The Nature of the Beast

by Louise Penny

  She parked in front of the small farmhouse.

  A curtain moved in an upstairs window and she saw Evelyn’s face, a look of distress glancing across it, as though Clara was a germ and Evie an open sore.

  An old mongrel dog, Harvest, lay on the grass. He struggled to his feet, his tail wagging slowly.

  “Clara,” Evie said, coming to the screen door, forcing a smile that looked painful.

  “I didn’t want to disturb you,” Clara said, cradling the dishes. “But I know how much energy it takes to get out of bed in the morning, never mind shop and cook. There’re a couple bags of groceries in the trunk. They’re from Monsieur Béliveau. And Sarah sent some croissants and baguettes from her boulangerie. She says you can freeze them. I wouldn’t know. They never last that long in my house.”

  Clara saw a hint of a genuine smile. And with it a slight relief, a loosening of the tight bands holding Evie Lepage in, and the world out.

  * * *

  Armand Gamache watched the old scientist leave the B and B dining room.

  As soon as Gamache had asked about Gerald Bull’s real contribution to Project Babylon, Michael Rosenblatt had looked at his watch and slid awkwardly out of the banquette.

  “I really must go. Thank you for the company.”

  Armand had got up too.

  Professor Rosenblatt offered his hand and Gamache, stepping into the handshake, had whispered in the scientist’s ear.

  Then stepped back to look into the startled face.

  Rosenblatt had turned and strolled away with forced leisure, and Armand had returned to the banquette, and his coffee, and his musings.

  Had Gerald Bull designed his Supergun? Or was he just the clever front man? Was there another genius behind that one? Someone younger, smarter? And far more dangerous?

  And perhaps still alive. According to Reine-Marie, Gerald Bull had been sixty-two when he’d been murdered. Gamache knew that most scientists did their best work, their most dynamic and creative work, by the time they were forty.

  Did Bull have a silent partner? A scientist, a physicist, an armaments designer? Did they make the perfect team? One staying in the shadows, scribbling plans for a gun unlike any other? An elegant weapon? While the other schmoozed, moved about in powerful circles, made deals? Found buyers. Found Saddam?

  Both brilliant and both commanding different fields.

  Gamache did the math. Michael Rosenblatt would have been in his mid-forties when Gerald Bull was killed. The design of the Supergun must have been made half a decade earlier, perhaps more. Putting Rosenblatt in his thirties.

  It fit. Was Michael Rosenblatt the father of the monster in the woods?

  Armand Gamache noticed that Rosenblatt had left so quickly he’d forgotten the redacted papers. Armand gathered them up, and thought maybe it hadn’t been an oversight. Maybe there was nothing in them that could possibly be news to the elderly scientist.

  Gamache sipped his coffee, and thought.

  He had a sense that Rosenblatt was a scientist with a conscience. The question was, had Rosenblatt’s sense of right and wrong come too late? Had he already contributed to the balance of terror?

  Or perhaps his sense of what was right was different from Gamache’s.

  “We sat down and wept,” Gamache had whispered into Rosenblatt’s ear, as they’d said good-bye. And then he provided the next line of the psalm. The one not written on the weapon. “When we remembered Zion.”

  Dr. Bull and Professor Rosenblatt might have their weapons of mass destruction, but so did Armand Gamache. And judging by the look on Rosenblatt’s face as they’d parted, he’d made a direct hit.

  Had Rosenblatt had a hand in creating Project Babylon, and then, when he realized that it was intended for Saddam, and that Saddam intended to use it against Israel, had he also had a hand in trying to stop it? By killing Gerald Bull. Perhaps he hadn’t actually pulled the trigger, but who else would have intimate knowledge of Bull’s movements, except a close colleague? A whispered word was all it would take.

  Mossad, the CIA, the Iranians, CSIS would do the rest.

  But that was a twenty-five-year-old murder case. Armand Gamache’s responsibility wasn’t to the gun, and it sure wasn’t to Gerald Bull. It was to Laurent. Who’d warned them all, and been ignored.

