The Nature of the Beast

CHAPTER 5

“What do you want?” Antoinette called into the darkness.

She stood on the brightly lit stage, her hand to her forehead, peering like a mariner looking for land.

“To talk to you,” came Armand’s voice from the theater.

“I think you’ve done enough, don’t you?”

Brian came out of the wings carrying a prop lamp. “Who’re you talking to?”

Armand climbed the steps onto the stage. “Me. Salut, Brian.”

“Are you happy?” Antoinette demanded, walking over to him. “Myrna and Gabri have quit. Brian here has to take over Gabri’s lead role—”

“I do?”

“A play’s hard enough to put on without actors dropping out,” she said.

“You’re going on with the production then?” Gamache asked.

“Of course,” she said. “Despite all your efforts. The other actors are going to be here in a few minutes. I’d like you to leave before you do more damage.”

“Are you going to tell them who wrote the play?”

“Because if I don’t you will? Is that why you’re here? To make sure you well and truly destroy the production? Christ, you’re a fascist after all.”

“I don’t want to debate with you,” said Gamache.

“Of course not, because that would be more free speech,” said Antoinette. For his part, Brian stood by the sofa, still holding the lamp. Like a failed Diogenes.

“Gabri and Myrna made up their own minds,” said Gamache. “But I didn’t try to dissuade them. I think doing the play is wrong.”

“Yes, I got that. But we’re doing it anyway. And you know why? Because while the man might be horrible, his play is extraordinary. If you have your way, no one will ever read it or see it performed. What a champion of the free society.”

“A free society comes at a cost,” he snapped, then reined himself in.

Antoinette smiled. “Hit a nerve, did I? What’re you so afraid of, Armand? The man’s in prison, has been for years. He’ll never get out.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“You’re terrified,” said Antoinette. “If I was casting a man driven by fear, I’d beg you to do the role.”

“I’d like to talk,” said Gamache, ignoring what she just said. “Can we sit down?”

“Fine, but make it quick before the others arrive.”

“Can I join you?” Brian asked, putting the lamp down. “Or is this private?”

“Yes,” said Armand. “This involves you too.”

He sat on a threadbare armchair, part of the stage set. The few times he’d actually been on a stage, it had surprised him how very shabby everything was. From a distance, from the audience, the actors could look like kings and queens, titans of business. But close up? The costumes were cheap, worn, often smelly. Their castles were falling apart.

The illusion shattered. That was the price of looking at things too closely.

As an investigator he’d spent his career examining things, examining people. Looking behind the façade, at what was really there. The worn and shabby and threadbare interiors.

But sometimes, sometimes, when he pulled back the illusion, what he found was something shiny, bright, far better than the stage set.

He looked at Antoinette. Middle-aged, clinging on perhaps a little too tightly to the illusion of youth. Her hair was dyed purple, her clothes could have been considered bohemian, had they not been so studied.

He genuinely liked Antoinette and admired her. Admired her even now, for standing up for what she believed in. And, after all, she didn’t know the full truth about Fleming.

“I’m here because we’re friends,” he said. “I don’t want this disagreement to come between us.”

“You didn’t even read the play, Armand,” Antoinette said, the anger draining from her voice. “How can you condemn it?”

“Perhaps the life of the writer shouldn’t matter,” he said, his own voice soft now. “But it does to me. In this case.”

“I’m not going to pull the play,” she said. “It might be crap now, with Brian in the lead—”

“Hey,” said Brian.

“I’m sorry, you’ll be fine, but you don’t have much time to rehearse, and when you came in late for rehearsal today I thought you’d also—”

“I’d never quit,” said Brian, looking shocked and upset. “How could you even think such a thing?”

Gamache wondered if Antoinette knew how lucky she was to have such a loyal partner. He also wondered about Brian, who could be so morally blinded by love.

“Honestly, Armand,” she said. “You’re behaving as though our very survival is at stake. It’s just a play.”

“If it’s just a play, then cancel it,” he said, and they were back where they’d started.

She stared at him. He stared at her. And Brian just looked unhappy.

“How did you come to have the Fleming play?” Gamache asked.

“I told you, Brian found it among my uncle’s papers,” she said.

“What was your uncle’s name?”

“Guillaume Couture.”

“Was he a theater director? An actor?” Armand asked.

“Not at all. As far as I know he never went to the theater. He built bridges. Little ones. Overpasses really. He was a quiet, gentle man.”

“Then why did he have the play? Did he know Fleming?”

“Of course not,” she said. “He barely left Three Pines his whole life. He probably picked it up at a yard sale. We don’t owe you an explanation. We’ve committed no crime, and you’re no cop.” She got up. “Now please leave. We have work to do.”

She turned her back on him and so did Brian, but not before giving Armand a slightly apologetic grimace.

As he drove down the dirt road toward Three Pines, feeling the familiar and almost comforting washboard bumps, Armand Gamache came to a realization. One he’d probably known since he’d discovered who’d written She Sat Down and Wept.

He would have to read the play.

Armand walked up the path and onto the rickety front stoop. And then he knocked.

“What do you want?” Ruth demanded through the closed door.

“To read the play.”

“What play?”

“For God’s sake, Ruth, just open the door.”

Something in his tone, perhaps the weariness, must have gotten through to her. A bolt slid back and the door opened a crack.

“Since when have you locked your door?” he asked, squeezing in.

She shut it so quickly behind him the corner of his jacket caught in the doorjamb and he had to yank it free.

“Since when have you cared?” she asked. “What makes you think I have the play?”

“I saw you take it when you left last night.”

“Why do you want to read it?”

“I might ask you the same thing.”

“It’s none of your business,” she snapped.

“And I might say the same thing.”

He saw the briefest flicker of a smile. “All right, Clouseau. If you can find it, you can have the goddamned play.”

He shook his head and sighed. “Just give it to me.”

“It’s not here.”

“Then where is it?”

Ruth and Rosa limped to the kitchen door and pointed to her back garden. The flower beds held late-blooming roses and creamy, pink-tinged hydrangeas, and trellises on which grew bindweed.

“Blows over from your garden,” she complained. “It’s a weed, you know.”

“Invasive, rude, demanding. Soaks up all the nutrients.” He looked down at the old poet. “Yes, we know. But we like it anyway.”

And again the smile flickered, but didn’t catch. Her eyes had dropped to a large planter in the middle of the lawn.

Gamache followed her gaze, then he stepped off the porch and walked over to the planter. It was empty. Without a word, he dragged it a few paces away, then looked down at the square of fresh-turned earth. Rich and dark.

“Here.” Ruth handed him the spade.

Sinking to his knees, he dug.

Ruth and Rosa watched from their back porch.

It was a deeper hole than Gamache had expected. He turned to look at Ruth, thin and frail. And yet, she’d dug, and dug. Deep. As deep as she could. He put the shovelful of dirt on the pile behind him, and jabbed it back in.

Eventually it hit something. Brushing away the dirt, he leaned in and saw the dark printing on the bone-white page.

She Sat Down and Wept.

He stared and from the ground came the audio recording played at the trial. Screams for help. Begging. Pleading with him to stop.

“Armand?”

Reine-Marie’s voice cut through the sounds, but even before he turned he knew something had happened. Something was wrong.

Holding the filthy script in one hand and the spade in the other, he stood up and saw Reine-Marie outlined in the light of Ruth’s back door.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s Laurent. He didn’t come home for dinner tonight. Evie just called to ask if he was with us.”

Gamache felt the weight of the play in his hand, drawn back to the ground. Dirt to dirt.

Laurent didn’t come home.

He dropped the play.