The Nature of the Beast

CHAPTER 2

“So?”

Isabelle Lacoste put her glass of apple cider on the worn wooden table and stared at the man across from her.

“You know I’m not going to answer that,” said Armand Gamache, picking up his beer and smiling at her.

“Well, now that you’re no longer my boss I can tell you what I really think.”

Gamache laughed. His wife, Reine-Marie, leaned toward Lacoste and whispered, “What do you really think, Isabelle?”

“I think your husband, Madame Gamache, would make a great Superintendent at the Sûreté.”

Reine-Marie leaned back in her armchair. Through the mullioned windows of the bistro she saw a ragtag mix of kids and adults, including her daughter Annie and Annie’s husband, Jean-Guy, playing soccer. It was mid-September. Summer was gone and autumn was on the doorstep. Leaves were just turning. Brilliant reds and yellows and amber maples dotted the gardens and forest. Some leaves had already fallen onto the grass of the village green. It was a perfect time of year, when late summer flowers were still blooming and the leaves were turning, and the grass was still green, but the nights were chilly and sweaters were out and fires were beginning to be lit. So that the hearths at night resembled the forests in the day, all giddy and bright and cheerful.

Soon everyone would head back to the city after the weekend, but for her and Armand there was no need to return. They were already there.

Reine-Marie nodded to Monsieur Béliveau, the grocer, who’d just taken a seat at a nearby table, then turned her attention back to the woman who had joined them for the weekend. Isabelle Lacoste. Chief Inspector Lacoste, acting head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec. The job Reine-Marie’s husband had held for more than twenty years.

Reine-Marie always thought of her as “young Isabelle.” Not, she hoped, in a patronizing, or matronizing, way, but because she’d been so young when Armand had found and recruited and trained her.

But now there were lines in Isabelle’s face, and gray just starting in her hair. It seemed to happen overnight. They’d met her fiancé, and been at her wedding, and attended the baptism of her two babies. She’d been young Agent Lacoste for so long, and now, suddenly it seemed, she was Chief Inspector Lacoste.

And Armand was retired. Early retirement, certainly, but retirement.

Reine-Marie glanced out the window again. They were in their amber years.

Or perhaps not.

Reine-Marie shifted her attention to Armand, sitting back in his wing chair in the bistro, sipping his microbrewery beer. Relaxed, comfortable, amused. His six-foot frame had filled out. He wasn’t heavy, but he was solid. The pillar in the storm.

But there was no storm, Reine-Marie reminded herself. They could, finally, stop being pillars and just be people. Armand and Reine-Marie. Two more villagers. That was all. That was enough.

For her.

And for him?

Armand’s hair was grayer than ever, and curling just around his ears and at his collar. It was longer, slightly, than when he was at the Sûreté. More from not noticing than not caring.

Here in Three Pines they noticed the migration of the geese, and the prickly chestnuts ripening on the trees, and the bobbing black-eyed Susans in bloom. They noticed the barrel of apples outside Monsieur Béliveau’s general store, free for the taking. They noticed the fresh harvest at the farmers market and the new arrivals at Myrna’s New and Used Bookstore. They noticed Olivier’s daily specials at the bistro.

Reine-Marie noticed that Armand was happy. And healthy.

And Armand noticed that Reine-Marie was happy and healthy too, here, in the little village in the valley. Three Pines couldn’t hide them from the woes of the world, but it could help heal the wounds.

The scar at Armand’s temple plowed across the other lines on his forehead. Some of the furrows were created by stress and worry and sadness. But most, like the ones showing now, were deep with amusement.

“I thought you were going to tell me what you really thought of him as a person,” said Reine-Marie. “All those flaws you witnessed after years of working together.” Reine-Marie leaned closer, in conspiracy. “Come on, Isabelle, tell me.”

Out on the green, Lacoste’s two children were fighting with Jean-Guy Beauvoir for the ball. The grown man appeared to be sincerely, and increasingly desperately, trying to control the play. Lacoste smiled. Even against kids, Inspector Beauvoir did not like to lose.

“You mean all the cruelty?” she asked, bringing her attention back inside the comfortable room. “The incompetence? We had to keep waking him up to tell him our solution to a case so he could take the credit.”

