Still Life (A Three Pines Mystery)

'No.' Yolande grabbed Bernard and tried to put her arms around him. They wouldn't go. Bernard himself didn't seem all that upset at the thought of a foster home. Andre looked as though he thought this might be a good idea. Yolande was apoplectic.

'Or', said Beauvoir in his best, 'you'd better make an offer before the owners change their minds' voice, 'you can tell us the truth right now.' He held up the folder. Part of him felt badly about using Bernard but he figured he'd get over it.

The beans spilled. She'd found the folder sitting on the coffee table in Aunt Jane's home. In full view. Yolande described this as though she'd found an S and M magazine. She was about to toss it on the fire but she decided, out of respect and love for dear Aunt Jane, to keep the pictures.

'Why did you take them?' Beauvoir repeated, walking toward the door.

'OK, OK. I thought maybe they'd be worth something.'

'I thought you hated your aunt's work.'

'Not as art, you great shit,' said Andre. 'I thought I could sell them to her friends, maybe Ben Hadley.'

'Why would he buy them?'

'Well, he has lots of money and maybe if I threatened to burn them he'd want to save them.'

'But why take them out of the house? Why not keep the sketches there?'

'Because they disgust me,' Yolande was transformed. All the make-up in the world, and she was pretty close to wearing it all, couldn't hide the hideous person underneath. In an instant she became a bitter middle-aged woman, twisted and made grotesque like a metalwork sculpture. All rust and sharp edges. Even Bernard edged away from her. 'I needed them where I knew no one else would see them.'

On a slip of paper Beauvoir wrote a receipt for the folder and gave it to Yolande who took it in her manicured hand as though he'd passed her a sheet of toilet paper.

Clara had given up waiting for her tree house to speak and had gone to Jane's to do more work. She'd begun to see Jane's work as a masterpiece. One giant mural, like the Sistine Chapel or Da Vinci's Last Supper. She didn't hesitate to make the comparisons. Jane had captured the same elements as those master works. Awe. Creation. Wonderment. Longing. Even logging, in Jane's case.

Ben couldn't be moving more slowly if he tried. Still, Clara had to remind herself that it didn't really matter. It would all be revealed, eventually.

'Oh, my God, it's a disaster,' Ruth's voice rang loud and clear. Clara came up from the basement with her bucket. Ruth and Gamache were standing in the center of the living room and Clara was a little disheartened to see Ben also there, lounging by the desk.

'Did you do this?' Ruth wanted to know.

'I helped uncover it. Jane did the drawings.'

'I never thought I'd say it, but I'm on Yolande's side.

Cover them up.'

'I want to show you something.' Clara took Ruth's elbow and guided her to the far wall. 'Look at that.' Unmistakable, there was a picture of Ruth as a child, holding her mother's hand in the schoolhouse. Little Ruth, tall and gawky, school books for feet. Encyclopedia feet. Piglets dancing in her hair. Which could mean one of two things.

'I had pigtails as a child,' said Ruth, apparently reading her thoughts. But Clara thought Jane's message was that even then Ruth was pig-headed. The other children were laughing but one child was coming over to hug her. Ruth stood, transfixed, in front of Jane's wall:'Jenny kissed me when we met, jumping from the chair she sat in; time, you thief, who love to get sweets into your list, put that in: say I'm weary, say I'm sad, say that health and wealth have missed me; say I'm growing old, but add, Jenny kissed me.'

Ruth recited the poem in a whisper, and the still room heard. 'Leigh Hunt. "Rondeau". That's the only poem I wish I'd written. I didn't think Jane remembered, I didn't think it'd meant anything to her. This is my first day here, when my father came to work in the mill. I was eight years old, the new kid, tall and ugly, as you can see, and not very nice even then. But when I walked into that schoolhouse, terrified, Jane walked all the way down the aisle and she kissed me. She didn't even know me but it didn't matter to her. Jane kissed me when we met.'

Ruth, her brittle-blue eyes glistening, took a breath and then took a long look around the room. Then slowly shook her head and whispered, 'It's extraordinary. Oh, Jane, I'm so sorry.'

'Sorry for what?' Gamache asked.

'Sorry she didn't know we loved her enough to be trusted with this. Sorry she felt she had to hide it from us.' Ruth gave a hurrumph of unamused laughter. 'I thought I was the only one with a wound. What a fool.'