The Nature of the Beast

by Louise Penny

  “If there was any other way, Jean-Guy…”

  “You can’t let him out. I’m begging you.” Beauvoir, still on his knees, lifted his arms toward Gamache. “It won’t even do any good. He was probably lying to you. He might not even know where the plans are.” Beauvoir got up, angry now. “You were too close, you couldn’t see it. He was playing with you, messing with you.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” shouted Gamache. “You think I don’t know he was probably lying, and even if he does know where the plans are, he almost certainly won’t tell us? I know that.”

  “Then why do it? Why even consider it?”

  “What happens if we leave Fleming where he is and those plans are found by another arms dealer?”

  He stared at Beauvoir, challenging him. Daring him to go where Gamache himself stood. In the whirlwind.

  The two men were ten feet apart, glaring at each other.

  “You think,” growled Gamache, “I want to release Fleming? To bring him to Three Pines? It sickens me. But we might have no choice. Fleming might not tell us where the plans are. And yes, he might escape. But I don’t know where the plans are. You don’t know where they are. God knows I’ve been desperate to find them.”

  “And Fleming probably doesn’t either. He’d say anything to get out of there.”

  “But he might. He might know. He could be our only hope.”

  Beauvoir stared at him, appalled. “You’re pinning hopes on that creature? What if the lives he takes next time belong to Madame Gamache, or Annie, or your granddaughters? Would you be so cavalier then?”

  “Cavalier? You think that’s what I am? If those plans are found, how many more wives and husbands, children and grandchildren will be killed? Tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. No one would be safe.”

  It was a grotesque equation, and Gamache looked like he was about to pass out. He was contemplating being an accessory to a slaughter, for the greater good.

  Mary Fraser had been wrong about Gamache. He’d done it before, and he’d do it again. Send a few to possible death, to save the many. Those decisions had finally torn him to shreds, and he’d crawled to Three Pines to heal. But not, it would appear, to hide.

  Beauvoir opened his mouth, his breathing heavy, his eyes wide.

  “Annie’s pregnant, Armand.”

  It took a moment for the words to penetrate Gamache’s defenses, to get through his turmoil. But then his shoulders dropped, his face softened.

  And he understood.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered.

  In long, swift strides he covered the distance between them, and gathering Jean-Guy in his arms, he held the sobbing man.

  “We’ll find the plans,” he repeated over and over, until Jean-Guy had calmed down. “We’ll find them.”

  Though he didn’t know how.

  * * *

  Armand drove the rest of the way home, giving Jean-Guy a chance to recover and to talk about the new baby. And Annie.

  “Please don’t tell Madame Gamache,” said Jean-Guy. “Annie would kill me. She wants to do it herself.”

  “I won’t, but you have to tell her soon because she might pry it out of me. She’s very cunning.”

  As they talked about this happy news, Gamache could almost forget where they’d been, and what lay ahead. After a few miles they once again lapsed into silence.

  Gamache went back over his interview with Fleming, struggling to bring it into focus.

  “Fleming admitted he knew Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme,” he said, and Beauvoir nodded. Jean-Guy had also been replaying the meeting with Fleming, with growing urgency, pursued by the ticking clock and the realization of just how monstrous Fleming really was.

  “But he said something,” said Armand. “Something I thought at the time I needed to remember, but then it got lost.”

  “Misdirection,” said Beauvoir. “Fleming probably knew he’d said too much and tried to hide it under a pile of crap.”

  “But what was it?” asked Gamache.

  They racked their brains. Al Lepage? Brussels. The agency. What was it Fleming had said?

  Jean-Guy got there first. It wasn’t something Fleming had said. It was something Gamache said.

  “The play,” he said. “You mentioned the play, and put it on the table, remember?”

  “That’s it,” said Gamache. “He asked if I’d read it.”

  “You said it was beautiful, and that surprised him, but it was something else.”

  Beauvoir reached behind him to the backseat and, picking up the satchel, he took out the worn and dirty script.

