The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (3 page)

“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.

CHAPTER 3

Their dinner guests had already arrived and were sipping drinks and eating apple and avocado salsa with corn chips by the time Armand returned.

“Got Laurent home all right, I see,” said Reine-Marie, greeting him at the door. “No alien invasions?”

“We nipped it in the bud.”

“Not quite,” said Gabri, standing at the door to their study. “One got through Earth’s defenses.”

Armand and Reine-Marie looked into the small room off the living room where an elderly, angular woman with ladders up her stockings and patches on her sweater sat in an armchair reading.

“It’s the mother shit,” said Gabri.

A strong smell of gin met them. A duck sat on the old woman’s lap and Henri, the Gamaches’ German shepherd, was curled at her feet. Gazing up adoringly at the duck.

“Don’t worry about greeting me at the door,” Armand said to Henri. “It’s fine. Really.”

He looked at the dog and shook his head. Love took all forms. This was, though, a step up from Henri’s previous crush, which was the arm of the sofa.

“The first hint of infestation was the smell of gin,” said Gabri. “Her race seems to run on it.”

“What’s for dinner?” their neighbor Ruth Zardo demanded, struggling out of the armchair.

“How long have you been there?” Reine-Marie asked.

“What day is it?”

“I thought you were out clubbing baby seals,” said Gabri, taking Ruth’s arm.

“That’s next week. Don’t you read my Facebook updates?”

“Hag.”

“Fag.”

Ruth limped into the living room. Rosa the duck goose-stepped behind her, followed by Henri.

“I was once head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec,” said Gamache wistfully as they watched the parade.

“I don’t believe it,” said Reine-Marie.

“
Bonjour
, Ruth,” said Antoinette.

Ruth, who hadn’t noticed there was anyone else in the room, looked at Antoinette and Brian, then over to Myrna.

“What’re they doing here?”

“We were invited, unlike you, you demented old drunk,” said Myrna. “How can you be a poet and never notice anything and anyone around you?”

“Have we met?” Ruth asked, then turned to Reine-Marie.

“Where’s numbnuts?” she asked.

“He and Annie left for the city, along with Isabelle and the kids,” said Reine-Marie.

She knew she should have chastised Ruth for calling their son-in-law numbnuts, but the truth was, the old poet had called Jean-Guy that for so long the Gamaches barely noticed anymore. Even Jean-Guy answered to numbnuts. But only from Ruth.

“I saw the Lepage boy come flying out of the woods again,” said Ruth. “What was it this time? Zombies?”

“Actually, I believe he disturbed a nest of poets,” said Armand, taking the bottle of red wine around and refilling glasses, before helping himself to some of the salsa with honey-lime dressing. “Terrified him.”

“Poetry scares most people,” said Ruth. “I know mine does.”

“You scare them, Ruth, not your poems.”

“Oh, right. Even better. So what did the kid claim to see?”

“A giant gun with a monster on it.”

Ruth nodded, impressed.

“Imagination isn’t such a bad thing,” she said. “He reminds me of myself when I was that age and look how I turned out.”

“It’s not imagination,” said Gabri. “It’s outright lying. I’m not sure the kid knows the difference anymore himself.” He turned to Myrna. “What do you think? You’re the shrink.”

“I’m not a shrink,” said Myrna.

“You’re not kidding,” said Ruth with a snort.

“I’m a psychologist,” said Myrna.

“You’re a librarian,” said Ruth.

“For the last time, it’s not a library,” said Myrna. “It’s a bookstore. Stop just taking the books. Oh, never mind.” She waved at Ruth, who was smiling into her glass, and turned back to Gabri. “What were we talking about?”

“Laurent. Is he crazy? Though I realize the bar for sanity is pretty low here.” He watched as Ruth and Rosa muttered to each other.

“Hard to say, really. In my practice I saw a lot of people whose grip on reality had slipped. But they were adults. The line between real and imagined is blurred for kids, but it gets clearer as we grow up.”

“For better or worse,” said Reine-Marie.

“Well, I saw the worse,” said Myrna. “My clients’ delusions were often paranoid. They heard voices, they saw horrible things. Did horrible things. Laurent seems a happy kid. Well adjusted even.”

“You can’t be both happy and well adjusted,” said Ruth, laughing at the very thought.