“Is that true, Armand?” Reine-Marie asked.

“Pardon? I was snoozing.”

Lacoste laughed. “And now I get your office, and the sofa.” She turned serious. “I know the Superintendent’s job has been offered to you, patron. Chief Superintendent Brunel told me in confidence.”

“Some confidence,” said Gamache. But he didn’t look put out.

Chief Superintendent Thérèse Brunel, appointed head of the Sûreté after the scandals and shake-up, had visited Three Pines a week earlier. It was, supposedly, a social visit. As they’d relaxed on the front porch one morning over coffee, she’d offered him the job.

“Superintendent, Armand. You’d head up the division that oversees Homicide and Serious Crimes and the annual Christmas party.”

He raised his brow.

“We’re restructuring,” she explained. “Gave the St-Jean-Baptiste Day picnic to Organized Crime.”

He smiled and so did she, before her eyes turned sharp again and she studied him.

“What would it take to get you back?”

It would be disingenuous for him to say he hadn’t seen this coming. He’d been expecting just such an overture since the leadership of the Sûreté had fallen into complete disarray, and the breadth and depth of the corruption he’d uncovered became clear.

They needed leadership and direction and they needed it fast.

“Let me think about it, Thérèse,” he’d said.

“I’d like an answer soon.”

“Of course.”

After Thérèse Brunel kissed Reine-Marie good-bye, she took Armand’s arm and the two old friends and colleagues walked to her car.

“The rot in the Sûreté has been removed,” she said, lowering her voice. “But now the force needs to be rebuilt. Properly this time. We both know rot can reappear. Don’t you want to be part of making sure the Sûreté is strong and healthy and on the right path?”

She examined her friend. He’d recovered from the physical attacks, that was obvious. He exuded strength and well-being and a kind of calmly contained energy. But the physical wounds, as grave as they’d been, hadn’t been the reason Armand Gamache had retired. He had finally staggered under the emotional burden. He’d had enough of corruption, of betrayal, of the back-stabbing and undermining and venal atmosphere. He’d had enough of death. Chief Inspector Gamache had exorcised the rot in the Sûreté, but the memories remained, embedded.

Would they disappear with time? Thérèse Brunel wondered. Would they disappear with distance? Would this pretty village wash them away, like a baptism?

Maybe.

“The worst is done, Armand,” she said, once they reached her car. “And now it’s time for the best, the fun part. Rebuilding. Don’t you want to be part of that? Or is this,” she looked around the village green, “enough?”

She saw the old homes circling the green. She saw the bistro and bookstore and bakery and general store. She saw, Gamache knew, a pretty, but dull, backwater. While he saw a shore. A place where the shipwrecked could finally rest.

Armand had told Reine-Marie about the job offer, of course, and they’d discussed it.

“Do you want to do it, Armand?” she’d asked, trying to keep her voice neutral.

But he knew her too well for that.

“It’s too soon, I think. For both of us. But Thérèse has raised an interesting question. What next?”

Next? Reine-Marie had thought when he’d said it a week ago. And she thought it again now, in the bistro, with the murmur of conversation, like a stream, flowing by her, around her. That one bedraggled word had washed up on her banks and set down roots, tendrils. A bindweed of a word.

Next.

When Armand had retired and they’d moved from Montréal to Three Pines, it had never occurred to her there’d be a next. She was still surprised and elated that there was a now.

But now had bled into next.

Armand wasn’t yet sixty, and she herself had given up a hugely successful career at the Bibliothèque nationale.

Next.

She was, truth be told, still savoring here and still savoring now. But next was on the horizon, slouching toward them.

“Hello, you still here?”

Gabri, large and voluble, walked across the bistro he owned with his partner, Olivier. He hugged Isabelle Lacoste.

“I thought you’d be gone by now,” said Myrna, arriving with him and taking the slender woman in her ample arms.

“Soon. I was just at your bookstore,” Isabelle said to Myrna. “You weren’t there so I left the money by the cash register.”

“You found a book?” asked Myrna. “Which one?”

They discussed books while Gabri got them a couple of beers and chatted with customers before returning to the table. In his late thirties, Gabri’s dark hair was just beginning to gray, and his face was showing crinkles when he laughed, which was often.

