Still Life (A Three Pines Mystery)

He saw a door ajar off the kitchen and made a guess. Reaching out he opened it and in a bound he was down the stairs and looking at an unholy mess.

'Don't go down there, that's Andre's area.' He ignored her and quickly moved around the dank room until he found what he'd been looking for. A pair of still-wet Wellingtons and a bow leaning against the wall.

'Where were you on the morning Jane Neal was killed?' Beauvoir asked Andre, once they'd returned to the living room.

'Sleeping, where else?'

'Well, how about hunting?'

'Mebbe. Dunno. I got a license you know.'

'That wasn't the question. Were you hunting last Sunday morning?'

Andre shrugged. ,

'I saw a dirty bow in the basement.' So like Andre, he thought, not to clean his equipment. But looking at the antiseptic home Beauvoir could see why Andre might yearn for mud. And disorder. And time away from Lemon Pledge.

'And you think it's still wet and dirty from last week?' Andre hooted.

'No, from today. You hunt on Sundays, don't you? Every Sunday, including one week ago, the day Jane Neal was killed. Let me make this clear. This is now a murder investigation. Who's the most likely suspect in any murder? A family member. Who's the next most likely suspect? Someone who benefits from the death. And if that person has the opportunity as well, we might as well start making your bed in the penitentiary right now. You two win. We know you're in debt.' He took a calculated guess, 'You believed you inherited everything, and you, Andre, know how to shoot a bow and arrow well enough to kill. Am I making myself clear?'

'Look, Inspector,' Andre rose from the chair, dropping the sports section a page at a time on the floor. 'I went hunting and I bagged a deer the day Jane Neal was killed. You can ask Boxleiter at the abattoir, he dressed it for me.'

'But you were out hunting today. Isn't the limit one deer?'

'What, now you're a game warden? Yes. I went out today. I'll kill as many deer as I want.'

'And your son, Bernard? Where was he last Sunday?'

'Sleeping.'

'Sleeping like you were sleeping?'

'Look, he's fourteen, that's what kids do on weekends. He sleeps, he wakes up long enough to piss me off and eat the food I put in the fridge, and then he goes back to bed. Wish I had his life.'

'What do you do for a living?'

'I'm unemployed. I was an astronaut, but I got laid off.' And Andre roared at his own cleverness, a putrid laugh that seemed to deaden the room even further. 'Yeah, they hired a one-armed black lesbian to replace me.'

Beauvoir left their home wanting to call his wife and tell her how much he loved her, and then tell her what he believed in, and his fears and hopes and disappointments. To talk about something real and meaningful. He dialed his cell phone and got her. But the words got caught somewhere south of his throat. Instead he told her the weather had cleared, and she told him about the movie she'd rented. Then they both hung up. Driving back to Three Pines Beauvoir noticed an odor clinging to his clothes. Lemon Pledge.

He found the chief standing outside Miss Neal's home, the key pressed into the palm of his hand. Gamache had waited for him. Finally, exactly a week after her death, the two men walked into Jane Neal's home.

ELEVEN

'Tabernacle', whispered Beauvoir, then after a pause during which neither man breathed. 'Christ.'

They stood on the threshold of Jane's living room, frozen in place. Riveted as to a particularly gruesome accident. But what held them fast was no mere accident, it was more aggressive, more intentional.

'If I was Jane Neal I'd keep people out, too,' said Beauvoir, regaining his secular voice. For a moment. 'Sacre.'

Jane's living room assaulted them with color. Huge Timothy Leary flowers daygloed, psychedelic three- dimensional silver towers and mushrooms advanced and retreated, enormous yellow Happy Faces marched around the fireplace. It was a veritable parade of bad taste.

'Shit,' whispered Beauvoir.

The room glowed in the gathering gloom. Even the ceiling between the old timbers was wallpapered. It was more than a joke, it was a travesty. Any lover of Quebecois heritage and architecture would feel wretched in this room and Gamache, who was both, could taste his lunch in his throat.

He hadn't expected this. Faced with this cacophony of color he couldn't remember what he'd expected, but certainly not this. He tore his eyes from the maniacal Happy Faces and forced himself to look down to the wide plank floors, made with timber hand-hewn by a man being chased by winter two hundred years ago. Floors like this were rare, even in Quebec, and considered by some, Gamache included, works of art. Jane Neal was fortunate enough to live in one of the tiny original fieldstone homes, made from stones literally yanked from the land as it was cleared for planting. To own a home like this was to be a custodian of Quebec history.

With dread Gamache lowered his eyes from the walls to the floor.

It was painted pink. Glossy pink.

He groaned. Beside him Beauvoir almost, almost reached out to touch the Chief Inspector on the arm. He knew how upsetting this would be for any lover of heritage. It was a sacrilege.

'Why?' asked Gamache, but the Happy Faces remained mute. So did Beauvoir. He had no answer but then he was always astonished by 'les Anglais'. This room was just one more example of their unfathomable behavior. As the silence stretched on Beauvoir felt he owed the Chief at least an attempt at an