TWELVE
‘Yolande Fontaine and her husband André Malenfant,’
Beauvoir said as he wrote their names in tidy capitals on the sheet of paper. It was 8.15 on Tuesday morning, almost a week and a half since the murder, and the investigators were reviewing the list of suspects. The first two were obvious.
‘Who else?’
‘Peter and Clara Morrow,’ said Nichol, looking up from her doodling.
‘Motive?’ he asked, writing the names.
‘Money,’ said Lacoste. ‘They have very little. Or had. Now they’re rich, of course, but before Miss Neal died they were practically paupers. Clara Morrow comes from a modest background, so she’s used to being careful with money, but not him. He’s a Golden Mile boy, born and bred. A Montreal Brahmin. Best schools, St Andrew’s Ball. I spoke to one of his sisters in Montreal. She was circumspect, as only these people can be, but she made it quite clear the family wasn’t thrilled with his choice of career. Blamed Clara for it. They wanted him to go into business. The family considers him a disappointment, at least his mother does. Too bad, really, because by Canadian art standards he’s a star. Sold ten thousand dollars’ worth of art last year, but that’s still below the poverty level. Clara sold about a thousand dollars. They live frugally. Their car needs major repair work as does their home. She teaches art in the winter to pay the bills, and they sometimes pick up contracts to restore art. They scrape by.’
‘His mother’s still alive?’ Gamache asked, trying to do some quick calculations.
‘Ninety-two,’ said Lacoste. ‘Pickled, by all accounts, but breathing. An old tartar. Probably outlive them all. Family lore has it she found her husband next to her one morning, dead, and she rolled over and went back to sleep. Why be inconvenienced?’
‘We only have Mrs Morrow’s word for it that they didn’t know what was in the will,’ said Beauvoir. ‘Miss Neal might have told them they’d inherit, n’est-ce pas?’
‘If they needed money, wouldn’t they have gone to Miss Neal for a loan instead of murdering her?’ Gamache asked.
‘Maybe they did,’ said Beauvoir. ‘And she said no. And, they had the best chance of luring her to the woods. If either Clara or Peter had called her at 6.30 in the morning and asked to see her without the dog, she’d have gone. No questions asked.’
Gamache had to agree.
‘And’, Beauvoir was on a roll, ‘Peter Morrow’s an accomplished archer. His specialty is the old wooden recurve. He says he only target shoots, but who knows? Besides, as you found out, it’s easy enough to replace the snub-nosed tip with the killer tip. He could have gotten them from the clubhouse, killed her, cleaned the equipment and returned it. And even if we found his prints or fibers, it’d mean nothing. He used the equipment all the time anyway.’
‘He was on the jury that chose her art work,’ Lacoste was warming to the possibility, ‘suppose he was jealous of her, saw her potential and, I don’t know, flipped out or something.’ She sputtered to a stop. None of them could see Peter Morrow ‘flipping out’. But Gamache knew the human psyche was complex. Sometimes people reacted to things without knowing why. And often that reaction was violent, physically or emotionally. It was just possible Peter Morrow, having struggled with his art and his family’s approval all his life, saw brilliance in Jane Neal’s work and couldn’t take it. Was consumed with jealousy. It was possible, not probable, but just possible.
‘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 André, 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.