“How was rehearsal?” Reine-Marie asked Gabri and Myrna. “Is the play going well?”

“You’ll have to ask Antoinette,” said Gabri, indicating with his beer a middle-aged woman at another table.

“Who is she?” asked Isabelle.

She looked to Lacoste like her daughter. Only her daughter was seven and this woman must’ve been forty-five. The woman wore clothes more suited to an infant. A bow was in her spiky purple hair. She wore a flowered skirt, short and tight around her ample bottom, and a tank top, tight around her ample top, under a bright pink sweater. If a candy store vomited, Antoinette would be the result.

“That’s Antoinette Lemaitre and her partner, Brian Fitzpatrick,” said Reine-Marie. “She’s the artistic director of the Knowlton Playhouse. They’re coming over for dinner tonight.”

“We’ll be there too,” said Gabri. “We’re trying to get Armand and Reine-Marie to join us.”

“Join?” said Isabelle. “Us?”

“The Estrie Players,” said Myrna. “I’ve been trying to convince Clara to join too. Not to act, necessarily, but maybe to paint sets. Anything to get her out of that studio. She just stares at that half-finished portrait of Peter all day long. I don’t think she’s lifted her brush in weeks.”

“That painting gives me the creeps,” said Gabri.

“Isn’t it a bit overkill, though?” said Reine-Marie. “Getting one of the top painters in Canada to do sets for an amateur production?”

“Picasso painted sets,” said Myrna.

“For the Ballets Russes,” Reine-Marie pointed out.

“I bet if he lived here he’d do our sets,” said Gabri. “If anyone could convince him, she could.”

He gestured toward Antoinette and Brian, who were approaching the table.

“How was rehearsal?” Reine-Marie asked, after introducing them to Isabelle Lacoste.

“It would be better if this one”—Antoinette jerked her head toward Gabri—“listened to my direction.”

“I need to be free to make my own creative choices.”

“You’re playing him gay,” said Antoinette.

“I am gay,” said Gabri.

“But the character is not. He’s just coming out of a ruined marriage.”

“Oui. Coming out. Because he’s…?” said Gabri, leaning toward her.

“Gay?” asked Brian.

Antoinette laughed. It was full and hearty and unrestrained and Isabelle liked her.

“Okay, play him any way you like,” Antoinette said. “It doesn’t really matter. The play’s going to be a hit. Even you can’t mess it up.”

“That’s on the poster,” Brian confided. “Even Gabri Can’t Mess This Up.”

He put his hands up in front of him to indicate a huge banner.

Reine-Marie laughed and knew it might actually be true, and a good selling point.

“What part do you play?” Isabelle asked Myrna.

“The owner of the boardinghouse. I was going to play it as a gay man, but since Gabri already claimed that territory I decided to go in a different direction.”

“She’s playing her as a large black woman,” said Gabri. “Inspired.”

“Thank you, darling,” said Myrna, and the two air-kissed.

“You should’ve seen their production of The Glass Menagerie,” said Armand. His eyes widened as though to say it was exactly what Isabelle imagined it would be.

“By the way, did you talk to Clara?” Antoinette asked Myrna. “Will she do it?”

“I don’t think so,” said Myrna. “She needs more time.”

“She needs distraction,” said Gabri.

Isabelle looked at the script in Antoinette’s hand.

“She Sat Down and Wept,” she read. “A comedy?”

Antoinette laughed, handing her the script. “It’s not as dire as it sounds.”

“Actually, it’s wonderful,” said Myrna. “And very funny.”

“Some might even say gay,” said Gabri.

“Well, time to go.” Isabelle got up. “I see the soccer game is over.”

On the village green the children and adults had stopped playing, and were all looking toward the stone bridge across the Rivière Bella Bella where a kid was shouting and running into the village.

“Oh no,” said Gabri as they watched through the bistro window. “Not again.”

The boy paused at the edge of the green and gestured wildly with a stick. When no one reacted he looked around and his gaze stopped at the bistro.

“Hide,” said Myrna. “Duck.”

“God, don’t tell me Ruth’s coming too,” said Gabri, looking around frantically.

But it was too late. The boy was through the door, scanning the crowd. And his bright eyes came to a halt. On Gamache.

“You’re here, patron,” the boy said, running over to their table. “You have to come quick.”

