The Nature of the Beast

by Louise Penny

  “I knew,” Ruth admitted.

  “And Monsieur Béliveau knew,” said Gamache. “That’s why he’s been visiting you so early in the morning when he thought no one would see.”

  “He’s a good man, Armand,” said Ruth, warning in her voice. “Too good perhaps.”

  “He’s certainly good at keeping secrets.”

  “Look, none of us knew what they were actually doing in the woods.”

  “You must have suspected.”

  “That they were building the biggest goddamned missile launcher this side of the River Jordan? Even I’m not that nuts. Who thinks that?”

  “What did you think?” he asked.

  She exhaled heavily, but didn’t speak.

  Gamache got up, and walked away.

  “Where’re you going, shithead?”

  He kept walking.

  “Asshat,” she called.

  He didn’t turn around.

  “Armand?”

  But by then it was too late. She saw the screen door of the general store swinging and heard the thwack, as it passed the threshold. Thwack as it came back.

  And she heard the familiar squeak of the hinges.

  Squeak. Thwack.

  She picked up Rosa, holding the duck to her chest. Standing up, she turned to face the door.

  The door opened again, squeak, thwack, and the two men walked toward her.

  “I’m sorry, Clément, I didn’t mean—”

  The grocer held up his hand and smiled. “It’s all right, Ruth. We should’ve said something sooner. It’s time.”

  They took their seats, Monsieur Béliveau on one side of her and Armand on the other. The three of them stared ahead, as though waiting for a bus.

  “I can’t remember the exact date,” Monsieur Béliveau began without Armand prompting. “Or even the year. Can you, Ruth?”

  “All I remember is that it was spring. It must’ve been in the early eighties. I was working on my first collection of poetry.”

  “Early eighties?” asked Gamache. “As long ago as that?”

  The grocer nodded. “I think so. During a bridge game at Ruth’s home, Guillaume Couture said he’d heard that some rich Anglo was going to build a home in the woods behind Three Pines.”

  “And what did you think?”

  “We thought nothing,” said Ruth. “Why would we? If someone mentioned to you that they were building a home in the forest, what would you think?”

  “I guess I’d just hope it wouldn’t be too disruptive,” said Armand. “That was why Dr. Couture mentioned it to you, of course. To explain any noise and strangers. And no one noticed it wasn’t a woodstove and a kitchen sink being taken into the woods?”

  “We weren’t paying attention,” said Ruth. “It was off over there.” She waved behind her, toward the forest. “At most we might’ve heard machinery, but if someone was building a home, you would.”

  It would have seemed implausible, incredible. Impossible. How could they have missed a massive missile launcher being hauled into the forest right behind the village? But Gamache remembered what Professor Rosenblatt had said. Gerald Bull had the gun made in pieces, by different factories around the world. The final result was massive, but each piece might not be. It would be taken in a bit at a time and assembled there.

  “Did you ever meet this rich Anglo?” asked Armand.

  “Once,” said Monsieur Béliveau. “In the hardware store.”

  “Where the bistro is now,” said Ruth. “Used to be a hardware store.”

  “The fellow introduced himself,” said Monsieur Béliveau. “He wasn’t alone. There was a man with him. His project manager. Seemed a little odd that a log cabin, even a big one, would need a project manager. But we figured it was the sort of thing a rich Anglo would do. They wanted to know if there were any artists around.” The grocer looked uncomfortable. “I sent them to Ruth.”

  “To Ruth? Why?”

  “I panicked.”

  “Panicked?” asked Gamache. “Why would you panic?”

  Clément Béliveau looked down at his large hands, and rubbed an imagined stain.

  “There was something about them,” he said into his hands. “Something off. They looked okay, if you didn’t look too close or too long.”

  He picked up an apple from the grass. With an expert twist of his hands, the apple split in two. He offered one half to Armand.

  The outer flesh was white and moist. Perfect. But the core was dark, decayed.

  “After a while, in my profession, you can tell when something’s gone rotten,” said the elderly grocer. “Even if it’s not obvious from the outside.”

  Armand looked at the apple in his hand, then cocked his arm, tossing it as far as he could.

  “I just wanted to be rid of them,” said Monsieur Béliveau, throwing his own piece, and watching it bounce into the tall grass by the pond. Then he looked at Ruth. “I’ve regretted sending them to you ever since.”

  Ruth patted his hand. “You’re one of the good ones, Clément. Always will be.”

  “What did they want?” asked Armand.

  “They wanted to commission a work of art,” said Ruth. “I explained I was a poet and told them to go away. But they wouldn’t leave until I gave them the name of an artist.”

  “Evelyn Lepage,” said Gamache.

  “Evie?” said Ruth. “No. She was a child at the time. It was Al Lepage.”

  Gamache closed his eyes for a moment. Of course, he thought. It couldn’t have been Evie.

  “How did you know he was an artist?” Gamache asked. “Isn’t he a musician?”

  “If you can call it that. He drew a bit too,” said Ruth. “If you look at the sleeve of his album, you’ll see some of his drawings.”

