The Nature of the Beast
Page 5
“To talk to you,” came Armand’s voice from the theater.
“I think you’ve done enough, don’t you?”
Brian came out of the wings carrying a prop lamp. “Who’re you talking to?”
Armand climbed the steps onto the stage. “Me. Salut, Brian.”
“Are you happy?” Antoinette demanded, walking over to him. “Myrna and Gabri have quit. Brian here has to take over Gabri’s lead role—”
“I do?”
“A play’s hard enough to put on without actors dropping out,” she said.
“You’re going on with the production then?” Gamache asked.
“Of course,” she said. “Despite all your efforts. The other actors are going to be here in a few minutes. I’d like you to leave before you do more damage.”
“Are you going to tell them who wrote the play?”
“Because if I don’t you will? Is that why you’re here? To make sure you well and truly destroy the production? Christ, you’re a fascist after all.”
“I don’t want to debate with you,” said Gamache.
“Of course not, because that would be more free speech,” said Antoinette. For his part, Brian stood by the sofa, still holding the lamp. Like a failed Diogenes.
“Gabri and Myrna made up their own minds,” said Gamache. “But I didn’t try to dissuade them. I think doing the play is wrong.”
“Yes, I got that. But we’re doing it anyway. And you know why? Because while the man might be horrible, his play is extraordinary. If you have your way, no one will ever read it or see it performed. What a champion of the free society.”
“A free society comes at a cost,” he snapped, then reined himself in.
Antoinette smiled. “Hit a nerve, did I? What’re you so afraid of, Armand? The man’s in prison, has been for years. He’ll never get out.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“You’re terrified,” said Antoinette. “If I was casting a man driven by fear, I’d beg you to do the role.”
“I’d like to talk,” said Gamache, ignoring what she just said. “Can we sit down?”
“Fine, but make it quick before the others arrive.”
“Can I join you?” Brian asked, putting the lamp down. “Or is this private?”
“Yes,” said Armand. “This involves you too.”
He sat on a threadbare armchair, part of the stage set. The few times he’d actually been on a stage, it had surprised him how very shabby everything was. From a distance, from the audience, the actors could look like kings and queens, titans of business. But close up? The costumes were cheap, worn, often smelly. Their castles were falling apart.
The illusion shattered. That was the price of looking at things too closely.
As an investigator he’d spent his career examining things, examining people. Looking behind the façade, at what was really there. The worn and shabby and threadbare interiors.
But sometimes, sometimes, when he pulled back the illusion, what he found was something shiny, bright, far better than the stage set.
He looked at Antoinette. Middle-aged, clinging on perhaps a little too tightly to the illusion of youth. Her hair was dyed purple, her clothes could have been considered bohemian, had they not been so studied.
He genuinely liked Antoinette and admired her. Admired her even now, for standing up for what she believed in. And, after all, she didn’t know the full truth about Fleming.
“I’m here because we’re friends,” he said. “I don’t want this disagreement to come between us.”
“You didn’t even read the play, Armand,” Antoinette said, the anger draining from her voice. “How can you condemn it?”
“Perhaps the life of the writer shouldn’t matter,” he said, his own voice soft now. “But it does to me. In this case.”
“I’m not going to pull the play,” she said. “It might be crap now, with Brian in the lead—”
“Hey,” said Brian.
“I’m sorry, you’ll be fine, but you don’t have much time to rehearse, and when you came in late for rehearsal today I thought you’d also—”
“I’d never quit,” said Brian, looking shocked and upset. “How could you even think such a thing?”
Gamache wondered if Antoinette knew how lucky she was to have such a loyal partner. He also wondered about Brian, who could be so morally blinded by love.
“Honestly, Armand,” she said. “You’re behaving as though our very survival is at stake. It’s just a play.”
“If it’s just a play, then cancel it,” he said, and they were back where they’d started.
She stared at him. He stared at her. And Brian just looked unhappy.
“How did you come to have the Fleming play?” Gamache asked.
“I told you, Brian found it among my uncle’s papers,” she said.
“What was your uncle’s name?”
“Guillaume Couture.”
“Was he a theater director? An actor?” Armand asked.
“Not at all. As far as I know he never went to the theater. He built bridges. Little ones. Overpasses really. He was a quiet, gentle man.”
“Then why did he have the play? Did he know Fleming?”
“Of course not,” she said. “He barely left Three Pines his whole life. He probably picked it up at a yard sale. We don’t owe you an explanation. We’ve committed no crime, and you’re no cop.” She got up. “Now please leave. We have work to do.”
She turned her back on him and so did Brian, but not before giving Armand a slightly apologetic grimace.
As he drove down the dirt road toward Three Pines, feeling the familiar and almost comforting washboard bumps, Armand Gamache came to a realization. One he’d probably known since he’d discovered who’d written She Sat Down and Wept.
He would have to read the play.
* * *
Armand walked up the path and onto the rickety front stoop. And then he knocked.
“What do you want?” Ruth demanded through the closed door.
“To read the play.”
“What play?”
“For God’s sake, Ruth, just open the door.”
Something in his tone, perhaps the weariness, must have gotten through to her. A bolt slid back and the door opened a crack.
