Still Life (13 page)

FIVE

With trembling hands, Agent Isabelle Lacoste reached into the plastic bag and carefully withdrew a lethal weapon. In her fingers, wet and numb with cold, she held an arrowhead. The other Sûreté officers around the room sat in silence, many squinting, trying to get a clear look at the tiny tip, designed to kill.

‘We found it and others in the clubhouse,’ she said, passing it around. She’d arrived early that morning, leaving her husband to look after the kids and driving through the rain and dark from Montreal. She liked her quiet time at the office, and today the office was a cold and silent former schoolhouse. Inspector Beauvoir had given her the key and as she let herself past the yellow police tape she pulled out her thermos of coffee, dropped her police bag with ‘scene of crime’ paraphernalia on the floor, switched on the light and looked around. The tongue-in-groove walls were covered with quivers hanging from what must once have been hooks for little coats. At the front of the room the blackboard still dominated, no doubt permanently attached
to the wall. On it someone had drawn a target, an ‘X’ and an arc between the two with numbers written below. Agent Lacoste had done her homework on the Internet the night before and recognised this as a pretty basic archery lesson on wind, distance and trajectory. Still, she took out her camera and photographed it. Pouring herself a coffee, she sat down and drew the diagram in her notebook. She was a careful woman.

Then, before any of the other officers assigned to the search arrived, she did something only she knew about: she went back outside and in the strained light of the rainy morning she walked to the spot where Jane Neal had died. And she told Miss Neal that Chief Inspector Gamache would find out who had done this to her.

Agent Isabelle Lacoste believed in ‘do unto others’ and knew she’d want someone to do this for her.

She then returned to the unheated archery clubhouse. The other officers had arrived and together they searched the single room, fingerprinting, measuring, photographing, bagging. And then Lacoste, reaching into the back of a drawer in the only desk remaining in the room, had found them.

Gamache held it in the palm of his hand, as though holding a grenade. The arrowhead clearly meant for hunting. Four razors tapered to a fine tip. Now, finally, he could appreciate what had been said in the public meeting. This arrowhead seemed to yearn to cut through his palm. Hurtled from a bow with all the force thousands of years of need could produce, it would without a doubt pass straight through a person. It’s a wonder guns were ever invented when you already had such a lethal and silent weapon.

Agent Lacoste wiped a soft towel through her dripping dark hair. She stood with her back to the lively fire perking in the stone fireplace, feeling warm for the first time in
hours, and she smelt the homemade soup and bread and watched the deadly weapon progress around the room.

Clara and Myrna stood in line at the buffet table, balancing mugs of steaming French Canadian pea soup and plates with warm rolls from the boulangerie. Just ahead Nellie was piling food on to her plate.

‘I’m getting enough for Wayne too,’ Nellie explained unnecessarily. ‘He’s over there, poor guy.’

‘I heard his cough,’ said Myrna. ‘A cold?’

‘Don’t know. It’s gone to his chest. This is the first time I’ve been out of the house in days, I’ve been that worried. But Wayne cut Miss Neal’s lawn and looked after odd jobs and he wanted to go to the meeting.’ The two women watched as Nellie took her huge plate over to Wayne, who sat slouched and exhausted in a chair. She wiped his brow and then got him to his feet. The two of them left the Bistro, Nellie concerned and in charge, and Wayne docile and happy to be led. Clara hoped he’d be all right.

‘What did you think of the meeting?’ Clara asked Myrna as they edged along.

‘I like him, Inspector Gamache.’

‘Me too. But it’s strange, Jane being killed by a hunting arrow.’

‘Though if you think about it, it makes sense. It’s hunting season, but I agree the old wooden arrow gave me the shivers. Very weird. Turkey?’

‘Please. Brie?’ asked Clara.

‘Just a sliver. Perhaps a bigger sliver than that.’

‘When does a sliver become a hunk?’

‘If you’re a hunk, size doesn’t matter,’ Myrna explained.

‘I’ll remember that next time I go to bed with a hunk of Stilton.’

‘You’d cheat on Peter?’

‘With food? I cheat on him everyday. I have a very special
relationship with a gummy bear who shall remain nameless. Well, actually his name is Ramon. He completes me. Look at that.’ Clara pointed to the floral arrangement on the buffet.

‘I did that this morning,’ said Myrna, happy that Clara had noticed. Clara noticed most things, Myrna realised, and had the wit to mostly mention just the good.

‘I thought perhaps you had. Anything in it?’

‘You’ll see,’ said Myrna, with a smile. Clara leaned into the arrangement of annual monarda, helenium and artist’s acrylic paint brushes. Nestled inside was a package wrapped in brown waxed paper.

‘It’s sage and sweetgrass,’ said Clara back at the table, unwrapping the package. ‘Does this mean what I think?’

‘A ritual,’ said Myrna.

‘Oh, what a fine idea.’ Clara reached over and touched Myrna’s arm.

‘From Jane’s garden?’ Ruth asked, inhaling the musky, unmistakable aroma of sage, and the honey-like fragrance of the sweetgrass.

‘The sage, yes. Jane and I cut it in August. The sweetgrass I got from Henri a couple of weeks ago, when he cut back his hay. It was growing around Indian Rock.’

Ruth passed them to Ben who held them at arm’s length.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, man, they won’t hurt you.’ Ruth snatched them up and whipped them back and forth under Ben’s nose. ‘As I recall, you were even invited to the Summer Solstice ritual.’

‘Only as a human sacrifice,’ said Ben.

‘Come on, Ben, that’s not fair,’ said Myrna. ‘We said that probably wouldn’t be necessary.’

‘It was fun,’ said Gabri, swallowing a deviled egg. ‘I wore the minister’s frocks.’ He lowered his voice and darted his eyes around, in case the minister should have actually decided to come and minister.

