Louise Penny - Still Life (Three Pines Mysteries)

‘Except Ben!’ said Myrna, buttering her warm roll and watching the butter melt as soon as it touched the bread. ‘What a fool to have missed it .’

‘Took me a long time too,’ admitted Gamache. ‘I only saw it after staring at Fair Day in my room. No Ben.’

‘But why did Ben panic when he saw Fair Day ? I mean, what was so horrible about seeing his face in a painting?’ Olivier asked.

‘Think about it,’ said Gamache. ‘Ben injected his mother with a fatal dose of morphine on the final day of the fait, actually while the parade was on. He’d made sure he had an alibi, he was off in Ottawa at an antiques show.’

‘And was he?’ Clara asked.

‘Oh yes, even bought a few things. The he raced back here, it’s only about three hours by car, and waited for the parade to start—’

‘Knowing I’d leave his mother? How could he have known?’ asked Ruth.

‘He knew his mother, knew she’d insist.’

‘Go on,’ said Olivier, dipping his roll in the soup. ‘He looked at the painting and

‘He saw himself, apparently at the parade,’ said Gamache.

‘There in the stands. He believed then that Jane knew what he’d done, that he’d been in Three Pines after all.’

‘So he stole the painting, erased his face, and painted in a new one,’ said Clara.

‘The strange woman was sitting next to Peter,’ Ruth pointed out. ‘A natural place for Jane to put Ben.’

Peter made a conscious effort not to lower his eyes.

‘That night at the B. & B. after the vernissage it all came together,’ said Clara. ‘He didn’t lock his door after the murder. Everyone else did, but not Ben. Then there was the speed, or lack of it, with which he was uncovering the walls. Then that night we saw the light here, Ben said he was catching up on stripping the walls, and I accepted it but later I thought it sounded a little lame even for Ben.’

‘Turns out,’ supplied Gamache, ‘he was searching Jane’s home for this.’ He held up the folder Beauvoir had found in Yolande’s home. ‘Sketches Jane did of every county fair for sixty years. Ben thought there might be some rough sketches for Fair Day around, and he was looking for them.’

‘Do the sketches show anything?’ Olivier asked.

‘No, too rough.’

‘And then there were the onions,’ said Clara.

‘Onions?’

‘When I’d gone to Ben’s home the day after Jane was killed he was frying up onions, to make chili con carne. But Ben never cooked. Egoist that I am I believed him when he said it was to cheer me up. I wandered into his living room at one stage and smelt what I took to be cleaning fluid. It was that comforting smell that means everything’s clean and cared for. I figured Nellie had cleaned. Later I was talking to her and she said Wayne had been so sick she hadn’t cleaned anywhere in a week or more. Ben must have been using a solvent and he fried the onions to cover up the smell.’

‘Exactly,’ confirmed Gamache, sipping on a beer. ‘He’d taken Fair Day from Arts Williamsburg that Saturday after your Thanksgiving dinner, stripped away his own face and painted in another. But he made the mistake of making up a face. He also used his own paints, which were different to Jane’s. Then he returned the work to Arts Williamsburg, but he had to kill Jane before she could see the change.’

‘You’, Clara turned to Gamache, ‘put it beyond doubt for me. You kept asking who else had seen Jane’s work. I remembered then that Ben had specifically asked Jane at the Thanksgiving dinner if she’d mind him going to Arts Williamsburg to see it.’

‘Do you think he was suspicious that night?’ Myrna asked.

‘Perhaps a little uneasy. His guilty mind might have been playing tricks on him. The look on his face when Jane said the picture was of the parade and it held a special message. She’d looked directly at him.’

‘He also looked odd when she quoted that poem,’ said Myrna.

‘What poem was that?’ Gamache asked.

‘Auden. There, in the pile by her seat where you’re sitting, Clara. I can see it,’ said Myrna. ‘The Collected Works of W H. Auden.’

Clara handed the hefty volume to Myrna.

‘Here it is,’ said Myrna. ‘She’d read from Auden’s tribute to Herman Melville:

Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.’

Peter reached out for the book and scanned the beginning of the poem, the part Jane hadn’t read:

‘Towards the end he sailed into an extraordinary mildness, and anchored in his home and reached his wife and rode within the harbour of her hand, and went across each morning to an office as though his occupation were another island. Goodness existed: that was the new knowledge. His terror had to blow itself quite out.’

Peter looked into the fire, listening to the murmur of the familiar voices. Gently he slipped a piece of paper into the book and closed it.

‘Like a paranoid person he read hidden messages into everything,’ said Gamache. ‘Ben had the opportunity and skill to kill Jane. He lived practically beside the schoolhouse, he could go there without being seen, let himself in, take a recurve bow and a couple of arrows, change the tips from target to hunting, then lure Jane and kill her.’

The movie played in Peter’s head. Now he dropped his eyes. He couldn’t look at his friends. How had he not known this about his best friend?

‘How’d he get Jane there?’ Gabri asked.

‘A phone call,’ said Gamache. ‘Jane trusted him completely.

She didn’t question when he asked her to meet him by the deer trail. Told her there were poachers so she’d better leave Lucy at home. She went without another thought.’

This is what comes of trust and friendship, loyalty and love, thought Peter. You get screwed. Betrayed. You get wounded so deeply you can barely breathe and sometimes it kills you. Or worse. It kills the people you love most. Ben had almost killed Clara. He’d trusted Ben. Loved Ben. And this is what happened. Never again. Gamache had been right about Matthew 10:36.

‘Why did he kill his own mother?’ Ruth asked.

‘The oldest story in the book,’ said Gamache.

‘Ben was a male prostitute?’ Gabri exclaimed.

‘That’s the oldest profession. Where do you keep your head?’ asked Ruth. ‘Never mind, don’t answer that.’

‘Greed,’ explained Gamache. ‘I should have twigged earlier, after our conversation in the bookstore,’ he said to Myrna. ‘You described a personality type. The ones who lead what you called “still” lives. Do you remember?’

‘Yes, I do. The ones who aren’t growing and evolving, who are standing still. They’re the ones who rarely got better.’

‘Yes, that was it,’ said Gamache. ‘They waited for life to happen to them. They waited for someone to save them. Or heal them. They did nothing for themselves.’

‘Ben,’ said Peter. It was almost the first time he’d spoken all day.

‘Ben.’ Gamache gave a single nod. ‘Jane saw it, I think.’ He got up and hobbled to the wall. ‘Here. Her drawing of Ben. Did you notice he’s wearing shorts? Like a little boy. And he’s in stone. Stuck. Facing his parent’s home, facing the past. It makes sense now, of course, but I didn’t see it earlier.’

‘But why didn’t we see it? We lived with him every day,’ Clara asked.

‘Why should you? You were leading your own busy lives.

Besides, there’s something else about Jane’s drawing of Ben.’ He let them consider for a moment.

‘The shadow,’ said Peter.

‘Yes. He cast a long and dark shadow. And his darkness influenced others.’

‘Influenced me, you mean,’ said Peter.