The Nature of the Beast

by Louise Penny

  Armand Gamache stared out the bistro window at the B and B. Gabri had quietly told him about seeing Delorme and Fraser in the library there, with the Fleming play.

  “I’ve never seen anyone read like that before,” he said. “She was so focused and he was like her watchdog. A pit bull.”

  “Sean Delorme?” asked Gamache.

  “I know,” said Gabri. “That’s why I thought you should know. He wasn’t at all happy that I’d seen them.”

  Gamache was keenly aware of the clock on the mantelpiece behind him, ticking down. And Michael Rosenblatt, in the corner. Cornered.

  Someone had told the CSIS agents about the significance of the play and Gamache could guess who.

  Armand looked out over the village and with a great effort cleared his mind and heard again the voices of the villagers reading the Fleming play. Armand stood very still, in the window, his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes closed.

  “Jesus,” he whispered after a couple of minutes. “Could it be?”

  * * *

  Mary Fraser looked up from the script, the blood rushing from her face, then rushing back.

  She felt faint, light-headed.

  “What is it?” asked Delorme.

  “Jesus,” she mumbled. “I’m an idiot.”

  She lifted the script off her lap as though offering it to Delorme, but kept it for herself.

  “Fleming was here, in this village.”

  “We know that,” said Delorme.

  “The play is set here,” she said, excited. “We missed it because Three Pines has changed, not a lot, but enough so that it wasn’t immediately recognizable.”

  * * *

  Jean-Guy was reaching for the phone when it rang. Before he could say “Allô,” Gamache said, “The play is set in Three Pines.”

  “I just realized it myself,” said Jean-Guy. “The B and B was a boardinghouse when Fleming was here. He set the play there. But what does it mean? We still don’t know where the plans are. Nobody lost anything in the play.”

  “True, but every character was in search of something, and they all went to the same place hoping to find it. Remember?”

  “Milk,” said Beauvoir. “The hardware store.”

  “Which is now the bistro.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  Gamache took Olivier and Gabri aside, well aware that Rosenblatt was watching, and no longer caring. It no longer mattered. There was no “longer” left.

  It was twenty to six.

  “The B and B was a boardinghouse when you moved here, right?”

  The two men nodded, attentive, alert, picking up on the urgency.

  “And this was a hardware store?”

  “Oui,” said Olivier.

  “You obviously did major renovations,” said Gamache. “Did you find anything in the walls, the floors?”

  Please Lord, please Lord, he thought.

  “All sorts of things,” said Gabri. “We took the place down to the studs. The walls were insulated with old newspapers and mummified squirrels.”

  “The papers,” said Gamache, speaking clearly, deliberately. “Where are they?”

  “We put them in the blanket box over there.” He waved at the pine chest in front of the fireplace. They’d been using it as a coffee table and footstool for years.

  “We always meant to read them,” said Gabri, following Gamache over there. “Some are really old.”

  Beauvoir arrived and joined them at the blanket box.

  “They found papers when they did the renovations,” said Gamache, kneeling in front of the box. “They’re all in here.”

  “Let me help.”

  They looked up and into the eyes of Professor Rosenblatt.

  “Please,” said the elderly scientist.

  Gamache and Beauvoir exchanged a quick glance, then Gamache nodded. They emptied the contents of the heavy wooden box onto the area rug. Behind them the fire in the grate mumbled and popped as though sensing something flammable nearby.

  Gabri and Olivier joined them on the floor and Professor Rosenblatt sat on the sofa as they divvied up the pile.

  “Carefully,” said Gamache. “No panic, look at everything carefully. The plans might appear to be something else. Examine a piece of paper, then set it aside, then take the next—”

  But they were already racing through the great mound of papers.

  The phone rang and Olivier got up to answer it.

  “It’s for you.” He held the receiver out to Jean-Guy.

  “Take a message.”

  “The message is ‘Fuck you,’” said Olivier, returning to the hunt. “I think you can guess who that was. She wants the two of you to share a Lysol.”

