Still Life (A Three Pines Mystery)

'Just their art. He's a member of the Royal Academy of Canada, quite a distinguished artist. Does the most amazing works, very stark. They look like abstracts, but they're actually just the opposite, they're hyper-realism. He takes a subject, say that glass of Cinzano,' she picked it up, 'and he gets really close.' She leaned in until her eyelashes were licking the moisture on the outside of his glass. 'Then he takes a microscope device and gets even closer. And he paints that.' She put his glass back on the table. 'They're absolutely dazzling. Takes him for ever, apparently, to do a single piece. Don't know where he finds the patience.'

'How about Clara Morrow?'

'I have one of her works. I think she's fabulous, but very different from him. Her art is quite feminist, a lot of female nudes and allusions to goddesses. She did the most wonderful series on Sophia's Daughters.'

'The Three Graces, Faith, Hope and Charity?'

'Very impressive, Chief Inspector. I have one of that series. Hope.'

'Do you know Ben Hadley?'

'Of Hadley Mills? Not really. We've been at a few functions together. Arts Williamsburg has an annual garden party, often on his mother's property, and he's always there. I guess it's his property now.'

'He never married?'

'No. Late forties and still single. I wonder if he'll marry now.'

'What makes you say that?'

'It just seems often the case. No woman could come between mother and son, though I don't think Ben Hadley had the hots for Mommy. Anytime he spoke of her it was of how she'd somehow put him down. Some of his stories were horrible, though he never seemed to notice. I always admired that.'

'What does he do?'

'Ben Hadley? I don't know. I always had the impression he did nothing, sort of emasculated by Mom. Very sad.'

'Tragic.' Gamache was remembering the tall, ambling, likeable professor type, slightly befuddled all the time. Sharon Harris picked up the book he'd been reading and read the back cover.

'Good idea.' She placed it back on the table, impressed. Seems she'd been lecturing Gamache on things he already knew. It probably wasn't the first time. After she left Gamache went back to his book, flipping to the dog-eared page and staring at the illustration. It was possible. Just possible. He paid for his drink, shrugged into his field coat and left the warmth of the room to head into the cold and damp and approaching dark.

Clara stared at the box in front of her and willed it to speak. Something had told her to start work on a big wooden box. So she had. And now she sat in her studio and stared, trying to remember why building a big box had seemed such a good idea. More than that. Why had it seemed an artistic idea? In fact, what the hell was the idea anyway?

She waited for the box to speak to her. To say something. Anything. Even nonsense. Though why Clara thought the box, should it choose to speak, would say anything other than nonsense was another mystery. Who listens to boxes anyway?

Clara's art was intuitive, which wasn't to say it wasn't skilled and trained. She'd been to the best art college in Canada, even taught there for a while, until its narrow definition of 'art' had driven her away. From downtown Toronto to downtown Three Pines. That had been decades ago and so far she'd failed to set the art world on fire. Though waiting for messages from boxes could be a reason. Clara cleared her mind and opened it to inspiration. A croissant floated through it, then her garden, which needed cutting down, then she had a tiny argument with Myrna about the prices Myrna would no doubt offer for some of Clara's used books. The box, on the other hand, remained mute.

The studio was growing cold and Clara wondered whether Peter, sitting across the hall in his own studio was also cold. He would almost certainly, she thought with a twang of envy, be working too hard to notice. He never seemed to suffer from the uncertainty that could freeze her, leave her stuck and frozen in place. He just kept putting one foot in front of the other, producing his excruciatingly detailed works that sold for thousands in Montreal. It took him months to do each piece, he was so painfully precise and methodical. She'd given him a roller for his birthday one year and told him to paint faster. He didn't seem to appreciate the joke. Perhaps because it wasn't entirely a joke. They were constantly broke. Even now, with the autumn chill seeping in through the cracks around the windows, Clara was loath to turn on the furnace. Instead she'd put on another sweater, and even that was probably worn and pilled. She longed for crisp new bed linens and one can in their kitchen with a name brand and enough firewood to see them through the winter without worry. Worry. It wears you down, she thought as she put on another sweater and sat down again in front of the big silent box.