Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #1) - Louise Penny Page 0,104
Was this what the tail end of a disaster sounded like? Had Kyla joined them after all? But the rumbling seemed to be coming from inside the building. Inside the room. In fact, right beside Clara. She turned and found the source. Ruth.
‘That’s me!’ Ruth jabbed a finger at the dancing goat in Fair Day. Then the rumbling burst into a geyser of laughter. Ruth roared. She laughed until she had to steady herself on Gabri. Her laughter infected the entire room until even the sour-faced and forgotten artists were laughing. Much of the rest of the evening was taken with people recognising themselves or others in Jane’s work. Ruth also found Timmer’s parents and her brother and sister, both now dead. There was the first-grade teacher and Timmer’s husband, and the exercise class they all belonged to. They were the chicks. Over the course of the hour or so just about every figure had been identified. Still, Peter stared, not joining in the laughter.
Something was wrong.
‘I’ve got it!’ Clara pointed at the painting. ‘This was painted at the closing parade, right? The day your mother died. In fact, isn’t that your mother?’ Clara showed Ben the cloud with trotters. The flying lamb.
‘You’re right,’ laughed Myrna. ‘It’s Timmer.’
‘Do you see? This was Jane’s tribute to your mother. Everyone in this picture was meaningful to her. From her grandparents to her dogs, to everyone in between.’ Now Clara turned to Peter. ‘Remember that last dinner we all had together?’
‘Thanksgiving?’
‘Yes, that’s it. We were talking about great art, and I said I thought art became art when the artist put something of themselves into it. I asked Jane what she’d put into this work, and do you remember what she said?’
‘Sorry, I can’t.’
‘She agreed that she’d put something in it, that there was some message in this work. She wondered if we’d figure it out. In fact, I remember she looked directly at Ben when she spoke, as though you’d understand. I’d wondered why at the time, but now it makes sense. This is for your mother.’
‘You think?’ Ben moved closer to Clara and stared at the picture.
‘Well, that doesn’t make any sense,’ said Agent Nichol, who’d wandered over from her post by the door, drawn to the laughter as though to a crime. Gamache started making his way toward her, hoping to cut her off before she said something totally offensive. But his legs, while long, were no match for her mouth.
‘Who was Yolande to Timmer? Did they even know each other?’ Nichol pointed at the face of the blonde woman in the stands next to the acrylic Peter and Clara. ‘Why would Jane Neal put in a niece she herself despised? This can’t be what you said, a tribute to Mrs Hadley, with that woman there.’
Nichol was clearly enjoying getting one up on Clara. And Clara, despite herself, could feel her anger rising. She stared speechless at the smug young face on the other side of the easel. And what made it worse was that she was right. There was the big blonde woman, undeniably in Fair Day, and Clara knew that if anything Timmer disliked Yolande even more than Jane did.
‘May I see you, please?’ Gamache placed himself between Clara and Nichol, cutting off the young woman’s triumphant stare. Without another word he turned and walked toward the exit, Nichol hesitating an instant then following.
‘There’s a bus for Montreal tomorrow morning at six from St Rémy. Take it.’
He had no more to say. Agent Yvette Nichol was left shaking with rage on the cold dark stoop of Arts Williamsburg. She wanted to pound on the closed door. It seemed all her life doors were being shut in her face and here she was again, on the outside. Throbbing with fury she took two steps over to the window and looked in, at the people milling around, at Gamache talking to that Morrow woman and her husband. But there was someone else in the picture. After a moment she realised it was her own reflection.
How was she going to explain this to her father? She’d blown it. Somehow, somewhere, she’d done something wrong. But what? But Nichol was beyond reasoning. All she could think of was walking into her miniscule home with the immaculate front yard in east end Montreal, and telling her father she’d been kicked off the case. Shame on you. A phrase from the investigation floated into her head.