  After a minute or so, Gamache looked at Beauvoir. “I think you should go see her.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” said Beauvoir, getting up.

  “Who?” asked Rosenblatt, setting aside a copy of the Québec Gazette from 1778.

  “Ruth,” said Gabri.

  “He’s going to help her clean? Now?”

  Olivier shrugged.

  “Keep looking,” said Gamache, kneeling by the overturned blanket box. He could feel the fire behind him and hear the clock above him.

  CHAPTER 40

  “What is it?” Beauvoir asked, taking a seat next to Ruth in her living room.

  Monsieur Béliveau sat across from them on a lawn chair that looked familiar because it had once belonged to the grocer.

  Ruth’s home was furnished with what she described as “found” objects. Found, that is, in other people’s homes.

  “I know where the plans are.”

  “Where?” he asked.

  She leaned forward and tapped the play, which was sitting on a plank of wood held up by a stack of books found in Myrna’s bookstore.

  “The play?” demanded Jean-Guy. “We already know that.”

  “Not the play, numbnuts,” she snapped. “This.”

  She thumped the cover and now his eyes widened in frustration.

  “For Christ’s sake, what are you saying?”

  But then he saw what she’d been indicating. Not the play itself, but the title.

  “She Sat Down and Wept?” he said. “You think the title’s the key?”

  “It’s a reference to Babylon, isn’t it?” said Ruth. “And what would Fleming want to immortalize? What would give him the most pleasure?”

  “A moment of despair,” said Monsieur Béliveau.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He came asking for help and I sent him to Al Lepage,” she said. “I’d have done anything to get him away from me.”

  Beauvoir was listening, nodding. None of this was new, so why was she repeating herself? Once again, she tapped the title.

  She Sat Down and Wept.

  “Why did he call it that?” Ruth asked. “We just read it. At no stage does any woman actually sit down and weep. No one does. So why call it that?”

  * * *

  Gamache looked at the mess on the floor of the bistro. Old newspapers and magazines were scattered everywhere. But no plans.

  What was he missing? It was ten to six and they were no closer to finding the designs for Project Babylon.

  He looked at the play, the goddamned play, which he’d tossed onto one of the armchairs at the bistro. Had Fleming lied? It seemed likely now.

  She Sat Down and Wept. She Sat Down and Wept.

  It was, he had to admit, a strange title. No one in the play, man or woman, ever sat down and cried. Or stood up and cried. No one wept at all.

  And the actual biblical quote was “By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept.” We sat down, not she. It was a misquote. But Fleming knew the Bible, so it must’ve been done on purpose. With a purpose. Gamache remembered Fleming caressing the play with that one finger. But he wasn’t just touching the script, he was stroking the words of the title when he’d said, “You have no idea why I wrote this, do you? If you did, you wouldn’t need to be

here.”

  “This” wasn’t the play, it was the title.

  She Sat Down and Wept.

  Gamache forced himself to sit in the armchair, the play on his lap. Olivier, Gabri and Rosenblatt stared at him.

  “Aren’t you going to do something?” Gabri demanded. “Have you just given up?”

  “Shhh,” said Olivier. “He is doing something. He’s thinking.”

  “Ahhh,” said Gabri. “That’s what it looks like.”

  What did it mean? Gamache asked himself, tuning out the rest of the world.

  Fleming hid the plans, then he wrote the play. A play set in a fictional Three Pines. His eyes narrowed. There was one thing every character was looking for.

  Milk. In the hardware store. They came there to find it. But it wasn’t there, of course. So where would you find it?

  Gamache got up and walked to the door.

  * * *

  “My store?” asked Monsieur Béliveau. “You think he hid the plans in my store?”

  “Where else do you find milk?” asked Beauvoir, walking to the window. Looking out, he saw Gamache standing at the bistro door, also looking toward Monsieur Béliveau’s general store.

  But then Gamache turned away.

  Jean-Guy followed the Chief’s gaze. Past Monsieur Béliveau’s store, past the village green, past the three tall pines, past Clara’s place to Jane’s home. At Jane Neal’s now-empty house, Gamache’s gaze paused.

