Page 92 of Miss Wolcott’s Ghost

“Oh, it matters, but it isn’t buried treasure. It would be a fact, a detail—”

“A document?”

Charles nodded slowly. “Maybe.”

“And maybe, in thinking it’s a game, a hobby, Brian didn’t realize how dangerous it was to someone.”

Now Armand was also staring into space. Was it possible Aldous didn’t realize either? Armand wished he knew what became of the mail room clerk. And his uncle.

He was beginning to think that whatever Aldous Clybourne and his uncle stole from the ship was so important, so valuable, even dangerous, that it got a man killed generations later.

And Brian Fillmore might not have been its first victim.

“Let’s say, for a moment, that is your brother and that I believe you didn’t kill him. Then who did?”

He was curious to hear the next lie, the next misdirection. The fateful turn in the fog.

“That woman, of course. Who else?”

“Jeanette Bouchard?”

“No. Clara Morrow.”

CHAPTER 32

Clara stood in Peter’s studio and looked around.

The light, from the north, entered softly. There were almost no shadows in this room. It was what artists sought, an indirect light. In contrast, her own studio was flooded with light. At certain times of the year, especially winter, when the sun was low on the horizon and leaves were off the trees, its rays bounced off the snow and poured into her studio, almost blinding her.

It was, according to received wisdom, very bad for an artist to have direct sunlight. Hampered their work.

But Clara paid only fleeting attention to received wisdom. Finding it was more about protecting the status quo than actual wisdom.

When the sun hit her eyes while she worked in her studio, Clara simply moved her easel, made another mug of tea, or poured another beer, and got on with it.

After Peter was gone, Clara briefly considered moving into his studio. She’d even tried it out. But found her creativity stifled in that well-ordered, muted space. She preferred the jumble and light of her own small room.

But it was more than that.

After he’d died, she’d closed up his studio. Locking the door. Leaving it exactly as it had been. Unable to go in. Unable to face her own part in his death.

Then, after the passage of time and many talks with Myrna over many bottles of red wine and countless bags of potato chips, Clara had unlocked the door.

Myrna, Ruth, Reine-Marie had been with her. Even Rosa stood silent at the entrance, allowing Clara to cross that threshold alone.

And she did.

She’d taken two steps in. Stopped. Looked around. At the filbert brush with the creamy off-white paint hardened to it. The rag that, should she pick it up and press it to her nose, would smell of turpentine. Would smell of Peter.

He still hung in the air, even after all that time. Her handsome, troubled love.

There on the easel was his final, unfinished creation. She had no idea what it was going to be, except that it would be exacting. Precise. It would be what received wisdom said a good painting should be. Though perhaps not a great one.

And then, suddenly, her body told her it was time to leave. To get out. And she did.

Her goal had been to stand in his studio, to stand in Peter, for a whole minute, and she’d done it.

She’d then retreated with her friends to the back garden and a vat of gin and tonic among the hollyhock and honeysuckle, the old garden roses, the mumble of bees bumbling around in the blousy flowers, the mutter of the Rivière Bella Bella. And the murmur of the duck, as Rosa tucked her beak into her wing and went to sleep.