  “He touched it and said if you’d really understood it, you wouldn’t need to be speaking with him.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Gamache. “We wouldn’t need to visit Fleming because we’d have the answer.”

  “The hiding place of the plans is in the goddamned play,” said Beauvoir, looking down at She Sat Down and Wept. “You read it, I read it. I don’t remember anything about plans or papers or anything hidden, do you?”

  Gamache thought, scouring his memory. The play was set in a boardinghouse. The main character was a sad-sack fellow who kept winning the lottery. He’d lose all the money and end up back there. Then win again. And lose again. It was excruciating but also sensitively observed, insightful and very funny.

  “The winning ticket wasn’t hidden or lost, was it?” asked Beauvoir.

  Gamache shook his head. “No, he kept it on the chain around his neck, remember? Where the crucifix once was.”

  “Shit. What else, what else? Did anyone lose a key? A glove, anything?”

  Beauvoir opened the script and turned the pages at random, with growing frenzy.

  “Call Isabelle,” said Gamache. “Tell her about the CBC news at six, and get her to have every copy of that play picked up.”

  “Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme have one,” Beauvoir reminded him, as the phone rang.

  “Leave them alone,” said Gamache. “If they’ve read Fleming’s play then they’ve also missed the reference. Let’s keep it that way.”

  Beauvoir got Lacoste on the line, put her on speaker and brought her up to speed.

  “I know about the CBC,” she said. “Professor Rosenblatt was just in here. He had a call from a journalist asking about the Supergun. They’ve obviously done enough research to know he’s the expert on Gerald Bull.”

  “What did he tell them?” Beauvoir asked.

  “He says he told them he’s long retired and the case of Dr. Bull was long ago. They asked about finding Project Babylon and he said he thought that unlikely since it probably was never built and wouldn’t work anyway.”

  “Did they buy it?”

  “Not for a moment,” said Lacoste. “The professor’s afraid he might have even made it worse by denying what they already knew to be true.”

  “I don’t think it’s possible to make it worse at this stage,” said Beauvoir.

  “Well, the good news is, so far they don’t seem to know where the gun is, and I suspect they’ll zero in on Highwater to begin with. They might even stop there.”

  But they all knew that wasn’t going to happen. “You’ll get all the copies of the play? But leave the CSIS agents out of it.”

  “I’ll get Cohen on it,” she said.

  “No,” Gamache interrupted. “Not Cohen. Can you get another agent to do it?”

  “I can,” she said, her voice guarded. “Why?”

  “I’d like Agent Cohen to stay in the Incident Room. Do you mind? I’ll explain when we get there.”

  They hung up and Beauvoir glared at the phone, not daring to look at his father-in-law. He knew why Gamache wanted Cohen to stay behind.

  It was a terrible thing he was about to do.

  CHAPTER 38

  “That’s insane.” Then, after a tense pause, Isabelle Lacoste added, “Sir. Even if we could get Fleming out of the SHU and bring him here, it would be like releasing a plague.”

  “We have”�

��Gamache looked at the clock on the train station wall—“three hours and five minutes until the news breaks and there’s no going back. It takes two hours to drive to the SHU. Agent Cohen will have to leave now.”

  “I can tell the time, patron,” said Lacoste. “What I can’t tell is if you’ve lost your mind. I understand the equation, I really do. But I agree with Inspector Beauvoir. There’s a better-than-average chance Fleming’s lying. That he has absolutely no idea where the plans are. And then what? Arms dealers might still find the plans before we do, and John Fleming will certainly kill again once he escapes. Because he will escape. And you know who his first victim will be?”

  They looked over at Agent Cohen, who was watching them from across the room. He dropped his eyes and pretended to wipe something off his slacks.

  “It has to be done,” said Gamache.

  “Fleming gets what he wanted,” said Lacoste.

  “And we get what we need. Look,” said Gamache. “You know what will happen if someone else finds the plans to Project Babylon first. Fleming will seem like a cartoon character compared to what would happen then.”

  He glanced over at Adam Cohen.