Grabbing Gamache’s hand, he tried to pull the large man out of his chair.

“Wait a minute,” said Armand. “Settle down. What is it?”

The boy was bedraggled, like something the woods had coughed up. There were moss and leaves and twigs in his hair, his clothes were torn and he clutched a stick the size of a cane in his scratched and filthy hands.

“You won’t believe what I found in the woods. Come on. Hurry.”

“What is it this time?” Gabri asked. “A unicorn? A spaceship?”

“No,” the boy said, looking annoyed. Then he turned back to Gamache. “It was huge. Humongous.”

“What was?” Gamache asked.

“Oh, don’t encourage him, Armand,” said Myrna.

“It was a gun,” said the boy, and saw a flicker of interest in Gamache. “A giant gun, Chief. This big.” He waved his arms and the stick hit the table next to them, sweeping glasses to the floor.

“Okay,” said Gabri, getting up. “That’s enough. Give me that.”

“No, you can’t have it,” said the boy, protecting the stick.

“Either you give it to me, or you leave. I’m sorry, but you don’t see anyone else in here with tree branches.”

“It’s not a tree branch,” said the boy. “It’s a gun that can change into a sword.”

He made to brandish it but Olivier had come over and caught it with his hand. With his other he held out a broom and a pan.

“Clean it up,” said Olivier, not unkindly, but firmly.

“Fine. Here.” The boy handed Gamache the stick. “If anything bad happens to me, you’ll know what to do.” He looked at Gamache with deadly earnest. “I’m trusting you.”

“Understood,” said Gamache gravely.

The boy began to sweep while Armand leaned the stick against his chair, noticing that it was notched and etched and that the boy’s name was carved into it.

“What did he want this time?” Jean-Guy asked, as he and Annie joined them and watched the annoyed sweeping. “To warn you about an alien invasion?”

“That was last week.”

“Oui. I forgot. Are the Iroquois on the warpath?”

“Done that,” said Armand. “Peace has been restored. We gave them back the land.”

He looked over at the boy, who’d stopped sweeping and was now riding the broom like a steed, using the pan as a shield.

“He’s kind of sweet,” said Annie.

“Sweet? Godzilla is sweet. He’s a menace,” said Olivier, after getting the boy off the steed and refocusing him on the broken glass.

“We thought he was fun at first too. A real little character, until he came running in here telling us his house was burning down,” said Gabri.

“It wasn’t?” asked Annie.

“What do you think?” said Olivier. “We got the whole volunteer fire department rushing over there, only to find Al and Evie working in their garden.”

“We’ve tried talking to them about him,” said Gabri. “But Al just laughed and said he couldn’t get Laurent to stop, even if he wanted to. It’s in his nature.”

“Probably true,” said Myrna.

“Yeah, well, earthquakes and tornados are part of nature too,” said Gabri.

“So you really don’t think Clara can be convinced to help us with the sets,” said Brian. “We’re just a few weeks from opening night and we can use the help. It really is a great play, even if no one knows who wrote it.”

“What?” said Isabelle Lacoste, looking down at the cover sheet of the script and noticing for the first time that there was no name below the title.

“No one knows?” she asked. “Not even you?”

“Well, we know,” said Antoinette. “We’re just not saying.”

“Believe me,” said Gabri. “We’ve asked. I think it was David Beckham.”

“But he’s—” Jean-Guy started to say before Myrna cut him off.

“Don’t bother. Last week he decided Mark Wahlberg wrote it. Leave him his fantasies. And mine. David Beckham.” Her voice became dreamy. “He’d have to come to opening night. Alone. He and Victoria would’ve had a fight.”

“He’d stay in our B and B,” said Gabri. “He’d smell like leather and Old Spice.”

“He’d need a book to read, at bedtime,” said Myrna. “I’d bring some over—”

“Okay, enough,” said Jean-Guy.

“I want to hear more,” said Reine-Marie, and Armand looked at her with amusement.

“You’ll never guess who wrote the play,” said Brian, laughing and tapping the place where the name had been whited out. “You wouldn’t know him. A fellow named John Fleming.”

“Brian,” snapped Antoinette.

“What?”

“We agreed not to tell anyone.”

“No one’s ever heard of him,” said Brian.