  * * *

  Isabelle Lacoste was running out of village and villagers to interview.

  The Sûreté investigators could finally talk openly about the Supergun, and while wildly interested, the villagers were not even remotely helpful.

  Most had been either too young at the time the gun was built, or hadn’t lived there then. Like Myrna. And Clara. And Gabri and Olivier.

  And now Isabelle took the black-and-white photograph of Dr. Bull and her questions into the general store, to speak with the last person on her list. The second oldest resident, Monsieur Béliveau, while Jean-Guy got the short straw and was interviewing the oldest resident.

  * * *

  “Like some, numbnuts?”

  Ruth tilted the Glenfiddich bottle toward Beauvoir.

  “You know I don’t drink anymore,” he said.

  “This isn’t alcohol. I took it from the Gamaches’,” she said. “It’s tea. Earl Grey. They think I don’t know.”

  Beauvoir smiled and accepted, though part of him still felt uncomfortable seeing the amber liquid flow from the Scotch bottle into his glass. He smelled it. There was no medicinal scent of alcohol.

  Nevertheless, he pushed the glass away from him and slid the photograph he’d had copied toward her.

  It was black and white, and showed a substantial man in a suit and narrow tie, a coat slung over one arm. The image of a businessman, whose business was in trouble. While the stance might be casual, there was no mistaking the anxiety in his face, as though he’d heard a shot in the distance.

  “Do you know this man?”

  Ruth studied it. “Should I?”

  “You know about the gun?”

  “I heard something. Everyone’s talking about it.”

  “That man built it. His name’s Gerald Bull.”

  “Then it’s true. About the gun, I mean.”

  Jean-Guy nodded.

  “They’re calling it a Supergun,” said Ruth.

  Again he nodded. “Bigger than any weapon I’ve ever seen.”

  “Laurent was telling the truth,” said the old poet.

  To Jean-Guy’s eyes she’d never looked older.

  “It was built in the mid to late eighties,” he said. “You were here then. Do you remember anything? It must’ve made a racket in the forest. You couldn’t miss it.”

  “It’s a question only a city person would ask. You think the countryside is silent, but it isn’t. It would put New York City to shame some days. Chain saws are going around here all the time. Clearing land, cutting down trees, sawing off branches hanging too close to Hydro lines. People getting wood for the winter. Between the chain saws and the lawnmowers it can be deafening. And don’t get me started on the frogs and beetles in spring. No one would notice, or remember, a particular racket in the woods thirty years ago.”

  Beauvoir nodded. “He didn’t hire locals?”

  “Well, he didn’t hire me,” said Ruth. She slugged back the tea.

  * * *

  Monsieur Béliveau looked more morose than ever.

  “Désolé, I wish I could help. I was here at the time and running the general store, but I don’t remember anything.”

  “The gun is huge,” Chief Inspector Lacoste said. “Massive. Whoever built it would’ve needed help clearing the land and bringing in the pieces, and then assembling it. Can you remember any activity in the forest?”

  “Non,” he said, shaking his head.

  She waited for more, but no more was offered. She would have to go in and get the information, pull it from him.

  “If he was going to hire someone to clear the site, who would it have been back then?”

  “Gilles Sandon did a lot of work i

n the woods,” said Monsieur Béliveau. “But he’s too young. And Billy Williams has a backhoe and is handy with a chain saw, but he’s had the municipal contract for forty years. Keeps him pretty busy.”

  Lacoste had already spoken to both men. Neither knew Gerald Bull. Neither knew anything about the gun. Neither had been hired to clear the land or bring in strange machinery back in the mid to late 1980s.

  “Most everyone around here has a chain saw and cuts wood for the winter. Most do odd jobs for cash.” He shook his head. “Not exactly skilled labor.”

  “No.”

  “How’s this supposed to help find who killed the Lepage boy?” asked Monsieur Béliveau.

  Isabelle Lacoste picked up the photograph.

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “But that gun and Laurent’s death are connected. He was killed because he found it. I don’t suppose you remember anyone, a stranger, coming here in the last few years, asking about a gun in the woods?”