  Ruth’s best friend. Instead of recommending Jane for the artwork, she’d tossed Al Lepage into the pit.

  “Ruth,” Jean-Guy asked. “After you spoke to Fleming, did you go over to your friend Jane’s place? Did you talk to her about this?”

  * * *

  Gamache turned from Jane’s home and looked directly across the village green, to Ruth’s place.

  He saw movement in the window. Jean-Guy.

  Ruth had wanted to see Beauvoir, urgently, but didn’t want anyone else to know why. That’s why she sent the message about Lysol.

  Ruth.

  Who’d saved herself by betraying someone else. Ruth. Who’d been forced to face a terrible truth. She was a coward.

  She’d have turned in the Jews hiding in her attic.

  She’d have named names to McCarthy.

  She’d have pointed out heretics to the Inquisition, to avoid the flames and save herself.

  And she’d almost certainly have looked at the crosses on a distant hill and whispered “Gethsemane” into a Roman ear.

  And then she’d have sat down and wept.

  * * *

  “No, I didn’t go to Jane’s,” said Ruth. “I was too ashamed. I needed to be by myself.”

  “So you stayed here?” Jean-Guy asked. “You drew the curtains and locked the door and stayed in your home.”

  “At first.”

  “And then?”

  “My God,” said Monsieur Béliveau to Ruth. “He must’ve seen.”

  “Seen what?” Jean-Guy demanded.

  * * *

  Gamache’s eyes moved on, swiftly now. Up the hill. Past the old schoolhouse.

  And then his gaze stopped. And Armand Gamache started walking. Then running.

  * * *

  “The church,” said Beauvoir. “You went to St. Thomas’s. That’s what Fleming saw.”

  He ran out of Ruth’s home. Gamache was already at the bottom of the wide wooden stairs. He took them two at a time. Beauvoir got there just as Gamache yanked open the large door to the small church.

  “Where do you find milk?” Gamache asked, turning around only briefly to speak to Beauvoir.

  “A church,” said Jean-Guy. “The milk in the play isn’t literal.”

  “It’s a metaphor. For kindness and healing.”

  Gamache was scanning the rows of wooden pews, the simple altar, the unadorned walls. More a chapel than a church.

  “And forgiveness,” said Beauvoir. “You don’t find it in a hardware store, but you might find it here. Ruth came to St. Thomas’s after betraying Al Lepage. To pray for forgiveness. Looking for milk.”

  “John Fleming was a churchgoing man. Enjoying his relationship with a God he mocked and taunted,” said Gamache. “He either followed her or had come here himself, for a moment of gloating, knowing what he’d done to her.”

  They heard movement behind them as Ruth and Monsieur Béliveau arrived.

  “Where did you sit?” Gamache asked her.

  “Over there,” she pointed. “By the boys.”

  “The boys,” the soldiers of the Great War, who lived forever in the stained-glass window. They marched through mud and chaos. This was no civilian monument to the glories of war. They were young and they were far from home and they were afraid.

  But one young man had turned so that he was looking directly at the congregation. And on his face, alongside the terror, was something else.

  Forgiveness.

  Beneath the window were written the names of the dead from Three Pines. The boys who would never return to the old railway station, to the parents who waited.

  And under their names the words “They Were Our Sons.”

  Ruth had sat in the light pouring through their bodies. And wept.

  And when she left? Someone came out of the shadows.

  Gamache dropped to his knees and pushed the pew to one side. Beauvoir joined him and together they started prying up the wide wooden floorboards.

  And there, in a long metal tube, they found what they were looking for. The plans for Armageddon hidden in the chapel of St. Thomas. The doubter.

  Gamache looked at his watch. It was six o’clock.

  CHAPTER 41

  “Good evening, I’m Susan Bonner and this is the World at Six.”

  Adam Cohen could barely hear the words for the pounding in his ears.

  “Our top story tonight, an astonishing find in Québec’s Eastern Townships.”

