Margaret Atwood’s short story, “Death by Landscape,” opens with an elderly widow who has recently moved into a Toronto apartment along with her fine collection of Canadian art. After a brief description of Lois’s relief at no longer having to worry about lawn care, destructive ivy, and “strange noises”—the building has a security system and no plant life except in pots—we are introduced to the paintings that surround her:

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They are pictures of convoluted tree trunks on an island of pink wave-smoothed stone, with more islands behind; of a lake with rough, bright, sparsely wooded cliffs; of a vivid river shore with a tangle of bush and two beached canoes, one red, one gray; of a yellow autumn woods with the ice-blue gleam of a pond half-seen through the interlaced branches….

Because of this collection of hers, Lois’s friends—especially the men—have given her the reputation of having a good nose for art investments.

But this is not why she bought the pictures, way back…