The Nature of the Beast

CHAPTER 29

The wipers on Gamache’s car were working furiously, thumping and sweeping, thumping and sweeping away the rain, trying to clear a semicircle of visibility.

When they arrived at the theater, Brian bolted out. Armand waited in the car until he got inside, but saw Brian put his hands in the pockets of his jacket, then bring them out and try other pockets. Then he looked over at Gamache.

Armand turned the car off and dashed over, head down against the driving rain.

“Do you have the keys?” he shouted.

Once again Brian searched the pockets and shook his head. “They’re in my jacket. This’s yours.”

Gamache tried the handle. It turned and the door opened.

“Thank God,” he said, quickly following Brian inside. “But shouldn’t this be locked?”

He closed the door against the beating rain.

“Antoinette sometimes forgets to lock it,” said Brian, running his hands through his wet hair. “I’m okay now, you can go if you want to.”

“I think I might wait until the storm passes,” said Armand, feeling a little bad since he knew Brian desperately wanted time alone. “I’ll just wait in the theater for a few minutes.”

Brian went over to a panel and with a clunk turned on the stage lights, but not the house lights. While Armand took off his sodden overcoat and chose a seat in the darkness a few rows back, Brian sat on the sofa on the stage. Folding his hands on his lap, a calm seemed to come over him. He looked like a man meditating. Eyes closed, face tilted slightly upward, peaceful though not, Gamache supposed, at peace.

This was Brian’s sanctuary and Gamache was aware he was an intruder. He felt like a voyeur. Watching an intimate act. An uninvited audience at a private play.

He averted his eyes, looking around the set.

It took him a while to realize what he was seeing. It started as a vague sense that something was different. Not wrong, not threatening, just a little different.

Brian wouldn’t have noticed. His back was to the set and his eyes were closed. But Armand sensed it, then saw it.

There were more items on the set. The tatty furniture was the same, but there were more books on the shelves, and little ornaments filled some of the empty spaces.

Armand cocked his head to one side, looking at the items. They were too far away to see clearly, though one caught his eye. He stared at it, and then stood up.

Walking to the wings, he climbed the few steps to the stage and into the floodlights. Brian, hearing the footsteps, opened his eyes.

“Leaving?” he asked, with more than a little hope in his voice.

“Not yet,” said Armand, distracted, staring at the items on the bookshelf. Then he took a step to his left and bent down, reading the spines of the books. Some were dusty old volumes that had been there before, no doubt bought in bulk at a rummage sale and used for props in many productions. But there were a few others, including—he bent closer and put on his reading glasses—Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems, Barrier Trajectories and one called Applied Physics, Theory and Design.

Straightening up, his eyes moved swiftly over the bookshelf, the desk, the chest of drawers, all meant to convey the living room of a boardinghouse in the Fleming play.

And then his eyes stopped. There, at the back of the desk behind a pen set, was a small photograph in a silver frame of a smiling man with a little girl in pigtails leaning against his knee.

Gamache brought out the photo of the three scientists and compared the faces. Both smiling. Both slightly disheveled. Both Guillaume Couture.

And the girl was almost certainly Antoinette Lemaitre, when she really was a girl and not a woman-child.

He reached for his cell phone and called Isabelle Lacoste.

“Antoinette brought her uncle’s things to the theater,” he said. “They’re scattered around the set on the stage.”

“Are the plans there?” she asked immediately. “The firing mechanism?”

“I don’t know yet, I just discovered it.”

Brian had come over and was standing next to Gamache. He reached out for the framed photograph but Gamache stopped his hand.

“We’ll be over right away,” said Lacoste. “Don’t touch anything.”

It was out before she realized what she’d said.

“We’ll try not to,” said Gamache, eyeing Brian.

“I’m sorry, patron,” said Lacoste. “Of course you won’t.”

After he’d hung up, Gamache asked Brian if he could point out which props had been there for a while and which ones might be new.

Brian took his time, pointing to, but not touching, the pen set, the photo, some books, some bric-a-brac.

When he finished, he turned back to Armand. “Did I hear you say Antoinette put these things out? That they belonged to her uncle?”

“She must have,” said Armand. “The books were suggestive, but that photograph puts it beyond doubt. How about this?” Armand motioned to the ornament that had first caught his attention. Brian had pointed it out as something he’d never seen before. “Are you sure this isn’t from your props department?”

Brian gnawed on his lower lip. “Pretty sure. It’s kind of memorable, isn’t it?”

It was that, Gamache agreed. And it was manufactured to be just that. Memorable. He was certain it hadn’t been on the stage when he’d visited Antoinette a few days earlier. He’d have remembered.

It was, after all, a souvenir. Bending closer, he came eye to eye with the statue. It was small and tacky and cheap. He knew because he’d bought one himself, but not for himself. Or Reine-Marie.

