Still Life (A Three Pines Mystery)

'I can't. She was doped up with morphine and I know she would never have said anything had she been in her right mind. Besides, it has nothing to do with Jane's death. It happened over sixty years ago.'

'The funny thing about murder is that the act is often committed decades before the actual action. Something happens, and it leads, inexorably, to death many years later. A bad seed is planted. It's like those old horror films from the Hammer studios, of the monster, not running, never running, but walking without pause, without thought or mercy, toward its victim. Murder is often like that. It starts way far off.'

'I still won't tell you what Timmer said.'

Gamache knew he could persuade her. But why? If the lab tests exonerated the Crofts, then he'd come back, but otherwise she was right. He didn't need to know, but, God knew, he really wanted to know.

'I'll tell you what,' he said. 'I won't press. But one day I might ask again and you'll need to tell me.'

'Fair enough. You ask again, and I'll tell you.'

'I have another question. What do you think of the boys who threw the manure?'

'We all do stupid, cruel things as children. I remember I once took a neighbor's dog and shut it in my house, then told the little girl her dog had been picked up by the dog catcher and destroyed. I still wake up at three in the morning seeing her face. I tracked her down about ten years ago to say I was sorry but she'd been killed in a car accident.'

'You have to forgive yourself,' said Gamache, holding up Being.

'You're right, of course. But maybe I don't want to. Maybe that's something I don't want to lose. My own private hell. Horrible, but mine. I'm quite thick at times. And places.' She laughed, brushing invisible crumbs from her caftan.

'Oscar Wilde said there's no sin except stupidity.'

'And what do you think of that?' Myrna's eyes lit up, happy to so obviously turn the spotlight on him. He thought a moment.

'I've made mistakes that have allowed killers to take more lives. And each of those mistakes, upon looking back, was stupid. A conclusion jumped to, a false assumption held too firmly. Each wrong choice I make puts a community at risk.'

'Have you learned from your mistakes?'

'Yes, teacher, I believe I have.'

'Then that's all you can ask of yourself, Grasshopper. I'll make you a deal. I'll forgive myself if you forgive yourself.'

'Deal,' said Gamache, and wished it was that easy.

Ten minutes later Armand Gamache was sitting at the table by the Bistro window looking out on to Three Pines. He'd bought just one book from Myrna, and it wasn't Being or Loss. She'd seemed slightly surprised when he put the book next to her till. He now sat and read, a Cinzano and some pretzels in front of him, and every now and then he'd lower the book to stare through the window and through the village and into the woods beyond. The clouds were breaking up, leaving patches of early evening sunshine on the small mountains that surrounded Three Pines. Once or twice he flipped through the book, looking for illustrations. Finding what he was looking for he ear-marked them and continued reading. It was a very pleasant way to pass the time.

A manila file hitting the table brought him back to the Bistro.

'The autopsy report.' The coroner, Sharon Harris, sat down and ordered a drink.

He lowered his book and picked up the dossier. After a few minutes he had a question. 'If the arrow hadn't hit her heart, would it still have killed her?'

'If it had come close to the heart, yes. But', Dr Harris leaned forward and bent the autopsy report down so she could see it, upside down, 'she was hit straight through the heart. You see? Whoever did it must have been a great shot. That wasn't a fluke.'

'And yet I suspect that's exactly the conclusion we're going to reach, that it was a fluke. A hunting accident. Not the first in Quebec history.'

'You're right, lots of hunting accidents every season with rifles. But arrows? You'd have to be a good hunter to get her through the heart and good hunters don't often make mistakes like that. Not archers. They aren't the usual yahoos.'

'What are you saying, doctor?'

'I'm saying if the death of Miss Neal was an accident the killer had very bad Karma. Of all the accidental hunting deaths I've investigated as medical examiner none has involved a good bow hunter.'

'You mean if a good hunter did this it was on purpose?'

'I'm saying a good bow hunter did this and good bow hunters don't make mistakes. You connected the dots.' She smiled warmly then nodded to the people at the next table. Gamache remembered she lived in the area.

'You have a home at Cleghorn Halt, don't you? Is it close by?'

'About twenty minutes from here toward the Abbey. I know Three Pines quite well from the Tours Des Arts. Peter and Clara Morrow live here, right? Just over there?' She pointed through the window across the green to their red-brick home.

'That's right. Do you know them?'