then walked determinedly to the ensuite bathroom. His shower revived him, and after getting into casual clothing he called Reine-Marie, gathered his notes, and was back in the living room in twenty minutes.

Yvette Nichol came down half an hour later. She’d decided to wear the ‘power’ outfit. Gamache didn’t look up from his reading when she walked in.

‘We have a problem.’ Gamache lowered his notebook and looked at her, cross-legged and cross-armed across from him. She was a station of the cross. ‘Actually, you have a problem. But it becomes my problem when it affects this investigation.’

‘Really, sir? And what would that be?’

‘You have a good brain, Agent.’

‘And that’s a problem?’

‘No. That’s the problem. You’re smug and you’re arrogant.’ The soft-spoken words hit her like an assault. No one had dared speak to her like this before. ‘I started off by saying you have a good brain. You showed fine deductive reasoning in the meeting this afternoon.’

Nichol sat up straighter, mollified, but alert.

‘But a good brain isn’t enough,’ continued Gamache. ‘You have to use it. And you don’t. You look, but you don’t see. You hear, but you don’t listen.’

Nichol was pretty sure she’d seen that written on a coffee cup in the traffic division. Poor Gamache lived by philosophies small enough to fit a mug.

‘I look and listen well enough to solve the case.’

‘Perhaps. We’ll see. As I said before, that was good work, and you have a good brain. But there’s something missing. Surely you can feel it. Do you ever feel lost, as though people are speaking a foreign language, as though there’s something going on which everyone else gets, but you don’t?’

Nichol hoped her faced didn’t reflect her shock. How did he know?

‘The only thing I don’t get, sir, is how you can dress me down for solving a case.’