They’d bought one each for their granddaughters when last they’d visited Paris. They’d taken the girls for a weekend away, to give Daniel and Roslyn time on their own.

In a series of clear images, Armand saw little Florence and her littler sister Zora in front of the Eiffel Tower. In the Luxembourg Gardens. At a laiterie with dripping ice cream cones.

Then little Florence and littler Zora on the train à grand vitesse, the TGV, in profile, side by side, looking wide-eyed out the window, the French countryside zipping by at great speed as they hurtled toward Belgium.

And then little Florence and her littler sister Zora pointing to and laughing at the little bronze boy, peeing into the fountain in Brussels. The famous statue was called the Manneken Pis, which was also greeted with hilarity. Grandpapa had told them the story of the baby prince who, legend had it, in 1142 had peed on his enemies from a tree during battle. Legend also had it that somehow this act had led to victory. If only the arms dealers knew it wasn’t arms that won a war.

The girls were so taken with the story and the silly statue that they’d pleaded for their own from a souvenir stand. It proved a little embarrassing to explain to their parents how the girls could have gone to the beautiful city of Brussels and their only memory, their only souvenir, was of a peeing boy.

But Gamache now remembered something else from that trip. They’d taken the girls to the Atomium, a huge reproduction of an atom, shepherding in the atomic age. It was possible to go inside, to visit rooms, to look out the windows, and to travel up and down on the quite singular, indeed unique, escalators.

And that’s what Reine-Marie had remembered when looking at the picture of the scientists.

Once again Armand brought the photograph from his pocket and stared at it. Had there been a chair under him, he’d have sat. In his mind he replaced the three scientists with two teary, weary and bored girls and an exhausted Reine-Marie. At the top of the escalator. This escalator. At the Atomium.

That was where the photograph was taken. At the Atomium. This picture placed Guillaume Couture in Brussels with Gerald Bull. Proving he’d stayed on to work with Dr. Bull while Project Babylon was being developed.

Anyone familiar with Gerald Bull’s career, and the Atomium, would have seen that too.

Beauvoir and Lacoste arrived a few minutes later and Gamache showed them the new items on the stage set.

“Brian confirms these pieces weren’t here before,” said Gamache. “And they certainly weren’t out when I was here last week.”

“Where is he?” asked Beauvoir, unpacking his forensics kit and putting on gloves.

“He’s gone downstairs to the greenroom, to be alone.”

He also told them where the picture had been taken.

“Brussels,” said Beauvoir, pausing in his search of the books. “Where Bull was murdered. But when Bull was murdered?”

“We can’t be sure,” said Gamache.

“Antoinette might’ve hid all her uncle’s things in the basement and then brought them here in the last few days,” said Lacoste. “That suggests she knew her uncle was involved with Gerald Bull and the gun. Why else hide the things? Why else bring them here?”

“To get them out of the house, I agree,” said Beauvoir. “But why only in the last few days? What happened then? She didn’t do it when she took over his house. She didn’t do it when Laurent was murdered. What happened to make her get the wind up?”

“The gun,” said Gamache.

“But it was found when Laurent died,” said Lacoste. And then it dawned on her. “But no one knew what was under the netting. It was only three days ago that people found out it was Gerald Bull’s missile launcher.”

Gamache nodded. “I think when Antoinette heard, she panicked. She must’ve realized it was her uncle’s gun and that was why Laurent was killed.”

“She was afraid she’d be next,” said Beauvoir. “If the murderer found out about her uncle and his connection to Bull.”

“And she was right,” said Lacoste. “But by the time she hid the things, it was too late.”

“Which means,” said Gamache, “her uncle must’ve told her at least something about his work.”

“Probably to warn her,” said Lacoste.

“But how did the murderer find out about Dr. Couture? And that his niece was living in his home?” asked Beauvoir.

“The photograph of them together in Brussels was published in his obituary, probably furnished by Antoinette, not realizing what it revealed,” said Gamache. “Anyone looking for the plans would see the significance immediately.”

“But Dr. Couture died years after Gerald Bull was murdered,” Isabelle pointed out. “Was anyone still interested?”

“In a fortune?” asked Beauvoir. “Even Professor Rosenblatt admitted there’d be people out there still looking for the mythical Supergun. What I’m not clear on is, after Laurent found the gun and was killed to stop him blabbing, why did the murderer wait a week or more to kill Antoinette and search her house for the plans? If he knew her uncle had worked on the Supergun, why not go there right away?”

Gamache took a deep inhale, held it a moment, then exhaled.

It was a very good question. There was a reason, of course. And perhaps the answer was—

“Maybe they aren’t the same person,” said Armand. “Maybe someone killed Laurent and someone else, on hearing of the find, came down to see it and look for the plans. They knew that Guillaume Couture was Antoinette’s uncle, and if anyone had the plans to Project Babylon it would be him.”