‘Best use they’ve been put to,’ said Ruth.

‘Thank you,’ said Gabri.

‘It wasn’t meant as a compliment. Weren’t you straight before the ritual?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes.’ Gabri turned to Ben. ‘It worked. Magic. You should definitely go to the next one.’

‘That’s true,’ said Olivier, standing behind Gabri and massaging his neck. ‘Ruth, weren’t you a woman before the ritual?’

‘Weren’t you?’

‘And you say this’, Gamache held the arrowhead up so the tip was pointing to the ceiling, ‘was found in an unlocked drawer along with twelve others?’ He examined the hunting tip with its four razor edges coming to an elegant and lethal point. It was a perfect, silent, killing device.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Lacoste. She’d firmly claimed the spot directly in front of the fire. From where she stood in the back room of the Bistro she could see out the French doors as rain, almost sleet, whipped against the glass. Her hands, now free of lethal weapons, cradled a mug of hot soup and a warm roll stuffed with ham, melting brie and a few leaves of arugula.

Gamache carefully placed the arrowhead on to Beauvoir’s open palm. ‘Can this be put on to the end of any arrow?’

‘What do you have in mind?’ Beauvoir asked the boss.

‘Well, that clubhouse is full of target-shooting arrows, right?’

Lacoste nodded, her mouth full.

‘With little stubby heads, like bullet tips?’

‘Phreith,’ Lacoste managed, nodding.

‘Can those tips be removed and this put on?’

‘Yes,’ said Lacoste, swallowing hard.

‘Forgive me.’ Gamache smiled. ‘But how do you know?’

‘I read up on it on the Internet last night. The tips are
made to be interchangeable. ‘Course you have to know what you’re doing or you’ll cut your fingers to ribbons. But, yes, take one out, put the other in. That’s the design.’

‘Even the old wooden ones?’

‘Yes. I suspect these hunting heads came originally from the old wooden arrows in the clubhouse. Someone took them off and replaced them with the target heads.’

Gamache nodded. Ben had told them that he’d picked up the old wooden arrows from families who were upgrading their hunting equipment. The arrows would have come originally with hunting heads and he’d have to replace them with the target ones.

‘Good. Get them all to the lab.’

‘Already on their way,’ said Lacoste, taking a seat next to Nichol, who moved her chair slightly away.

‘What time is our appointment with Notary Stickley about the will?’ Gamache asked Nichol. Yvette Nichol knew very well it was at one-thirty, but saw an opportunity to prove she’d heard his little lecture that morning.

‘I forget.’

‘I’m sorry?’

Ha, she thought, he gets it. He’d given her one of the key statements in response. She quickly went through the other statements, the ones that lead to promotion. I forget, I’m sorry, I need help and what was the other one?

‘I don’t know.’

Now Chief Inspector Gamache was looking at her with open concern.

‘I see. Did you happen to write it down?’

She considered trying out the last phrase but couldn’t bring herself to say, ‘I need help.’ Instead she lowered her head and blushed, feeling she’d somehow been set up.

Gamache looked in his own notes. ‘It’s at one-thirty. With any luck we’ll get into Miss Neal’s home after we sort out the will.’

He had called his old friend and classmate Superintendent Brébeuf earlier. Michel Brébeuf had been promoted beyond Gamache, into a job they’d both applied for, but it hadn’t affected their relationship. Gamache respected Brébeuf and liked him. The Superintendent had sympathised with Gamache, but couldn’t promise anything.

‘For God’s sake, Armand, you know how it works. It was just stinking bad luck she actually found someone dense enough to sign the injunction. I doubt we’ll find a judge willing to overturn a colleague.’

Gamache needed evidence, either that it was murder or that the home didn’t go to Yolande Fontaine. His phone rang as he contemplated the interview with the notary.

‘Oui, allô?’
He got up to take the call in a quiet part of the room.

‘I think a ritual would be perfect,’ said Clara, picking at a piece of bread but not really hungry. ‘But I have this feeling it should just be women. And not necessarily just Jane’s close friends, but any women who’d like to take part.’

‘Damn,’ said Peter, who’d been to the Summer Solstice ritual and had found it embarrassing and very strange.

‘When would you like it?’ Myrna asked Clara.

‘How about next Sunday?’

‘One week to the day Jane died,’ said Ruth.

Clara had spotted Yolande and her family arriving at the Bistro and knew she’d have to say something. Gathering her wits she walked over. The Bistro grew so silent Chief Inspector Gamache heard the sudden drop off in noise next door after he’d hung up from the call. Tiptoeing around the back he stood just inside the servers’ entrance. From there he could see and hear everything, but not be observed. You don’t get to be that good at this job, he thought, without being a sneak. He then noticed a server standing patiently behind him with a tray of cold cuts.

‘This should be good,’ she whispered. ‘Black forest ham?’

‘Thank you.’ He took a slice.

‘Yolande,’ Clara said, extending her hand. ‘I’m sorry for your loss. Your aunt was a wonderful woman.’

Yolande looked at the extended hand, took it briefly and then released it, hoping to give the impression of monumental grief. It would have worked had she not been playing to an audience well acquainted with her emotional range. Not to mention her real relationship with Jane Neal.

‘Please accept my condolences,’ Clara continued, feeling stiff and artificial.

Yolande bowed her head and brought a dry paper napkin to her dry eye.

‘At least we can re-use the napkin,’ said Olivier, who was also looking over Gamache’s shoulder. ‘What a pathetic piece of work. This is really awful to watch. Pastry?’

Olivier was holding a tray of mille feuilles, meringues, slices of pies and little custard tarts with glazed fruit on top. He chose one covered in tiny wild blueberries.