“Since when have you locked your door?” he asked, squeezing in.
She shut it so quickly behind him the corner of his jacket caught in the doorjamb and he had to yank it free.
“Since when have you cared?” she asked. “What makes you think I have the play?”
“I saw you take it when you left last night.”
“Why do you want to read it?”
“I might ask you the same thing.”
“It’s none of your business,” she snapped.
“And I might say the same thing.”
He saw the briefest flicker of a smile. “All right, Clouseau. If you can find it, you can have the goddamned play.”
He shook his head and sighed. “Just give it to me.”
“It’s not here.”
“Then where is it?”
Ruth and Rosa limped to the kitchen door and pointed to her back garden. The flower beds held late-blooming roses and creamy, pink-tinged hydrangeas, and trellises on which grew bindweed.
“Blows over from your garden,” she complained. “It’s a weed, you know.”
“Invasive, rude, demanding. Soaks up all the nutrients.” He looked down at the old poet. “Yes, we know. But we like it anyway.”
And again the smile flickered, but didn’t catch. Her eyes had dropped to a large planter in the middle of the lawn.
Gamache followed her gaze, then he stepped off the porch and walked over to the planter. It was empty. Without a word, he dragged it a few paces away, then looked down at the square of fresh-turned earth. Rich and dark.
“Here.” Ruth handed him the spade.
Sinking to his knees, he dug.
Ruth and Rosa watched from their back porch.
It was a deeper hole than Gamache had expected. He turned to look at Ruth, thin and frail. And yet, she’d dug, and dug. Deep. As deep as she could. He put the shovelful of dirt on the pile behind him, and jabbed it back in.
Eventually it hit something. Brushing away the dirt, he leaned in and saw the dark printing on the bone-white page.
She Sat Down and Wept.
He stared and from the ground came the audio recording played at the trial. Screams for help. Begging. Pleading with him to stop.
“Armand?”
Reine-Marie’s voice cut through the sounds, but even before he turned he knew something had happened. Something was wrong.
Holding the filthy script in one hand and the spade in the other, he stood up and saw Reine-Marie outlined in the light of Ruth’s back door.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s Laurent. He didn’t come home for dinner tonight. Evie just called to ask if he was with us.”
Gamache felt the weight of the play in his hand, drawn back to the ground. Dirt to dirt.
Laurent didn’t come home.
He dropped the play.
CHAPTER 6
After a night of searching, his mother and father found Laurent early the next morning. In a gully. Where he’d been thrown, his bicycle nearby. The polished handlebars had caught the morning sun and the glint guided his parents to him.
The other searchers, from villages all over the Townships, were alerted by the wail.
Armand, Reine-Marie, and Henri stopped their search. Stopped calling Laurent’s name. Stopped struggling through the thick brush on the side of the roads. Stopped urging Henri even deeper, ever deeper, through the brambles and burrs.
Reine-Marie turned to Armand, stricken, as though a fist had formed out of the cries. She walked into Armand’s arms and held on to him, burying her face in his body. His clothing, his shoulder, his arms almost muffled her sobs.
She smelled his scent of sandalwood, mixed with a hint of rosewater. And for the first time, it didn’t comfort her. So overwhelming was the sorrow. So shattering was the wail.
Henri, covered in burrs and upset by the sounds, paced the dirt road, whining and looking up at them.
Reine-Marie pulled back and wiped her face with a handkerchief. Then, on seeing the gleam in Armand’s eyes, she grabbed him again. This time holding him, as he’d held her.
“I need to—” he said.
“Go,” she said. “I’m right behind you.”
She took Henri’s leash and started to run. Armand was already halfway to the corner. Sprinting, following the grief.
And then the wailing stopped.
* * *
As Armand rounded the corner, he saw Al Lepage at the bottom of the hill standing in the middle of the dirt road, staring into space.
Armand ran down the steep hill, skidding a little on the loose gravel. In the distance he saw Gabri and Olivier arriving from the opposite direction. Converging on the man.
From the underbrush he heard moaning and rhythmic rustling.
“Al?” Armand said, slowing down to stop a few paces from the large, immobile man.
Lepage gestured behind him but kept his face turned away.
Even before he looked, Gamache knew what he’d see.
Behind him he heard Reine-Marie’s footsteps slow to a stop. And then he heard her moan. As one mother looked at another’s nightmare. At every mother’s nightmare.
And Armand looked at Al. Every father’s nightmare.
In a swift, practiced glance, Armand took in the position of the bike, the ruts in the road, the broken bushes and bent grass. The placement of rocks. The stark detail imprinted itself forever in his mind.
Then Armand slid down the ditch, through the long grass and bushes that had hidden Laurent and his bike. Behind him he could hear Olivier and Gabri speaking to Al. Offering comfort.
But Laurent’s father was beyond comfort. Beyond hearing or seeing. He was senseless in a senseless world.
Evie was clinging to Laurent, her body enfolding his. Rocking him. Her mousy brown hair had escaped the elastic and fell in strands in front of her face, forming a veil. Hiding her face. Hiding his.
“Evie?” Armand whispered, kneeling beside her. “Evelyn?”
