Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #1) - Louise Penny Page 0,45
Though Beauvoir knew the boss was also taking in every detail of what was happening. He just didn’t show it.
‘What do you do for a living?’
‘I work for the township of St Rémy in the road department.’
‘Doing what?’
‘I’m the head of road maintenance. I assign crews, assess problem areas. Sometimes I just drive, looking for problems. Don’t want to find a problem at the same time as I find an overturned car.’
It happened far too often. Normally death came at night, taking a person in their sleep, stopping their heart or tickling them awake, leading them to the bathroom with a splitting headache before pouncing and flooding their brain with blood. It waits in alleys and metro stops. After the sun goes down plugs are pulled by white-clad guardians and death is invited into an antiseptic room.
But in the country death comes, uninvited, during the day. It takes fishermen in their longboats. It grabs children by the ankles as they swim. In winter it calls them down a slope too steep for their budding skills, and crosses their skies at the tips. It waits along the shore where snow met ice not long ago but now, unseen by sparkling eyes, a little water touches the shore, and the skater makes a circle slightly larger than intended. Death stands in the woods with a bow and arrow at dawn and dusk. And it tugs cars off the road in broad daylight, the tires spinning furiously on ice or snow, or bright autumn leaves.
Matthew Croft was always called to road accidents. Sometimes he was the first there. As he worked to free the body Matthew Croft’s bruised heart and brain would go home to poetry. He would recite poems learned by heart from books borrowed from Miss Neal. And Ruth Zardo’s poetry was his favorite.
On quiet days off he would often visit Miss Neal and sit in her garden in an Adirondack chair looking across the phlox to the stream beyond, and memorise poems, to be used to ward off the nightmares. As he memorised, Miss Neal would make pink lemonade and deadhead her perennial borders. She was aware of the irony of deadheading while he banished death from his head. For some reason Matthew was loath to tell the police about this, to let them that far in.
Before he could say more he tensed, slightly. A moment later Gamache heard it too. Suzanne opened the door from the basement which led into the kitchen and came in.
Suzanne Croft didn’t look well at all. She’d looked strained at the public meeting, but nothing compared to this. Her skin was almost translucent, except for the blotches. And a thin layer of sweat lent it a sheen, not unlike a reptile. Her hand, when shaken by Gamache, was ice-cold. She was terrified, he realised. Scared sick. Gamache looked over at Croft, who now wasn’t even trying to hide his own fear. He was looking at his wife the way one might look at a specter, a ghost with a particularly awful and personal message.
Then the moment passed. Matthew Croft’s face fell back to ‘normal’, with only a pall to the skin evidence of what lay beneath. Gamache offered Mrs Croft his seat but Matthew had grabbed a stool and sat while his wife took his chair. No one spoke. Gamache was willing Beauvoir not to speak. To let the silence stretch to breaking. This woman was holding on to something horrible and her grip was slipping.
‘Would you like a glass of water?’ Nichol asked Suzanne Croft.
‘No, thank you, but let me make some tea.’ And with that Mrs Croft leapt from her chair and the moment was broken. Gamache looked at Nichol, perplexed. If she had wanted to sabotage the case and her career she couldn’t have done a better job.
‘Here, let me help,’ said Nichol, bouncing off her seat and grabbing the kettle.
Beauvoir had allowed his face to show a flash of fury when Nichol spoke, then it too was replaced by his familiar, reasonable, mask.
Stupid, stupid woman, he cursed to himself, even as his face took on a benevolent half-smile. He stole a glance at Gamache, and saw with satisfaction the boss was also staring at Nichol, but not angrily. To Beauvoir’s disgust, he saw a look he took to be tolerance on the chief’s face. Will he never learn? What in God’s name drives him to want to help such fools?