Within an hour Peter and Clara had spread tarpaulins and moved the furniture. Before leaving, Gamache gave his approval for them to remove the wallpaper and as much of the covering paint as possible. Clara called Ben and he readily volunteered. She was delighted. She would have called Myrna, who would definitely have been a far harder worker than Ben, but this was a job that called for delicacy and the touch of an artist, and Ben had that.
‘Any idea how long this’ll take?’ asked Gamache.
‘Honestly? Including the ceiling and the floors? Probably a year.’
Gamache frowned.
‘It’s important, isn’t it?’ said Clara, reading his expression.
‘Could be. I don’t know, but I think it is.’
‘We’ll go as fast as we dare. Don’t want to ruin the images underneath. But I think we can get a lot of the stuff off, enough to see what’s underneath.’
Fortunately Yolande, proving slapdash to the end, hadn’t prepped the wall, so the paper was peeling off already. Nor had she used primer under the painted bits, to Peter and Clara’s great relief. They started after lunch and continued with only a break for beer and chips mid-afternoon. In the evening Peter rigged up some floodlights and they continued, except Ben who felt maybe his elbow was acting up.
At about seven a tired and bedraggled Peter and Clara decided to break for food and joined Ben by the fireplace. He’d at least managed to lay it and light it, and now they found him, his feet on the hassock, sipping red wine and reading Jane’s latest copy of The Guardian Weekly. Gabri arrived with Szechwan take-out. He’d heard rumors of the activity and wanted desperately to see for himself. He’d even rehearsed.
The huge man, made even more enormous by his coat and scarves, swept into the room. Stopping dead in the center, and making sure he held his audience, he looked around and declared, ‘Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.’
His appreciative audience roared their approval, took the food and kicked him out feeling that Jane and Oscar Wilde made one dead person too many in the room.
They worked into the night, and finally gave it up around midnight, too tired to trust themselves anymore and both slightly nauseous from inhaling paint remover. Ben had long since gone home.
The next morning, in the light of day, they saw they’d done about four square feet upstairs and a quarter of one wall downstairs. It looked as though Gamache had been right. Jane had covered every inch of her home. And Yolande had covered that. By midday a little more had been uncovered. Clara stood back to admire the few feet of wallpaper she’d stripped and Jane’s work underneath. Enough was emerging now to make it quite exciting. There seemed to be a pattern and purpose to Jane’s work. But what that purpose might be wasn’t clear, yet.
‘For God’s sake, Ben, is that all you’ve done?’ A disheartened Clara couldn’t help herself. Upstairs Peter had managed to get a couple of feet done, but Ben had hardly done anything, though, granted, what he had done was brilliant. Crystal clear and beautiful. But not enough. If they were going to solve the murder they needed to uncover all the walls. Quickly. Clara could feel her anxiety rising and knew she was becoming obsessed.
‘I’m sorry,’ they both said at once then Ben stood up and looked down at her, hang-dog. ‘I’m sorry, Clara. I’m slow, I know, but I’ll get better. Practice.’
‘Never mind.’ She put her arm around his slim waist. ‘It’s Miller time. We can get back to work soon enough.’ Ben perked up and put his arm around her shoulder. The two of them walked by Peter, leaving him to watch their retreating backs and walk down the stairs alone.
By that night a fair amount of the living-room walls had been exposed. They called Gamache, who brought beer and pizza and Beauvoir.
‘The answer’s here,’ said Gamache, simply, reaching for another beer. They ate in front of the fireplace in the living room, the aroma of three extra large ‘All Dressed’ from Pizza Pizza just masking the mineral spirits they’d used to remove the paint. ‘In this room, with this art. The answer’s here, I can feel it. It’s too much of a coincidence that Jane would invite you all here on the same night her art’s being shown, then be murdered within hours of telling everyone this.’
‘We have something to show you,’ said Clara, brushing off her jeans and standing up. ‘We’ve uncovered more of the walls. Shall we start upstairs?’
Grabbing pieces of pizza they trooped upstairs. In Peter’s room the lighting was too dark to really appreciate what Jane had done, but Ben’s work was different. Though tiny, the area he’d uncovered was astonishing. Brilliant, bold strokes leapt from the walls as people and animals came alive. And, in some cases, people as animals.
‘Is that Nellie and Wayne?’ Gamache was looking at a patch of wall. There, clear as day, was a stick-figure woman leading a cow. It was a very thick stick, and a skinny, happy cow, with a beard.
‘Wonderful,’ Gamache murmured.
They went back into the darkness downstairs. Peter had turned off the industrial floodlights he’d hooked up earlier in the day to allow them to work. Through dinner they’d eaten by firelight and the warm glow of a couple of table lamps. The walls had been in darkness. Now Peter went to the switch and flooded the room with light.
Gamache screwed his eyes tight shut. After a few moments he opened them.
It was like being in a cave, one of those wondrous caves explorers sometimes found filled with ancient symbols and depictions. Running caribou and swimming people. Gamache had read all about them in National Geographic, now he felt as though he’d been magically transported into one, here in the heart of Quebec, in a settled and even staid old village. As with cave drawings, Gamache knew the history of Three Pines and its people was depicted here. Slowly, hands clasped behind his back, Gamache walked around the walls. They were covered floor to ceiling with village scenes and rural scenes and classrooms and children and animals and adults singing and playing and working. A few of the scenes were of accidents, and there was at least one funeral.
He no longer felt he’d walked into a cave. Now he felt surrounded by life. He took a couple of steps back and could feel tears stinging his eyes. He screwed them shut again, hoping they’d think him bothered by the strong light. And in a way he was. He was overwhelmed by emotion. Sadness and melancholia. And delight. Joy. He was lifted right out of himself. It transcended the literal. This was Jane’s long house. Her home had become her long house, where every one, every event, every thing, every emotion was present. And Gamache knew then the murderer was there as well. Somewhere on those walls.