“I don’t think he’s well adjusted,” said Antoinette. “Look, I’m all for imagination. The theater’s fueled by it. Depends on it. But I agree with Gabri. This is something else. Shouldn’t he be growing out of it by now? What’s the name for it when someone doesn’t understand, or care about, consequences?”

“Ruth Zardo?” said Brian.

There was surprised silence, followed by laughter. Including Ruth’s.

Brian Fitzpatrick didn’t say a great deal, but when he did it was often worth the wait.

“I don’t think Laurent’s psychotic, if that’s what you’re asking,” said Myrna. “No more than any kid. For some, their imagination’s so strong it overpowers reality. But, like I say, they grow out of it.” She looked at Ruth, stroking and singing to her duck. “Or at least, most do.”

“He once told us a classmate had been kidnapped,” said Brian. “Remember that?”

“He did?” Armand asked.

“Yes. Took about a minute to realize it wasn’t true, but what a long minute. The girl’s parents were in the bistro when he came running in with that news. I don’t think they’ll ever recover, or forgive him. He’s not the most popular kid in the area.”

“Why does he say things if they aren’t true?” asked Reine-Marie.

“Your children must’ve made things up,” said Myrna.

“Well, yes, but not anything so dramatic—”

“And so vivid,” said Antoinette. “He really sells it.”

“He probably just wants attention,” said Myrna.

“Oh God, don’t you hate people like that,” said Gabri.

He put a carrot on his nose and tried to balance it there.

“There’s a seal just asking to be clubbed,” said Myrna.

Ruth guffawed then looked at her. “Shouldn’t you be in the kitchen?”

“Shouldn’t you be cutting the eyes out of a sheet?” asked Myrna.

“Look, I like the kid,” said Ruth, “but let’s face it. He was doomed from the moment of conception.”

“What do you mean?” asked Reine-Marie.

“Well, look at his parents.”

“Al and Evelyn?” asked Armand. “I like them. That reminds me.” He walked to the door and picked up a canvas tote bag. “Al gave me this.”

“Oh, God,” said Antoinette. “Don’t tell me it’s—”

“Apples.” Armand held up the bag.

Gamache smiled. When he’d dropped off Laurent, his father Al had been on the porch, sorting beets for their organic produce baskets.

There was no mistaking Al Lepage. If a mountain came alive, it would look like Laurent’s father. Solid, craggy. He wore his long gray hair in a ponytail that might not have been undone since the seventies.

His beard was also gray and bushy and covered most of his chest, so that the plaid flannel shirt underneath was barely visible. Sometimes the beard was loose, sometimes it was braided and sometimes, like that afternoon, it was in its own ponytail so that Al’s head looked like something about to be tie-dyed.

Or, as Ruth once described him, a horse with two asses.

“Hi, cop,” Al had said when Armand parked and Laurent had jumped out of the car.

“Hello, hippie,” said Armand, going around to the back of the car.

“What’s he done now, Armand?” Al asked as they yanked the bike out of the station wagon.

“Nothing. He was just slightly disruptive in the bistro.”

“Zombies? Vampires? Monsters?” suggested Laurent’s father.

“Monster,” said Armand, closing the hatchback. “Only one.”

“You’re slipping,” Al said to his son.

“It was on a huge gun, Dad. Bigger than the house.”

“You need to clean up for dinner, you’re a mess. Quick now before your mother sees you.”

“Too late,” said a woman’s voice from the house.

Armand looked over and saw Evelyn standing on the porch, hands on her wide hips, shaking her head. She was much younger than Al. At least twenty years, which put her in her mid-forties. She too wore a plaid flannel shirt, and a full skirt that fell to her ankles. Her hair was also pulled back, though some wisps had broken free and were falling across her scrubbed face.

“What was it this time?” she asked Laurent with a mixture of amusement and weary tolerance.

“I found a gun in the woods.”

“You did?”

Evelyn looked alarmed and Gamache was once again amazed that this woman still believed her son. Was that love, he wondered, or the same form of delusion Laurent suffered from? A potent combination of wishful thinking and madness.

“It was just the other side of the bridge. In the woods.” Laurent pointed with his stick and almost hit Gamache in the face.

“Where is it now?” she asked. “Al, should we go and see?”