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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.
    ‘And you?’ Olivier asked Ruth, more than a little annoyed to be lumped in where he secretly knew he belonged.
    ‘Me? But you know me well enough by now, Olivier. I’dbe the worst. I’d cheat, and steal, and make all your lives hell.’
    ‘Worse than now?’ asked Olivier, still peeved.
    ‘Now you’re on the list,’ said Ruth. And Olivier remembered that the closest thing they had to a police force was the volunteer fire brigade, of which he was a member but of which Ruth was the chief. When Ruth Zardo ordered you into