The Nature of the Beast

CHAPTER 45

Isabelle Lacoste and Adam Cohen walked up the steps to the B and B. The porch light had been left on by Gabri and the door was, of course, unlocked.

“You said you made a mistake with Fleming,” Isabelle asked. “What was it?”

Adam Cohen gnawed his lip and watched Gamache and Inspector Beauvoir walking, heads down and together, toward the light at the Gamache home. But then the two men paused, veered, and took a turn around the village green.

“I said his name,” said Cohen.

It took Isabelle Lacoste a moment to realize what Cohen meant, and then she too looked at the two men, strolling around the edges of the village green.

Adam Cohen, in his excitement, had called out over the phone. He’d said his name. Monsieur Gamache. And John Fleming, in the backseat, would have heard.

“I wanted to ask you about Professor Rosenblatt,” said Jean-Guy. “What did you say to him tonight, out on the terrasse? Did you thank him?”

“Non. I warned him.”

“About what? He stepped in front of the gun. He saved your life and probably mine, and allowed the plans to burn. Kept them out of the hands of those CSIS agents or whatever they are.”

“I wonder if that’s true.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I don’t think Professor Rosenblatt does much that is unconsidered. I think he knew the moment to get those plans had passed. And when he stepped in front of the gun, he knew that while Delorme might shoot us, he wouldn’t shoot him.”

Gamache remembered that moment with complete clarity.

When Michael Rosenblatt had stepped in front of him, with the gun pointed at his chest, Gamache had had the overwhelming impression that Rosenblatt was in no danger.

In that split second, as the plans burned, Delorme should have shot. But didn’t. To kill Gamache and Beauvoir, for plans that were almost certainly gone, would trigger an international manhunt. And so Professor Rosenblatt had done the only thing possible. He’d stepped in front of the gun, not to save Gamache or Beauvoir, but to salvage whatever he could of the situation.

“You think Rosenblatt’s one of them? A CSIS agent, or something?”

“Or something,” said Gamache.

He did not believe Michael Rosenblatt was himself a killer, though he thought the man might be capable of it. But he did think Rosenblatt knew Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme much better than he pretended.

After all, who called them to Three Pines? Who told them about finding Project Babylon?

Gamache had suggested as much to the retired scientist when they’d parted on the terrasse. And warned him he’d be watching.

“You still think I’m mixed up in this?” Rosenblatt had asked.

“I think you know far more than you’re telling.”

Rosenblatt had studied him closely. “We’re on the same side, Armand. You must believe me.”

“Do you swear it?” Gamache had asked. “On your grandson’s life?”

Professor Rosenblatt had smiled and Gamache heard a small grunt of acknowledgment. “I do.”

But then all amusement disappeared. “You need to know,” said Rosenblatt, “the clock hasn’t stopped. It has simply been reset.”

Armand Gamache had watched him walk away, believing he was looking at the taproot. From which Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme and John Fleming had sprung.

Jean-Guy and Armand strolled in silence around the village green, through the cold, crisp fresh autumn evening.

“Professor Rosenblatt might not have been in any danger when he stepped in front of the gun, but you were, patron.” Beauvoir stopped and turned to face his father-in-law. “Thank you.”

“Not everyone would have burned those plans, mon vieux. It was one of the most magnificent things I’ve ever seen. And I’m a man who’s seen the Manneken Pis.”

A laugh escaped Beauvoir, and then a smaller, deeper sound before he muffled it.

“You’re a brave man in a brave country, Jean-Guy. A man so remarkable needs to pass that courage on to his children.”

They walked in silence, by choice for Gamache, by necessity for Jean-Guy, who couldn’t yet speak.

“Merci,” he finally said. Then fell silent again.

As they passed the B and B, Armand saw a shadow in a window. An elderly man, preparing for bed. Where he would dream, perhaps, of children and grandchildren and friends. A warm hearth, a good book, quiet conversation. A life that might have been.

The next morning a dark police van drove up to the Canadian side of the U.S. border crossing at Richford.

A man and a woman in the uniform of the Judge Advocate General’s office in the States stood just on the other side of the barrier, military police at their side.

Waiting.

The van stopped twenty meters short, its engine running. The army officers looked at each other and shifted from foot to foot. Antsy.

The van door slid open and a large, burly man with wild gray hair stepped out. Then he turned and reached out his hand to help an elderly woman from the vehicle. And, after her, a tall elderly man.

