Still Life (A Three Pines Mystery)

'They hit me with sticks. It's funny, but when I think back that's the most painful part. Not the scrapes and bruises, but before they hit me they kind of poked, you know?' He jabbed with one arm to mimic their movements. 'It was as though I wasn't human.'

'That's the necessary first step,' said Myrna. 'They dehumanise their victim. You've put it well.'

She spoke from experience. Before coming to Three Pines she'd been a psychologist in Montreal. And, being black, she knew that singular expression when people saw her as furniture.

Ruth turned to Olivier, changing the subject. 'I was in the basement and came across a few things I thought you could sell for me.' Ruth's basement was her bank.

'Great. What?'

'There's some cranberry glass--'

'Oh, wonderful.' Olivier adored colored glass. 'Hand blown?'

'Do you take me for an idiot? Of course they're hand blown.'

'Are you sure you don't want them?' he always asked this of his friends.

'Stop asking me that. Do you think I'd mention them if there was a doubt?'

'Bitch.'

'Slut.'

'OK, tell me more,' said Olivier. The stuff Ruth hauled up from her basement was incredible. It was as though she had a porthole to the past. Some of it was junk, like the old broken-down coffee makers and burned-out toasters. But most made him tremble with pleasure. The greedy antique dealer in him, which composed a larger part of his make-up than he'd ever admit, was thrilled to have exclusive access to Ruth's treasures. He'd sometimes daydream about that basement.

If he was excited by Ruth's possessions, he was positively beside himself with lust after Jane's home. He'd kill to see beyond her kitchen door. Her kitchen alone was worth tens of thousands of dollars in antiques. When he'd first come to Three Pines, at the Drama Queen's insistence, he was reduced almost to incoherence when he saw the linoleum on Jane's mudroom floor. If the mudroom was a museum and the kitchen a shrine, what in the world lay beyond? Olivier shook off the thought, knowing he would probably be disappointed. IKEA. And shag carpet. He'd long since stopped thinking it strange that Jane had never invited anyone through the swinging door into her living room and beyond.

'About the mulch, Jane,' Gabri was saying, his bulk bending over one of Peter's jigsaw puzzles, 'I can get it to you tomorrow. Do you need help cutting back your garden?'

'No, almost done. But this might be the last year. It's getting beyond me.' Gabri was relieved he didn't have to help. Doing his own garden was work enough.

'I have a whole lot of hollyhock babies,' said Jane, fitting in a piece of the sky. 'How did those single yellows do for you? I didn't notice them.'

'I put them in last fall, but they never called me mother. Can I have some more? I'll trade you for some monarda.'

'God, don't do that.' Monarda was the zucchini of the flower world. It, too, figured prominently in the harvest market and, subsequently, the Thanksgiving bonfire, which would give off a hint of sweet bergamot so that it smelled as though every cottage in Three Pines was brewing Earl Grey tea.

'Did we tell you what happened this afternoon after you'd all left?' Gabri said in his stage voice, so that the words fell neatly into every ear in the room. 'We were just getting the peas ready for tonight' – Clara rolled her eyes and mumbled to Jane, 'Probably lost the can opener.' – 'when the doorbell rang and there were Matthew Croft and Philippe.'

'No! What happened?'

'Philippe mumbled, "I'm sorry about this morning."'

'What did you say?' Myrna asked.

'Prove it,' said Olivier.

'You didn't,' hooted Clara, amused and impressed.

'I most certainly did. There was a lack of sincerity about the apology. He was sorry he got caught and sorry there were consequences. But I didn't believe he was sorry about what he did.'

'Conscience and cowardice,' said Clara.

'What do you mean?' asked Ben.

'Oscar Wilde said that conscience and cowardice are the same thing. What stops us from doing horrible things isn't our conscience but the fear of getting caught.'

'I wonder if that's true,' said Jane.

'Would you?' Myrna asked Clara.

'Do terrible things if I could get away with it?'

'Cheat on Peter,' suggested Olivier. 'Steal from the bank. Or better still, steal another artist's work?'

'Ah, kids stuff,' snapped Ruth. 'Now, take murder, for instance. Would you mow someone down with your car? Or poison them, maybe, or throw them into the Bella Bella during spring run off? Or,' she looked around, warm firelight reflecting off slightly concerned faces, 'or we could set a fire and then not save them.'

'What do you mean, "we", white woman?' said Myrna. Myrna brought the conversation back from the edge.

'The truth? Sure. But not murder.' Clara looked over at Ruth who simply gave her a conspiratorial wink.

'Imagine a world where you could do anything. Anything. And get away with it,' said Myrna, warming to the topic again. 'What power. Who here wouldn't be corrupted?'

'Jane wouldn't,' said Ruth with certainty. 'But the rest of you?' she shrugged.