  “If I could go in his place I would, but only Adam can do what we need done. Only he can get Fleming out. He worked there for eighteen months. He knows the SHU, he knows the guards and the system. It gives me no pleasure, but this task falls to him. It has to happen, Isabelle.”

  Gamache tried to mask his frustration. For years, decades, he’d consulted his team, but the final decision was always his. Now, though, he needed Isabelle Lacoste to agree, and to act.

  “You’re talking about getting John Fleming out of the SHU?” asked Adam Cohen. He was leaning toward them. “I’m sorry, but I overheard.”

  They turned to the young man and Gamache took a step toward him.

  “Do you think you can do it?”

  Cohen considered, then nodded.

  “I think so.”

  He looked both determined and about to run away. His eyes were wide, his pupils dilated, his skin was not just pale but gray. A man about to jump off a cliff, hoping he’d sprout wings.

  “I’m sorry to ask, sir, but are you sure it’s such a good idea?”

  “We just need to know if you think it’s possible,” said Gamache reassuringly. “No decision has been made yet.”

  “But John Fleming,” said Cohen. “He’s not…” Cohen searched for the right way to put it. “He’s not a normal person.”

  It was such an understatement it was almost funny. But the look of sheer terror on the young man’s face made amusement impossible.

  “Let me go with him,” said Beauvoir. “We can’t send him alone.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt again,” said Cohen, again leaning into their conversation. “There’s one flaw in the SHU security. We were trained to expect riots, breakouts, but not a break-in. So it might work. But it needs to be someone they know and trust. Someone they’d never expect would cause trouble. Me. Alone.”

  His words said one thing, but his eyes were begging them to disagree. To not send him there at all, and certainly to not send him alone.

  “Excuse us,” Lacoste said to Agent Cohen with exaggerated courtesy, and took the other two deeper into the Incident Room. “We have to come to a decision.”

  She looked at Beauvoir, at Gamache. She glanced over at Agent Cohen, then up to the clock.

  “All right. We’ll send him to the SHU. As you said, it’ll take two hours for him to get there, and we have just over three until the broadcast. We don’t have to decide about Fleming until later, but Agent Cohen will at least be in place.”

  Gamache and Beauvoir nodded and Isabelle Lacoste walked back to Adam Cohen.

  “This is not sanctioned,” she said. “If you go, you need to be aware of what will almost certainly happen. Even if we’re successful, and you get Fleming out and return him, we will all be fired and probably brought up on charges. Do you understand?”

  “My uncle has a poutine stand,” he said. “I think I can get us all jobs there.”

  He spoke with such sincerity, Beauvoir didn’t know if Cohen was serious. And he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Or to tell him the real truth. That young Adam Cohen might very well lose more than his job.

  Chief Inspector Lacoste wrote up a letter of authorization, printed it out on Sûreté letterhead, and handed it to Agent Cohen. Then they walked him to the car.

  “If you haven’t heard from me by six you need to go into the SHU, do you understand?” said Chief Inspector Lacoste. “The moment the Gerald Bull story airs on CBC.”

  “Yes, sir. Mom. Ma’am.”

  “Oh God,” Beauvoir whispered.

  “You’ll be fine, son,” said Armand. “Just don’t give Fleming any information. Not your name, not where you’re taking him. Nothing. He’ll try to engage you, just ignore him.” He put out his hand. “Shalom aleichem.”

  Adam Cohen looked surprised and pleased. He took Gamache’s hand. “And peace be upon you too, sir. How did you know?”

  “I was raised by my Jewish grandmother,” said Gamache.

  “B’ezrat hashem,” said Cohen, releasing Gamache’s hand and getting into the car.

  They watched him drive off.

  “What did he say to you?” Beauvoir asked.

  “He said, God willing,” said Gamache.

  “I don’t think God has much to do with anything that’s happening,” said Lacoste. Then she turned to the two men. “If the location of the plans really is hidden somewhere in that play, we need to go through it, closely and quickly.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Gamache. “Both Jean-Guy and I have already read it and found nothing.”