“They?” asked Lacoste. “You’re thinking of Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme, aren’t you?”

“I’m not sure what I’m doing could really be called ‘thinking,’” said Gamache. “But yes, they’re a possibility. I put in that call to my contact in CSIS this morning. We should know more about them later today.”

Lacoste looked around the stage. They’d printed, swabbed and bagged the items they knew were from Antoinette’s home but hadn’t found the firing mechanism or the plans.

Gamache picked up a few of the bagged items and examined them. A pen set. A bookend. The peeing boy.

“I don’t suppose…” Gamache turned the Manneken Pis around, and around.

“You think that’s the firing mechanism?” asked Beauvoir, trying not to laugh.

“I think if a weapon’s powerful enough to wipe out an entire region, and is worth billions, some effort might be made to disguise the one component that will make it work. And that”—Gamache handed the Manneken Pis to Jean-Guy—“is not it.”

Beauvoir looked at it with distaste. “It does look familiar. Don’t Florence and Zora…?”

“Oui,” said Gamache. “Reine-Marie bought them each one. Guess what you’re getting for Christmas.”

They heard heavy steps on the stairs and turned around to see Brian emerging from the wings.

“I was sitting in the greenroom when I realized that Antoinette has a desk down there. I almost looked but then thought you might want to do it yourselves.”

“I’ll go,” said Beauvoir, handing the small statue back to Gamache. “I’m rethinking your gift now, patron.”

He came back up twenty minutes later, shaking his head. “Just old scripts and crap. When’s the team getting here from Montréal? It’s a real rat’s nest down there with costumes and props.” He looked out into the body of the theater. “It’ll take hours to go through this place. Maybe days.”

A few minutes later the forensics team arrived and began the arduous task of searching the theater.

Gamache drove through what was now drizzle. The dramatic dawn with its broken clouds and shafts of light had made way for the storm, which in turn became just a dreary, cold, rainy early autumn afternoon.

Now the wipers made a lazy, rhythmic motion as he drove south from the Knowlton Playhouse toward the Vermont border, listening to Neil Young on CD sing about the place his memory went when he needed comfort. All his changes were there.

Helpless …

Gamache had left Lacoste and Beauvoir and the forensics team at the theater and was following his GPS along the route Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme had taken two days before. Just south of Mansonville, he turned right and drove into Highwater.

Bounded by a hill on one side and a river on the other, it should have been a picturesque little village. Could have been. Would have been. Almost certainly had been a pretty little village, once. But now it felt abandoned, forgotten. Not even a memory.

… helpless.

It was far from the first run-down little community Armand Gamache had arrived in. He looked around and saw the old train station, shuttered. The transport link, like an artery, was severed and the once vital community had died. Slowly. The young people seeping away for jobs elsewhere, leaving aging parents and grandparents.

Gamache looked at his GPS. He was in Highwater, but the CSIS agents seemed to have traveled slightly beyond it. Turning right again, then left, he came to a line of high chain-link fencing and a gate with a rusty chain and a new lock.

Without compunction, or hesitation, Gamache reached into his glove compartment, brought out a small pouch of tools, and within moments the lock was open. He drove in, parked the car behind an old building, then taking the GPS and an umbrella with him, he started to walk.

Up.

The walk turned into a trudge along a narrow, muddy path. He tried not to slip but twice he lost his footing, dropped the GPS, and a knee, into the mud. On the second tumble, as he reached for the wet and soiled GPS, hoping it wasn’t broken, he noticed tracks. Rails. Uncovering them, he realized he was walking in the middle of a set of railway tracks. Narrower than the ones used by passenger or freight trains. These were abandoned, overgrown, all but invisible to everyone except a man on his knees.

He stood, pausing to catch his breath. He was almost at the top of the hill. After a few more minutes’ climb there was no more up left, only down. Bending over, he rested his hand on his knee. It was at times like this he realized he was no longer thirty, or even forty. Or even fifty. Straightening up, he looked around. The crown of the hill was wooded, but he could tell by the relatively new growth that it had once been clear-cut.

With the toe of his rubber boot, he uncovered the narrow rails and followed them until they ended at a concrete platform, half buried under years of dirt and roots and fallen leaves. Around it were other lumps, but those had been recently excavated. The huge pieces, like artifacts, sat half buried and half rusting in the drizzle. He examined them, taking photographs, and then returned to the platform.

A view that would once have thrilled him now left him queasy. He looked over the vast forest, his sight line skimming the treetops all the way to the Green Mountains of Vermont in the distance. Mist and low clouds clung to them and the world seemed washed of all vibrant color. He could hear, on the umbrella over his head, the drum of raindrops.

The Whore of Babylon had been here, and then moved on. Leaving behind a graveyard of giant severed limbs.

There was no mistaking what, when whole, they had once been.