The Nature of the Beast

by Louise Penny

  “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.

  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?”

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