  “You need new eyes,” said Lacoste. “Do you want me to read it?”

  “No, I want the village to read it,” said Gamache. “A play’s meant to be performed.”

  “We’re going to put on the play?” asked Beauvoir. “Wait a minute. It can be done. Mom can do the costumes and we can use Uncle Ned’s barn.”

  “Calm down, Andy Hardy,” said Gamache. “I meant a read-through. We need people to read it while we listen.”

  “It’s not a bad idea,” said Lacoste. “But it’ll take time. An hour and a half at least by the time you even start. By then it’ll be almost six o’clock. If you’re wrong—”

  “If we’re wrong we have Agent Cohen in place,” said Gamache.

  “Well, it might all work,” said Lacoste. “Don’t these things usually turn out well?”

  Gamache gave a single gruff laugh. “Always.”

  He started walking rapidly toward the village. “I think we should do it in our home. More private. I’ll round up some people we know we can trust. What is it?”

  He’d noticed her hesitation and stopped.

  “And who can we trust?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let me ask you this,” she said. “If someone arrived in Three Pines two weeks ago and met you walking Henri or sitting on your porch with Madame Gamache, would they know who you were and what you’d done?”

  He smiled slightly. She had a point.

  Who could know that Myrna hadn’t always run a used bookstore, but was once a prominent psychologist in Montréal? Who knew the woman with wild food-infested hair was a great artist?

  How many of the people in Three Pines were on their second or third acts? People had hidden depths, but they also had hidden pasts and hidden agendas.

  Who could really be trusted?

  Jean-Guy had asked about Monsieur Béliveau. It seemed unlikely he had anything to hide, but was it any more unlikely than that the quiet man walking the shepherd with the extravagant ears had once hunted murderers for a living? Or that the burly organic gardener was a war criminal?

  “Someone here killed Laurent,” Lacoste reminded him. “And Antoinette. Someone is not who they appear to be.”

  “Once again, though,” said Gamache, “we have no choice. We need help. We need their help,” he said, gesturing toward the village.

  He waited, poised to act, until Chief Inspector Lacoste gave a curt nod, then he hurried across the bridge.

  “I’ll get the scripts,” said Beauvoir. “You coming?”

  Isabelle Lacoste was standing still. She met his eyes and shook her head.

  “No, I think you and the Chief are enough.” She looked at her computer where, like Beauvoir’s, the screen saver was rotating photographs of Laurent and Antoinette. “I have work to do here. You look for the plans, I’ll look for the murderer. We’ve gotten sidetracked by the gun. More misdirection, and I fell for it.”

  “Not complete misdirection,” said Beauvoir. “Laurent wasn’t killed because he was Laurent, he was killed because he found the weapon, and Antoinette was killed because her uncle designed it. The gun is at the center of everything that’s happened.”

  “True, but the focus has become finding the plans, and we’ve taken our eyes off the murderer. He’s in here somewhere.” She tapped the dossier on her desk. “Mary Fraser said we don’t understand her world, and she’s right. This is the world we understand. This is what I should’ve been doing all along. I need to go back over the basics. The interviews, the forensics. Who knows, we might end up at the same place.”

  “B’ezrat hashem,” he said, and left while Lacoste opened the dossier and began reading.

  There was more than one path to the truth.

  * * *

  Armand went to the bookstore first. There he found Ruth, Myrna and Clara and invited them over to his place. He was vague and they were curious. It was a perfect fit.

  Next he went to the bistro, where he found Brian having a beer with Gabri. It was now just past four. Gamache hesitated a moment, then invited them both. Brian might be a suspect, but he was also their greatest asset. He knew the play inside out and backward.

  “Bring Olivier,” said Armand over his shoulder, as he hurried to the bistro door.

  He was about to leave when he noticed Professor Rosenblatt in a corner, gesturing to him.

  “What’s happening?” he asked when Gamache arrived at his table. Lowering his voice, he said, “Is it something to do with the CBC story?”

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