Still Life (Three Pines Mysteries)

by Louise Penny

  He woke up a short time later with Clara staring down at him, her face filled with fear. She radiated terror. He tried to get up, to protect her, but couldn’t move.

  ‘Chief? You all right?’ he shifted his blurry eyes and saw Beauvoir also looking down at him. ‘I’ve called for help on the cell phone.’ Beauvoir then reached out and held the Chief’s hand. For an instant.

  ‘I’m good, Jean Guy. You?’ He looked into the worried face.

  ‘I think an elephant landed on me.’ Beauvoir smiled slightly. A bit of bright red blood bubbled from his lip and Gamache lifted one shaky hand to gently wipe it away.

  ‘You must be more careful, boy,’ Gamache whispered. ‘Peter?’

  ‘I’m stuck, but I’m OK. You hit me with your head.’

  This wasn’t the time to argue over who hit whom.

  ‘There it is again. A slithering.’ Clara had found a flashlight, not all that difficult since the basement was now littered with flashlights, and men. She played it madly around the ceiling and the floor and wished it had power to do more than illuminate. A nice flamethrower would come in handy. She held Peter’s hand with her own broken hand, exchanging physical pain for emotional solace.

  ‘Ben?’ Gamache asked, and hoped soon he’d be able to form full sentences. His leg was shooting pain and his head throbbed, but he recognised that some threat was still out there, in the dark, in the basement with them.

  ‘He’s out cold,’ said Clara. She could have left them. The stairs had collapsed, true, but there was a step ladder not far away and she could have used that to climb out.

  But she didn’t.

  Clara had never known such fear. And anger. Not against Ben, yet, but against these morons who were supposed to have saved her. And now she had to protect them.

  ‘I hear something,’ said Beauvoir. Gamache tried to raise himself to his elbows, but his leg sent so much pain into his body it took his breath and strength away. He fell back and reached out his hands, hoping to find something to grab on to to use as a weapon.

  ‘Upstairs,’ said Beauvoir. ‘They’re here.’

  Gamache and Clara had never heard such beautiful words.

  A week later they were gathered in Jane’s living room, which was beginning to feel like home to all of them, including Gamache. They looked like a Fife and Drum Corps, Gamache’s leg in a cast, Beauvoir bent over with broken ribs, Peter’s head bandaged and Clara’s hand in plaster.

  Upstairs, Gabri and Olivier could be heard quietly singing ‘It’s Raining Men’. From the kitchen came the sounds of Myrna humming while preparing fresh bread and homemade soup. Outside snow was falling, huge wet flakes that melted almost as soon as they landed and felt like horse kisses when they touched a cheek. The last of the autumn leaves had blown off the trees and the apples had fallen from the orchards.

  ‘I think it’s beginning to stick on the ground,’ said Myrna, bringing in cutlery and setting up TV tables around the crackling fire. From upstairs they could hear Gabri exclaiming over things in Jane’s bedroom.

  ‘Greed. Disgusting,’ said Ruth and made her way quickly to the stairs and up.

  Clara watched as Peter got up and stirred the perfectly fine fire. She’d held him that night as he sprawled on the dirt floor. That had been the last time she’d gotten that close. Since the events of that horrible night he’d retreated completely on to his island. The bridge had been destroyed. The walls had been constructed. And now Peter was unapproachable, even by her. Physically, yes, she could hold his hand, hold his head, hold his body, and she did. But she knew she could no longer hold his heart.

  She watched his handsome face, lined with care now, and bruised by the fall. She knew he’d been hurt the worst, perhaps beyond repair.

  ‘I want this,’ said Ruth, coming down the stairs. She waved a small book then tucked it into a huge pocket in her worn cardigan. Jane in her will had invited each of her friends to choose an item from her home. Ruth had made her choice.

  ‘How’d you know it was Ben?’ Myrna asked, taking a seat and calling the boys down to lunch. Bowls of soup had been put out and baskets of fresh rolls steamed on the blanket box.

  ‘At the party here it came to me,’ said Clara.

  ‘What did you see we didn’t?’ Olivier asked, joining them.

  ‘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.’

  ‘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 Willi
amsburg 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.

  ‘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.