Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #1) - Louise Penny Page 0,92

landscapes from the mid-1800s. She’d seen them before, on Jane’s kitchen table during her dinners, but also elsewhere. They were very common. But maybe they weren’t reproductions after all? Is it possible these were the originals? Or that they’d been altered to include some hidden code?

She found nothing.

‘Over here, I think I have something.’ Peter stood back from the pine box he’d been examining. It stood on sturdy little wooden legs and came to hip height. Wrought iron handles were attached to either side, and two small, square drawers pulled out from the front. From what Peter could see, not a single nail had been used on the honey pine piece, all the joints were dovetail. It was exquisite and very maddening. The main body of the box was accessible by lifting the top, only it wouldn’t lift. Somehow, and for some reason, it had been locked. Peter yanked on the top again, but it wouldn’t lift. Beauvoir shoved him aside and tried it himself, much to Peter’s annoyance, as though there was more than one way to open a lid.

‘Maybe there’s a door on the front, like a trick or a puzzle,’ suggested Clara, and they all searched. Nothing. Now they stood back and stared, Clara willing it to speak to her, like so many boxes seemed to recently.

‘Olivier would know,’ said Peter. ‘If there’s a trick to it, he’ll know it.’

Gamache thought for a moment and nodded. They really had no choice. Beauvoir was dispatched and within ten minutes he returned with the antiques dealer.

‘Where’s the patient? Holy Mary, Mother of God.’ He raised his eyebrows and stared at the walls, his lean, handsome face looking attractively boyish and quizzical. ‘Who did this?’

‘Ralph Lauren. Who do you think?’ said Peter.

‘Certainly no one gay. Is that the chest?’ He walked over to where the others were standing. ‘Beautiful. A tea chest, modeled on one the British used back in the 1600s, but this is Quebecois. Very simple yet far from primitive. You want to get in?’

‘If you don’t mind,’ said Gamache and Clara marveled at his patience. She was about to slap Olivier. The antiques dealer walked around the box, knocked on it in a few places, holding his ear to the polished wood, then came to rest directly in front of it. Putting out his hands he grabbed the top and yanked. Gamache rolled his eyes.

‘It’s locked,’ said Olivier.

‘Well, we know that,’ said Beauvoir. ‘How do we unlock it?’

‘You don’t have a key?’

‘If we had a key we wouldn’t need you.’

‘Good point. Look, the only way I know is to take the hinges off the back. That could take a while since they’re old and corroded. I don’t want to break them.’

‘Please start,’ said Gamache. ‘The rest of us will continue our search.’

Twenty minutes later Olivier announced he had the last hinge off. ‘It’s fortunate for you I’m a genius.’

‘What luck,’ said Beauvoir, and showed a reluctant Olivier to the door. At the chest Gamache and Peter took hold of either side of the large pine top and lifted. It came up and all four of them peered in.

Nothing. The chest was empty.

They spent a few minutes making sure there were no secret drawers then the disheartened group flopped back into their seats around the fireplace. Slowly Gamache sat up. He turned to Beauvoir, ‘What did Olivier ask? Who decorated this place?’

‘So?’

‘Well, how do we know it was Jane Neal?’

‘You think she hired someone to do this?’ asked Beauvoir, amazed. Gamache just stared at him. ‘No, you’re thinking someone else who stayed here did it. My God, what an idiot I am,’ said Beauvoir. ‘Yolande. When I interviewed her yesterday she said she’d been decorating here –’

‘That’s right,’ said Clara, leaning forward in her seat, ‘I saw her lugging in a step ladder and bags full of stuff from the Reno Depot in Cowansville. Peter and I talked about whether she planned to move in.’ Peter nodded his agreement.

‘So Yolande put up the wallpaper?’ Gamache got up and looked at it again. ‘Her home must be a real monstrosity if this is how she decorates.’

‘Not even close,’ said Beauvoir. ‘Just the opposite. Her home is all off-whites and beiges and tasteful colors, like a Decormag model home.’

‘No Happy Faces?’ asked Gamache.

‘Probably never.’

Gamache stood up and paced slowly, his head down, hands clasped behind his back. He took a couple of quick strides over to the Port Neuf pottery, speaking as he went, and was standing facing a wall