They walked on either side of Al Lepage. Their pace measured, their faces solemn. Returning the man. Finishing the deed.

The bar lifted, but just before he crossed, Ruth stopped him.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I sent John Fleming to you.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t know. He terrified me and I wanted to get rid of him. I gave him you to save myself.”

Al Lepage considered Ruth Zardo.

“I could have sent him away too. That’s the difference between us. You saw evil and wanted nothing to do with it. But I invited him in.”

Al looked at the officers waiting for him. Then turned to the man and woman who had saved him once. He shook Monsieur Béliveau’s hand, then looked at Ruth.

“May I?” he asked, and when she nodded, he kissed her on one cheek. “I have no right to ask this, but please look after Evelyn. She knew none of this.”

Then he stepped across the border and became Frederick Lawson once again.

Before taking Al Lepage across the border that morning, Ruth had something she needed to do.

She picked up Rosa and walked over to Clara’s cottage. Letting herself in, she found Clara where she knew she’d be. Ruth sat on the sprung and lumpy sofa that smelled of banana peels and apple cores and watched Clara at the easel, staring at Peter’s portrait.

“Who hurt you once, so far beyond repair?” said Ruth.

“The line from your poem,” said Clara, turning on the stool to look at Ruth.

“I was asking you, Clara. Who hurt you once?” Ruth gestured to the easel. “What’re you waiting for?”

“Waiting?” asked Clara. “Nothing.”

“Then why’re you stuck? Like the characters in that goddamned play. Are you waiting for someone, something to save you? Waiting for Peter to tell you it’s okay to get on without him? You’re looking for milk in the wrong place.”

“I just want to paint,” said Clara. “I don’t want to be saved, I don’t want to be forgiven. I don’t even want milk. I just want to paint.”

Ruth struggled out of the sofa. “I did.”

“You did what?” asked Clara.

“The answer to that question. All those years when I couldn’t write, I blamed John Fleming. But I was wrong.”

Clara watched Ruth and Rosa waddle away. She had no idea what the crazy old woman was talking about. But sitting in front of the canvas, it slowly sank in.

Who could do such damage? Who knew where the weaknesses, the fault lines lay? Who could cause all that internal bleeding?

Clara turned back to the portrait of Peter.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking into his faded face. “Forgive me.”

She placed it carefully against a wall, and put up a fresh canvas.

She knew now why she was blocked. She was trying to do the wrong painting. Trying to make amends by turning painting into penance.

Clara picked up her brush and contemplated the empty canvas. She would do a portrait of the person who had hurt her once, beyond repair.

With one bold stroke after another she painted. Capturing the rage, the sorrow, the doubt, the fear, the guilt, the joy, the love, and finally, the forgiveness.

It would be her most intimate, most difficult painting yet.

It would be a self-portrait.

Evelyn Lepage sat in her kitchen contemplating the gas oven. Trying to get up the strength to turn it on. But all the bones of her body had finally dissolved. And she couldn’t move. Not to save her life, and not to take it.

Out the window she saw a car pull up. Two elderly people got out.

“We’ve come to take you home, Evie,” came the elderly woman’s thin voice from the other side of the door. It was almost unrecognizable for its gentleness. “If you don’t mind living with a broken-down old poet and her duck.”

Jean-Guy held the phone to his ear and looked out the window of the Gamaches’ study, to the quiet village. Then he turned from the window to the papers, neatly stacked, on his father-in-law’s desk.

All the offers. The answer to “What next?” was in there.

And then the phone was answered.

“Oui, allô?” came Annie’s cheerful voice.

“Armand,” said Reine-Marie, as they finished the breakfast dishes. “Are you ever going to tell me what John Fleming did?”

Armand put the dish down and dried his hands on the towel.

“What John Fleming did is in the past. It’s over, gone.”

She studied him closely. “Is it?”

“Oui. But if, after this phone call, you still want to know about Fleming, I’ll tell you.”

Reine-Marie turned around and saw Jean-Guy in the doorway holding out the phone. She took it, perplexed. And listened.

As the two men watched, the lines of her face re-formed, and her eyes filled with wonder. And all thought of John Fleming, of the Supergun, of the Whore of Babylon vanished, overwhelmed by a far greater force.

Reine-Marie looked at Jean-Guy, who was overcome with emotion. Then she turned to Armand, who was smiling, his eyes glistening. Then Reine-Marie sat down at the old pine table, and wept.