  “Non, madame, no one came into my store asking for a Supergun.”

  His morose and serious tone made his answer all the more ludicrous.

  She put the photograph of Dr. Bull back into her pocket. They were doing the forensics, doing the interviews, collecting all the facts. But it wasn’t a fact that had killed Laurent. It was fear. Someone was so frightened of what the boy had found, by what the boy would do or say, that they had to kill him.

  It took a certain type of person, and a certain type of secret, to kill a child. And a great, big, stinking, putrid emotion.

  Chief Inspector Gamache had taught her that.

  Yes, collect evidence, collect facts. Absolutely. The facts would convict him, but the feelings would find him.

  * * *

  Clara had put the shepherd’s pie and apple crisp in the fridge. They’d been her own comfort food, after Peter had gone. She’d followed the casseroles back to sanity. Thanks to the kindness of neighbors who kept baking them, and kept bringing them. And who’d kept her company.

  And now it was Clara’s turn to return the comfort and the casseroles and the company.

  “Where’s Al?” she asked. The large man was usually at home, fixing something or sorting baskets of produce.

  “In the fields,” said Evie. “Harvesting.”

  Clara looked out the kitchen window and saw Al Lepage, his gray ponytail falling down his broad back as he knelt in the squash patch.

  Immobile. Staring down at the rich earth.

  It seemed far too intimate a moment, and Clara turned back to Evie.

  “How’re you doing?”

  “It feels like my bones are dissolving,” said Evelyn. And Clara nodded. She knew that feeling.

  Evie left the kitchen and Clara and the dog followed her. Clara thought they were going into the sitting room, but instead Evie lumbered up the stairs and stood at a closed door. Harvest had stayed at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at them, either too old to climb, or no longer motivated, without the reward of the boy to play with.

  “Al won’t come in here,” she explained. “I have to keep the door closed. He doesn’t want to see anything to do with Laurent. But I come up, when he’s outside.”

  She swung the door open and stepped inside. The bed was as Laurent had left it, unmade. And his clothes were scattered about, where he’d tossed them.

  The two women sat side by side on Laurent’s bed.

  The old farmhouse creaked and groaned, as though the whole home was in mourning, trying to settle around the gaping hole in its foundation.

  “I’m afraid,” said Evie, at last.

  “Tell me,” said Clara. She didn’t ask, “Of what?” Clara knew what she was afraid of. And she knew the only reason Evelyn had allowed her past the threshold wasn’t because of the casseroles she carried in her arms, but because of something else Clara carried. The hole in her own heart.

  Clara knew.

  “I’m afraid it won’t stop, and all my bones will disappear and one day I’ll just dissolve. I won’t be able to stand up anymore, or move.” She looked into Clara’s eyes. Clung to Clara’s eyes. “Mostly I’m afraid that it won’t matter. Because I have nowhere to go, and nothing to do. No need of bones.”

  And Clara knew then that as great as her own grief was, nothing could compare to this hollow woman and her hollow home.

  There wasn’t just a wound where Laurent had once been. This was a vacuum, into which everything tumbled. A great gaping black hole that sucked all the light, all the matter, all that mattered, into it.

  Clara, who knew grief, was suddenly frightened herself. By the magnitude of this woman’s loss.

  They sat on Laurent’s bed in silence, except for the moaning house.

  It was a boy’s room. Filled with rocks, that might be pieces of meteors, and bits of white that might be plastic, or might be bones from saber-toothed tigers or dinosaurs. There were pieces of porcelain, that might be from an ancient Abenaki encampment. Had the old tribe enjoyed high tea.

  The walls were covered with posters of Harry Potter and King Arthur and Robin Hood.

  Up until that moment Clara had been shocked by Laurent’s death and appalled that it was murder. But she hadn’t really thought of him as a person. She’d only known Laurent as the strange, annoying little boy who made up stories and demanded attention.

  And so Clara had averted her eyes whenever he burst in erupting with another fantastic tale.