  He checked his device. All electronics were blocked inside the penitentiary, but there was a code the guards used and Cohen had programmed it in. His device showed five bars. And no messages.

  Closing his eyes for just a moment, Adam Cohen gathered himself and then got out of the car and walked, resolutely, toward the small door in the thick wall.

  * * *

  “Our top story tonight, an astonishing find in Québec’s Eastern Townships.”

  “Merde,” said Isabelle Lacoste. The broadcast streamed over her laptop in the Incident Room.

  It was six o’clock, and it was worse than they thought. The CBC did not yet know the exact location of Gerald Bull’s Supergun, but they’d narrowed it down to this region.

  The story unfolded. One journalist had a report on Gerald Bull’s unlikely life and mysterious death. Another told the story of Project Babylon, and Saddam Hussein, and the coming together of two madmen.

  Three, Lacoste knew. Three madmen.

  * * *

  “I heard you coming,” said Fleming in his soft, flawed voice. He studied the young man in front of him. “You used to be a guard here, didn’t you?”

  But Adam Cohen heeded Gamache’s warning, not to tell Fleming anything. Not to engage the man.

  “Does he need a change of clothes?” one of the five guards who’d accompanied Cohen asked.

  “No,” said Cohen. “We won’t be gone for long. He’ll be back by midnight.”

  “Before I turn into a pumpkin?” asked Fleming as they put the cuffs and restraints on him. “Or something.”

  “You sure you want to do this?” asked another guard. The one who’d been Cohen’s friend when he’d worked at the SHU. The one Adam Cohen had gone to with the authorization. Because he knew this man would trust him.

  And he had. He’d accepted without question the letter from the Sûreté authorizing Cohen to take Fleming.

  Fleming was watching this exchange, his reptile eyes sliding from one man to the other, sensing, perhaps, a betrayal in progress.

  * * *

  Jean-Guy skidded to a stop. He��d turned the corner and was sprinting across the bridge to the Incident Room to tell Lacoste to call off Cohen.

  “Where’re you going?” he called after Gamache, who’d missed the turn and was running, plans in hand, toward the bistro.

  “We have to make sure these are the plans.” Gamache held them up but didn’t stop running.

  “They say Project Babylon, patron. What else could they be?”

  “Highwater, that’s what. More misdirection.”

  Beauvoir looked at the old railway station behind him, then at Gamache in front of him.

  “Shit,” said Jean-Guy, and raced to catch up with Gamache.

  In the bistro, Armand hurried over to Professor Rosenblatt, who’d moved to the sofa by the fire.

  “You found them?” the elderly scientist said, standing up.

  “We hope so.”

  Gamache opened the tube and tipped the scroll out. He sat down and unrolled it onto the blanket box. Rosenblatt joined him, bending over the paper.

  “Is it them?” asked Beauvoir.

  Rosenblatt didn’t answer. He made humming sounds, his finger tracing the lines of the schematic.

  Come on, come on, thought Beauvoir. Behind them, the clock on the mantel said six minutes past six. Somewhere in the background he could hear the Radio Canada news. The French service also had the story of Gerald Bull and Project Babylon.

  Olivier and Gabri must be in the kitchen, Beauvoir thought. Listening. Along with the rest of the world.

  “Are these the plans?” he demanded.

  * * *

  Adam Cohen walked beside his friend down the long corridor. He felt sick and wondered if it was the flu, or the overpowering stink of disinfectant, or the memories conjured by that smell. Of eighteen long months in this hellhole, guarding these psychopaths.

  Was it the thought of what he was about to do that was turning his stomach? Or was it more simple than all that? Less heroic. Was it just garden-variety fear, rooted and blossoming into terror?

  Behind Cohen, with two heavily armed guards in front and two guards beside him, John Fleming was shuffling, his chains clinking. And mixed with that sound was humming. An old hymn.

  By the waters of Babylon …

  Agent Cohen walked on, his eyes riveted on the bright red exit sign. His hand in his pocket, clutching the device. Willing it to leap to life with a message.

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