  “Did Lepage know what was being built?” Armand asked.

  “How could he not?” demanded Ruth. “Do you think he did it blindfolded? Maybe he thought he was drawing a horsie but ended up with a sign of the apocalypse.”

  “You quoted Yeats’s ‘The Second Coming.’” Gamache pretended she hadn’t just spoken. “How did you know that the image Gerald Bull wanted was the Whore of Babylon. Did he tell you?”

  Ruth shook her head. “The other man did.”

  Gamache drew his brows together, trying to remember. Then he had it.

  “The project manager.”

  “Oui,” said Monsieur Béliveau.

  “After our first conversation, the project manager returned,” said Ruth. “He wanted me to write a few lines of poetry inspired by the Book of Revelation. He was the one who quoted Yeats.”

  “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,” said Gamache.

  “Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born,” Monsieur Béliveau finished the line.

  “I told him to just put the Yeats poem on Lepage’s drawing,” said Ruth. “I couldn’t do better. But he said they wanted something unique. Something inspired specifically by the Whore of Babylon.”

  “Were you tempted?” asked Gamache. He hadn’t meant to ask, it wasn’t at all relevant, but he was curious. “It’s a powerful image.”

  “It’s a vile image,” she said. “It’s hounded women for centuries and been an excuse for witch trials and torture and burnings. So, no. I wasn’t tempted. I was revolted.”

  “Did you still think it was for someone’s private home?” he asked.

  “People have different tastes. Some like pastel flowers, some prefer demonic images. I’m not one to judge.”

  Even Monsieur Béliveau raised his brows at that statement.

  “Clara and Peter weren’t in Three Pines then, but when Gerald Bull asked about an artist, why didn’t you recommend your friend Jane Neal? She lived in the village.” He gestured to the small stone cottage next to Clara’s. “She was an artist. Surely she would’ve appreciated the work.”

  “Jane was very private about her art,” said Ruth, turning to face him. Challenging him to challenge her.

  But Armand didn’t. He sat waiting

. For more.

  “Ruth,” Monsieur Béliveau said quietly. “We have to tell him everything.”

  “I didn’t want to bring Jane into it,” she said at last.

  “Why not?” Armand asked. “Why suggest Al Lepage, someone you didn’t like? Why give him the job and not your closest friend?”

  Ruth looked cornered, desperate, and Armand wished he could help her but he didn’t know how, except to say, “The truth, Ruth. Tell me.”

  “He looked perfectly normal, of course,” she said. “They do, don’t they? But he wasn’t. He was like Clément’s apple.”

  “Gerald Bull?”

  Ruth shook her head.

  “Al Lepage?”

  “No.”

  Gamache thought. Who else?

  And then he looked from Ruth to Monsieur Béliveau.

  “The project manager,” said Armand.

  “Oui,” said Clément Béliveau. “He was small, slight. Easy to overlook in the company of Gerald Bull. But if you looked at him, really looked at him, you could see it. Or feel it. There was something wrong with him. Inside.”

  Monsieur Béliveau sighed. Heavily. The very thought of the man a weight on the grocer’s chest.

  “I sent them over to Ruth.” He placed his large hand on her tiny one. “I was afraid, and I just wanted to get rid of them. Of him.” He squeezed Ruth’s hand. “I’ve never forgiven myself that cowardice.”

  “But who was he?” asked Gamache.

  “You know him,” said Ruth.

  Gamache thought, his lips moving slightly as he murmured to himself, going through the possibilities. Then he finally shook his head.

  “I don’t know who you mean.”

  “The third man in that picture,” said Ruth.

  “What picture?”

  “The one you showed me. With Gerald Bull and Guillaume.”

  “This one?” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the old black-and-white photo taken at the Atomium in Brussels.

  There was the grinning, almost buffoonish Guillaume Couture. The taciturn Gerald Bull.

  And one other. His head down and away from the camera.

  “Would I meet your eyes, and stand,/rooted and speechless,” said Ruth. “While the pavement cracked to pieces/and the sky fell down.”

  Gamache looked at her.

  “I wrote it after he left.” She gestured to the photograph. “After I sent him on. I did the same thing, Clément. I threw them Al Lepage, in the hopes they’d take him and leave me. I’d have done anything to get rid of him. After Gerald Bull left, the project manager returned. Alone. He knocked on the door and that’s when he asked if I could write a few lines to accompany the drawing of the Whore of Babylon. I told him I couldn’t. I told him I wasn’t really a poet. That it was just a lie I told myself.”

  Her hands were trembling now, and while Monsieur Béliveau held one, Armand took the other.

  “When he left I went up to St. Thomas’s,” she said, looking at the small clapboard chapel. “I prayed he’d never come calling again. I sat there and cried for shame. For what I’d done. Then I wrote those words, sitting in the pew, and didn’t write again for a decade.”

  Gamache looked down at the black-and-white photograph. It seemed, in just that instant, that the third man tilted his face up. And looked straight at him.

  Would I meet your eyes, and stand,/rooted and speechless.

  The blood ran from his face and his hands grew cold and Armand Gamache knew who it was.

