Free Still Life by Louise Penny Page A

ago. They were very close. Like this.’ Here Yolande attempted to cross her fingers but the nails kept knocking into each other making it look like a finger puppet version of All Star Wrestling. She gave up and looked at Gamache knowingly.
    ‘When can I get into the house?’ she asked.
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘In Three Pines. Aunt Jane always said it would be mine.’
    Gamache had seen enough grief in his time to know that people handle it in different ways. His own mother, upon waking up next to her husband of fifty years dead in the bed, called her hairdresser first to cancel her appointment. Gamache knew better than to judge people based upon what they do when presented with bad news. Still, it was an odd question.
    ‘I don’t know. We haven’t even been in yet.’
    Yolande became agitated.
    ‘Well, I have a key. Can I go in before you, just to kind of tidy up?’
    He wondered briefly whether this was a real estate agent’s learned response.
    ‘No.’
    Yolande’s face became hard and red, matching her nails. This was a woman not used to hearing ‘no’, and a woman without mastery of her anger.
    ‘I’m calling my lawyer. The house is mine and I do not give you permission to enter. Got it?’
    ‘Speaking of lawyers, do you happen to know who your aunt used?’
    ‘Stickley. Norman Stickley.’ Her voice brittle. ‘We use him too from time to time for house transactions around Williamsburg.’
    ‘May I have his co-ordinates, please?’
    While she wrote them down in a florid hand Gamache glanced around and noticed some of the listings on the ‘For Sale’ board were estates, beautiful, sprawling ancestral homes. Most were more modest. Yolande had a lot of condos and trailer homes. Still, someone had to sell them, and it probably took a far better salesperson to sell a trailer home than a century home. But you’d have to sell a lot of trailers to make ends meet.
    ‘There,’ she shoved it across her desk. ‘You’ll hear from my lawyer.’
    Gamache found Olivier waiting for him in the car. ‘Am I late?’ he asked, checking his watch. It said 1.10.
    ‘No, a little early, in fact. I just had to pick up some shallots for tonight’s dinner.’ Gamache noticed a distinct and very pleasant odor in the car. ‘And, to be honest, I didn’t figure the interview with Yolande would take long.’
    Olivier smiled as he pulled the car on to rue Principale. ‘How’d it go?’
    ‘Not quite as I expected,’ admitted Gamache. Olivier gave a bark of a laugh.
    ‘She’s quite a piece of work is our Yolande. Did she cry hysterically?’
    ‘Actually, no.’
    ‘Well, that is a surprise. I would’ve thought given an audience, and the police at that, she’d make the most of her role as sole survivor. She’s a triumph of image over reality. I’m not even sure if she knows what reality is anymore, she’s so busy creating this image of herself.’
    ‘Image as what?’
    ‘A success. She needs to be seen as a happy and successful wife and mother.’
    ‘Don’t we all?’
    Here Olivier gave him an arch and openly gay look. Gamache caught it and realised what he’d said. He raised his eyebrow to Olivier as though returning the look and Olivier laughed again.
    ‘I meant’ – Gamache smiled – ‘we all have our public images.’
    Olivier nodded. It was true. Especially true in the gay community, he thought, where you had to be entertaining, clever, cynical and, above all, attractive. It was exhausting looking so bored all the time. It was one of the things that made him flee to the country. He felt in Three Pines he had a shot at being himself. What he hadn’t counted on was it taking so long to figure out who ‘he’ was.
    ‘That’s true. But it goes deeper with Yolande, I think. She’s like a Hollywood set. This big fake front and all sort of empty and ugly behind. Shallow.’
    ‘What was her relationship with Miss Neal?’
    ‘Well, apparently they were quite close when Yolande was small, but there was a