Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #1)

‘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.’