Still Life (38 page)

‘It’s what I didn’t see. I didn’t see Ben. I knew
Fair Day
was a tribute to Timmer. All the people who were important to Timmer were in it –’

‘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.’

‘No Ben,’ repeated Clara. ‘I knew there was no way Jane would’ve left him out. But he wasn’t there. Unless he had been there and it was his face that’d been removed.’

‘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 fair, 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. Then 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.’

‘And she did. I should have stayed.’

‘You weren’t to know, Ruth,’ said Gabri.

‘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:

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

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.

‘Yes. And Clara. And almost everyone. He was very clever, he gave the impression of being tolerant and kind, while actually being very dark, very cunning.’

‘But why did he kill Timmer?’ Ruth asked again.

‘She was going to change her will. Not cut him out entirely, but give him just enough to live on, so that he’d have to start doing something for himself. She knew what sort of a man he’d become, the lies, the laziness, the excuses. But she’d always felt responsible. Until she met you, Myrna. You and Timmer used to talk about these things. I think your descriptions got her to thinking about Ben. She’d long known he was a problem, but she’d seen it as a kind of passive problem. The only person he was hurting was himself. And her, with his lies about her –’

‘She knew what Ben was saying?’ Clara asked.

‘Yes. Ben told us that during his interrogation. He admitted to telling lies about his mother since he was a child, to get sympathy, but didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with that. “It could have been true,” was how he put it. For instance,’ Gamache turned to Peter, ‘he told you his mother had insisted on sending him to Abbott’s, but the truth was he’d begged to go. He wanted to punish his mother by making her feel she wasn’t needed. I think those discussions with you, Myrna, were a real turning point in Timmer’s life. Up until then she’d blamed herself for how Ben had turned out. She half believed his accusations that she’d been a horrible mother. And she felt she owed him. That’s why she let him live in her home all his life.’

‘Didn’t that strike you as weird?’ Myrna asked Clara.

‘No. It’s incredible to look back now and see it. It was just where Ben lived. Besides, he said his mother refused to let him leave. Emotional blackmail, I thought. I bought everything he said.’ Clara shook her head in amazement. ‘When he moved to the caretaker’s cottage Ben told us she’d kicked him out because he’d finally stood up to her.’

‘And you believed that?’ Ruth asked quietly. ‘Who bought enough of your art so you could buy your home? Who gave you furniture? Who had you over for dinners those first years to introduce you around and to give you good meals
when she knew you were barely eating? Who sent you home with parcels of leftovers? Who listened politely every time you spoke, and asked interested questions? I could go on all night. Did none of this make an impression? Are you that blind?’

There it was again, thought Clara. The blind.

This was far worse than any injuries Ben had given her. Ruth was staring at them, her face hard. How could they have been so gullible? How could Ben’s words have been stronger than Timmer’s actions? Ruth was right. Timmer had been nothing but tolerant, kind and generous.

Clara realised with a chill that Ben had begun to assassinate his mother long ago.

‘You’re right. I’m so sorry. Even the snakes. I’d believed the snakes.’

‘Snakes?’ said Peter. ‘What snakes?’

Clara shook her head. Ben had lied to her, and used Peter’s name to add legitimacy to it. Why had he told her there were snakes in his mother’s basement? Why had he made up that story about himself and Peter as boys? Because it made him even more of a victim, a hero, she realised. And she’d been more than willing to believe it. Poor Ben, they’d called him. And poor Ben he’d wanted to be, though not literally as it turned out.

Timmer’s basement had proven, once the electricity had been restored, to be clean, absolutely fine. No snakes. No snake nests. No indication anything had ever slithered in or out of there, except Ben. The ‘snakes’ dangling from the ceiling had been wires, and she’d kicked and tossed pieces of garden hose. The power of the imagination never ceased to amaze Clara.

‘Another reason I was slow to catch on,’ admitted Gamache, ‘was that I made a mistake. Quite a big one. I thought he loved you, Clara. Romantically. I even asked him about it. That was the biggest mistake. Instead of asking
him how he felt about you, I asked him how long he’d loved you. I gave him the excuse he needed for all his guarded looks. He wasn’t sneaking peeks at you out of passion, but fear. He knew how intuitive you are, and that of anyone, you’d figure it out. But I let him off the hook and fooled myself.’

‘But you came to it in the end,’ said Clara. ‘Does Ben realise what he’s done?’

‘No. He’s convinced he was totally justified in what he did. The Hadley money was his. The Hadley property was his. His mother was simply holding them until they were passed on to him. The idea of not getting his inheritance was so unimaginable he felt he had no choice but to kill her. And because she put him in that position, well it wasn’t his fault. She brought it on herself.’

Olivier shivered. ‘He seemed so gentle.’

‘And he was,’ said Gamache, ‘until you disagreed with him, or he didn’t get what he wanted. He was a child. He killed his mother for the money. And he killed Jane because he thought she was announcing it to the world with
Fair Day:

‘It’s ironic,’ said Peter, ‘he thought his face in
Fair Day
gave him away. But what gave him away was erasing his face. Had he left the picture as it was he’d never have been caught. He’d been passive all his life. The one time he actually acts he condemns himself.’

Ruth Zardo walked slowly and painfully up the hill, Daisy on a lead beside her. She’d volunteered to take Ben’s dog, surprising herself more than anyone else when she’d made the offer. But it felt right. Two stinky, lame old ladies. They picked their way along the uneven path, being careful not to slip on the gathering snow and twist an ankle or aggravate a hip.

She heard it before she saw it. The prayer stick, its brightly
colored ribbons catching the wind, sending their gifts into the air, knocking against each other. Like true friends. Bumping, and sometimes hurting, though never meaning to. Ruth took hold of the old photograph, the image almost worn off by the rain and snow. She hadn’t looked at this picture in sixty years, since the day she’d taken it at the fair. Jane and Andreas, so joyous. And Timmer behind, looking straight at the camera, at Ruth holding the camera, and scowling. Ruth had known then, years ago, that Timmer knew. Young Ruth had just betrayed Jane. And now Timmer was dead. And Andreas was dead, and Jane was dead. And Ruth felt, maybe, it was time to let go. She released the old photograph and it quickly joined the other objects, dancing and playing together.