Still Life (A Three Pines Mystery)

'Who else?' asked Gamache.

'Ben Hadley,' said Lacoste. 'He's also a good archer, with access to the weapons. And trusted by Miss Neal.'

'But without a motive,' said Gamache.

'Well, not money, anyway,' admitted Lacoste. 'He's worth millions. All inherited from his mother. Before that he was on a generous allowance.'

Nichol snorted. She hated these 'trust fund' kids who did nothing with their lives except wait for Mommy and Daddy to die.

Beauvoir chose to ignore the snort. 'Could he have had another motive besides money? Lacoste, anything in the papers you found in Jane Neal's home?'

'Nothing.'

'No diary?'

'Except the diary where she made a list of people who wanted to kill her.'

'Well, you might have mentioned it.' Beauvoir smiled.

Gamache looked at the list of suspects. Yolande and Andre, Peter and Clara and Ben Hadley.

'Anyone else?' Beauvoir was closing his notebook.

'Ruth Zardo,' said Gamache. He explained his thinking.

'So her motive', said Lacoste, 'would be to stop Jane from telling everyone what she'd done. Wouldn't it've been easier to just kill Timmer to shut her up?'

'Actually, yes, and that's been bothering me. We don't know that Ruth Zardo didn't kill Timmer Hadley.'

'And Jane found out about it?' asked Lacoste.

'Or suspected. She was the type, I think, who would've gone directly to Ruth and asked her about her suspicions. She probably thought it was a mercy killing, one friend relieving another of pain.'

'But Ruth Zardo couldn't have actually fired the arrow,' said Beauvoir.

'True. But she might have enlisted the aid of someone who could, and would do anything. For a fee.'

'Malenfant,' said Beauvoir with a certain glum glee.

Clara sat in her studio with her morning coffee, staring at the box. It was still there, only now it stood on four legs, made of tree branches. Initially she'd seen it on a single leg, like the trunk of a tree. Like the blind. That's the image that had come to her in the woods during the ritual, when she'd looked over and seen the blind. It was such a perfect and appropriate image. Of being blind. Of the people who use the blind not seeing the cruelty of what they did, not seeing the beauty of what they were about to kill. It was, after all, a perfect word for that perch. A blind. And it was how Clara felt these days. Jane's killer was among them, that much was obvious. But who? What wasn't she seeing?

But the single tree trunk idea hadn't worked. The box had looked unbalanced, off-putting. So she'd added the other legs and what had been a perch, a blind, now looked like a home on great long stilts. But it still wasn't right. Closer. But there was something she needed to see. As always when faced with this problem Clara tried to clear her mind, and let the work come to her.

Beauvoir and Agent Lacoste were in the process of searching the Malenfant home. Lacoste had been prepared for filth, for a stench so thick she could see it. She hadn't been prepared for this. She stood in Bernard's bedroom and felt ill. It was perfect, not a dirty sock, not a plate of congealing food. Her kids were under five and their rooms already looked, and smelled, like the beach at low tide. This kid was, what? Fourteen? And his room smelled of Lemon Pledge. Lacoste felt like retching. As she put on her gloves and began her search she wondered if there wasn't a coffin in the basement which he slept in.

Ten minutes later she found something, though not what she'd expected. She walked out of Bernard's room and into the living room, making sure to catch the boy's eye. Rolling up the document she discreetly put it in her evidence bag. Not so discreetly, though, that Bernard didn't see. It was the first time she'd seen fear on his face.

'Well, look what I found.' Beauvoir came out of the other bedroom holding up a large manila folder. 'Oddly enough,' he said into Yolande's lemon-sucked face and Andre's lean leer, 'it was taped to the back of a picture, in your bedroom.'

Beauvoir opened the folder and flipped through the contents. They were rough sketches, Jane Neal's rough sketches of the county fair all the way back to 1943.

'Why did you take these?'

'Take? Who said anything about take? Aunt Jane gave them to us,' said Yolande in her most convincing, 'the roof is nearly new' real estate agent's voice.

Beauvoir wasn't buying. 'And you taped it behind that print of a lighthouse?'

'She told us to keep them out of the light,' said Yolande in her 'the plumbing isn't lead' voice.

'Why not just wallpaper over them?' Andre actually gave a snort of laughter before being silenced by Yolande. 'All right, take them in,' said Beauvoir. It was getting close to lunch and he longed for a beer and a sandwich.

'And the boy?' asked Lacoste, picking up the cue. 'He's a minor. Can't stay here without parents.'

'Call Children's Aid.'