  But now she sat on his Buzz Lightyear bedspread. And saw his shoes, flung off in different directions. And socks, balled up and tossed to the floor. And books, loads of books. Who read anymore? What child, what little boy read? But Laurent’s room was filled with books. And drawings. And wonder. And a grief so thick she could barely breathe.

  This was the real Laurent, and he was lost forever.

  Clara stood up and walked to the bookcase, and gripped it, her back turned to Evie so that Laurent’s mother wouldn’t be subjected to Clara’s own suddenly overwhelming sorrow.

  She was face-to-face with Babar and Tintin and the Little Prince. Leaning against the books was a series of small framed drawings of a nimble lamb. Pen and ink on white paper. The lamb was dancing. What was the word? Gamboling, she thought. Nine frames were lined up, leaned up against the books. The later ones were more sophisticated, with some watercolor added. All of the same lamb in a field. And in the distance, a ewe and a ram, watching. Guarding. On the back of each was written, Laurent, aged 1. Laurent, aged 2, and so on. The first lamb, the simplest, had just “My Son” written on the back and a heart.

  Clara looked at Evie. She had no idea this woman had such skill. While his father was the singer in the family, Laurent’s mother was the artist. But there would be no more lambs. Laurent Lepage had stopped aging.

  “Tell me about him.” Clara walked back to the bed and sat beside Evie.

  And she did. Abruptly, in staccato sentences at first. Until in dibs and dabs and longer strokes, a portrait appeared. Of an unexpected baby, who became an unexpected little boy. Who always did and said the unexpected.

  “Al adored him from the moment he was conceived,” Evelyn said. “He’d sit in front of me and play his guitar, and sing. His own songs, mostly. He’s the creative one.”

  Clara remembered Al sitting on that chair at the funeral. The guitar on his lap. Silent. No songs left. Clara wondered if, like her art, his music was now gone forever. That great pleasure consumed by grief.

  “He didn’t do it, you know.”

  “Pardon?” said Clara.

  “I’ve heard the gossip, we’ve seen how people look at us. They want to say something nice, but they’re afraid we did it. Do people really think that?”

  Clara knew that grief took a terrible toll. It was paid at every birthday, every holiday, each Christmas. It was paid when glimpsing the familiar handwriting, or a hat, or a balled-up sock. Or hearing a creak that could have been, should have been, a footstep. Grief took its toll each morning, each evening, every noon hour as those who were left behind struggled forward.

  Clara wasn’t sure how she’d have managed if the grief of losing Peter was accompanied not by shepherd’s pie and apple crisp, but by accusations. Not by kindness but by finger-pointing. Not by company and embraces and patience, but by whispers and turned backs.

  Al Lepage, the most social of men, the most jovial, had spent most of his time since the tragedy kneeling in a field. And no one had gone to get him.

  “They don’t know what they’re saying,” said Clara. “They don’t realize the harm they’re doing. People are afraid and they’re grabbing at whatever they can no matter how ridiculous.”

  “We thought they were friends.”

  “You have friends. Lots of them. And we’re defending you,” said Clara.

  It was true. But it was possible they could have done a better job. And Clara realized, with some shock, that part of her wondered if the gossip wasn’t perhaps, maybe, just a little … true.

  “Well, they have something else to talk about now,” said Clara.

  “What do you mean?”

  She hasn’t heard, thought Clara. These two really were isolated. It was like a moat had been carved around them.

  “The gun,” she began, watching Evie, who was looking blank.

  Beyond Evelyn, out the window of Laurent’s bedroom, Clara saw a familiar car drive up and park beside her own. Behind it came two Sûreté squad cars. On seeing the look on Clara’s face, Evie turned, then rose stiffly to her feet.

  “The police.” She looked at Clara. “Why? What was it you were saying about a gun?”

  CHAPTER 20

  “Al?” said Evie, approaching the large man planted in the field. “The police are here.”

  Al Lepage remained kneeling on the ground but straightened up. And then he very slowly hauled himself upright. He turned and stared at his wife as though not quite understanding what she was saying.

  Evie put out her hand and he took it in his massive hand. And she led him back to the house.

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