“But that’s the point,” Antoinette huffed. “Acht.” She waved in his direction. “You’re a surveyor, what would you know about marketing. I wanted to build up mystery, suspense. Get people wondering. Maybe it was written by Michel Tremblay, or a lost classic by Tennessee Williams.”

“Or George Clooney,” said Gabri.

“Oooh, George Clooney,” said Myrna, and her eyes again became unfocused.

“John Fleming?” said Gamache. “Do you mind?” He reached out and picked the play up from the table and stared at the title. She Sat Down and Wept.

“We got in touch with the copyright people to see who we had to pay for permission, but they had no record of it or of any playwright by that name,” said Brian, as though he had to explain to the cops.

The script in Armand’s hand was dog-eared, stained with coffee, and covered in notes.

“It’s old,” said Reine-Marie.

The typeface was ragged, not the clean look of a computer, but rather the chunky print of a typewriter.

Armand nodded.

“What is it?” she asked quietly.

“Nothing.” He smiled but no laugh lines radiated from the corners of his eyes.

“I’m in the play too,” said Brian, holding up his copy of the script.

“My gay roommate,” Gabri explained to them.

“He’s not gay, and neither are you,” snapped Antoinette in exasperation.

“Don’t tell Olivier,” said Myrna. “He’ll be a little disappointed.”

“And very surprised,” said Gabri.

Decaying leaves still sticking to his torn jacket and jeans, the boy swept up the last of the broken glass and trudged back to the table.

“Just so you know,” he said, handing the broom and pan to Olivier. “I’m pretty sure there’re some diamonds in there.”

“Merci,” said Olivier.

“Come on,” said Armand, getting up and giving the stick back to the boy. “It’s getting late. Grab your bike. I’ll put it in my car and give you a lift home.”

“The gun was really, really big, patron,” said the boy, following Monsieur Gamache out of the bistro. “As big as this building. And there was a monster on it. With wings.”

“Of course there was,” they heard Armand say. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t hurt you.”

“And I’ll protect you,” said the boy, swishing the stick so violently it struck Armand in the knee.

“I hope you have another husband waiting in the wings,” said Antoinette. “I’m not sure this one will survive the walk to the car.”

They watched Armand put the bicycle in the back of the Volvo, then he put the stick in the backseat, but the boy took it out and stood firm. He was going nowhere without it in his hands. It was, after all, a dangerous world.

Armand admitted defeat and relented, though they could see him giving the boy ground rules.

“I’d go on match.com right now, if I were you,” said Myrna to Reine-Marie.

After a few kilometers the boy turned to Gamache.

“What’re you humming?”

“Was I humming?” said Armand, surprised.

“Oui.” And the boy perfectly reproduced the tune.

“It’s called ‘By the Waters of Babylon,’” said Armand. “A hymn.”

John Fleming. John Fleming. He associated the hymn with him, though Gamache could never figure out why.

It couldn’t be the same man, he thought. It’s a common name. He was seeing ghosts where none existed.

“We don’t go to church,” said the boy.

“Neither do we,” said Armand. “Not often anyway. Though sometimes I sit in the little one in Three Pines, when no one else’s there.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s peaceful.”

The boy nodded. “Sometimes I sit in the woods because it’s peaceful. But then the aliens arrive.”

The boy began humming again, in a high, thin voice, a tune Gamache recognized from long, long ago.

“How do you know that song?” Gamache asked. “It’s way before your time.”

“My dad sings it to me every night at bedtime. It’s by Neil Young. Dad says he’s a genius.”

Gamache nodded. “I agree with your father.”

The boy clutched the stick.

“I hope the safety’s on,” said Gamache.

“It is.” He turned to Armand. “The gun’s real, patron.”

“Oui,” said Gamache.

But he wasn’t listening. He was watching the road, and thinking of the tune stuck in his head.

By the waters, the waters of Babylon,

We sat down and wept.

But the play wasn’t called that. It was called She Sat Down and Wept.

The play could not possibly be by that John Fleming. He didn’t write plays. And even if he did, no director in his right mind would produce it. It must be another man with the same name.

Beside him, the boy looked out the window at the early fall landscape and clutched the stick just below where his father had etched his name into the hilt.

Laurent. Laurent Lepage.