He gently, slowly, pulled back the curtain.
Gamache had been at the scene of enough accidents to know when someone was beyond help. But still he reached out and felt the boy’s cold neck.
Evie’s keening turned into a hum, and for a moment he thought it was Laurent. It was the same tune the boy had hummed two days earlier when Armand had driven him home.
Old man look at my life, twenty-four and there’s so much more.
From behind them, up the embankment and on the road, came a gasp so loud it drowned out the humming.
One gasp, then a heave. And another heave. As Al Lepage fought for breath through a throat clogged with grief.
Under the wretched sounds, Armand heard Olivier calling for an ambulance. Others had arrived, forming a semicircle around Al. Unsure what to do with such overwhelming grief.
And then Al dropped to his knees and slowly lowered his forehead to the dirt. He brought his thick arms up over his gray head and locked his hands together until he looked like a stone, a boulder in the road.
Armand turned back to Evie. The rocking had stopped. She too had petrified. She looked like one of the bodies excavated from the ruins of Pompeii, trapped forever in the moment of horror.
There was nothing Armand could do for either of them. So he did something for himself. He reached out and took Laurent’s hand, holding it in both of his, unconsciously trying to warm it. He stayed with them until the ambulance came. It arrived with haste and a siren. And drove off slowly. Silently.
A little while later Reine-Marie and Armand drew the curtains of their home, to keep out the sunshine. They unplugged the phone. They carefully took the burrs off a patient Henri. Then in the dark and quiet of their living room they sat down and wept.
* * *
“I’m sorry, patron,” said Jean-Guy. “I know how much you cared for him.”
“You didn’t have to come down,” said Gamache, turning from the front door to walk back into their home. “We could’ve spoken on the phone.”
“I wanted to bring you this personally, rather than email it.”
Gamache looked at what Jean-Guy held in his hand.
“Merci.”
Jean-Guy placed the manila file on the coffee table in front of the sofa.
“According to the local Sûreté, it was an accident. Laurent was riding his bike home, down the hill, and he hit a rut. You know what that road’s like. They figure he was going at a good clip and the impact must’ve thrown him over his handlebars and into the ditch. I’m not sure if you saw the rocks nearby.”
Gamache nodded and rubbed his large hand over his face, trying to wipe away the weariness. He and Reine-Marie had caught a few hours’ sleep then gotten up to the sound of rain pelting against the windowpanes.
It was now late afternoon and Jean-Guy had driven down from Montréal with the preliminary report on Laurent’s death.
“I did see them. This’s fast work,” said Gamache, putting on his reading glasses and opening the file.
“Preliminary,” Jean-Guy said, joining him on the sofa.
It was pouring outside now. A chilly rain that got into the bones. A fire was lit in the hearth and embers popped and burst from the logs. But the men, heads together, were oblivious to the cheerfulness nearby.
“If you look here.” Beauvoir leaned in and pointed to a line in the police report. “The coroner says he was gone as soon as he hit the ground. He didn’t…”
He didn’t lie there, in pain. As it got darker. And colder.
Laurent, all of nine years of age, didn’t die frightened, wondering where they were.
Jean-Guy saw Gamache give one curt nod, his lips tightening. There wasn’t much comfort to be found in what had happened. He’d take what he could get. As would Evie and Al, eventually. The only thing worse than losing a child was thinking that child had suffered.
“His injuries are consistent with what the police found,” said Jean-Guy. He sat back on the sofa and looked at his father-in-law. “Why do you think it might be more than that?”
Gamache continued to read, then he looked up and over his half-moon glasses.
“Why do you think I do?”
Jean-Guy gave a thin smile and nodded toward the report. “Your face as you read the report. You’re scanning for evidence. I spent twenty years across from you, patron. I know that look. Why do you think I wanted to be here when you read it?” He tapped the report. “I cared for him too, you know. Funny little guy.”
He saw Gamache smile, and nod.
“You’re right,” Gamache admitted. “I thought something was wrong from the moment we found him. All sorts of small things. And one big thing. Kids fall off bikes all the time. I can’t tell you how often Annie landed headfirst. Only repeated blows to the head could explain her attraction to you.”
“Merci.”
“But surprisingly few die. Laurent also wore a helmet most of the time. Why not yesterday? He had it with him. It was tied to the handlebars of his bike.”
“Laurent probably wore the helmet when he left home and when he arrived where he was going. But he took it off in between, when no one was looking. Like most kids. I used to take off my tuque in the middle of winter, as soon as my mother couldn’t see me. I’d rather freeze my head than look stupid. Don’t say it,” Jean-Guy warned, seeing the obvious comment coming.
Gamache shook his head. “It just wasn’t right, Jean-Guy. There was something off. The trajectory, the distance he traveled. The distance his bike traveled—”
“—is all explained here.”
“In a report slapped together quickly. And then there was the position of the bike, and Laurent’s body.”
Jean-Guy picked up the photographs from the police report and studied them, then handed them to Armand, who placed the pictures back in the file.
He saw that face, that body, all day long. It was burned into his memory. No need to look at it again.
“They look like they were thrown there,” said Gamache.
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