Still Life (A Three Pines Mystery)

'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 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.'