  While the pavement cracked to pieces/and the sky fell down.

  “It’s John Fleming,” he said beneath his breath.

  “Yes,” said Ruth, her cold hand squeezing his. “The rough beast.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Ten lambs were lined up down the center of the conference table in the Incident Room, facing Al and Evie Lepage.

  “You drew the etching,” said Isabelle Lacoste. “You knew the gun was there. What did you do, Monsieur Lepage, when your son came home and told you what he’d found in the forest? A giant gun with a monster on it. We’ve been looking for someone, just one person, who’d believe such a far-fetched story. And we’ve found him. You. Did you take him back there? Did you kill your son to keep your secret?”

  Al gaped at them, his blue eyes wide with terror.

  “You knew if the gun was found, the etching would eventually be traced back to you,” Lacoste pressed on. “And we’d start asking questions. We’d find out who you really are. And what you did.”

  Evelyn turned to her husband. “Al?”

  Gamache sat across from the couple and waited for the answer.

  He’d been on the bench with Ruth and Monsieur Béliveau when the vehicles drew up to the old railway station.

  He’d been trying to absorb the news that John Fleming was once in Three Pines. Was in fact Gerald Bull’s project manager. In a slight daze he watched Beauvoir and Lacoste get out of the car with Al Lepage, while Clara and Evie climbed out of the pickup truck. Evie ran to her husband’s side while Clara hesitated, then walked back to her home.

  Gamache turned back to Ruth and Monsieur Béliveau.

  “When you sent John Fleming his way, did you know who Al Lepage really was?”

  He hadn’t directed the question specifically to either one, but both nodded.

  “You helped him across the border.” It was a statement, not a question, and once again, they nodded.

  “It was 1970,” said Monsieur Béliveau. “We were involved in the peace movement, working to get draft dodgers across. We were approached about a special case.”

  Ruth was silent, her thin lips all but disappearing.

  “You didn’t approve?” asked Gamache.

  “I was conflicted,” she said. “I couldn’t decide if I thought Frederick Lawson was also a victim of the war or a psychopath.”

  “A conflict,” said Monsieur Béliveau with a small smile. “Your own civil war.”

  Armand knew if he’d said such a thing Ruth would have lashed out at him, but with Monsieur Béliveau, Clément, she accepted what he said.

  “Because I wasn’t sure, and he hadn’t been convicted, I didn’t feel I could refuse,” said Ruth. “But it didn’t mean I had to like it. Or him.”

  “It helped that we didn’t have television at the time. The signal didn’t make it into the valley,” said Monsieur Béliveau. “We’d read the reports of the atrocity in the newspapers and seen the photographs, but it wasn’t until years later that we saw the newsreels.”

  “If you’d seen film of the Son My Massacre,” Armand asked, “would you have helped Frederick Lawson find sanctuary here?”

  “We’ll never know, will we?” Monsieur Béliveau looked at the tree-covered mountains. “We set him up in the boardinghouse. It’s now the B and B.” He gestured toward Olivier and Gabri’s place. “And helped him get work singing at local boîtes à chansons.”

  “He changed his name,” said Ruth. “No one else knew who he really was and what he’d done. But we did.”

  “So when it came time to throw someone to the wolf you chose him?” asked Armand.

  “Is that really necessary, monsieur?” asked Monsieur Béliveau.

  “It’s all right, Clément. He’s just speaking the truth.” She turned back to Armand. “Al Lepage or Frederick Lawson or whatever he chose to call himself was already damned. What I hadn’t counted on was that in doing it, I was too.”

  “That’s not true, Ruth,” said Monsieur Béliveau.

  “But it is. We both know it. I sacrificed him to save myself.”

  “Who hurt you once so far beyond repair,” said Gamache, quoting her most famous poem.

  “So far beyond repair,” Ruth repeated. She looked at Gamache and almost smiled. “I was nice once, you know. And kind. Perhaps not the most kind, or the nicest, but it was there.”

  “And still is, madame,” said Armand, stroking Rosa. “At your core.”

  He got up and excused himself. Lacoste and Beauvoir needed to hear about this. He arrived at the Incident Room just as Lacoste was placing the ten lamb drawings down the center of the conference table, facing Laurent’s parents.

  Armand caught her eye and she came over, followed by Beauvoir.

  “I was just speaking with Ruth.”

  “Yes, we saw,” said Beauvoir. “And Monsieur Béliveau.”

  “She knew about the drawing of the Whore of Babylon. She’s the one who recommended Al Lepage for the job.”

  He told them what he’d discovered and then, from his breast pocket, he brought out the black-and-white photograph of the three men.

  Isabelle and Jean-Guy looked at the familiar picture, then at him. Waiting.

  “Gerald Bull had a man with him when he was here working on Project Babylon. A man he introduced as his project manager.”

  Gamache tapped the photograph. “This man. Ruth recognized him.”

  His finger landed on the third man, whose face was turned away from the camera, and down.

  “Oui?” said Lacoste, leaning in for a better look.

  Beauvoir also studied it. He’d wondered about that third man and had harbored a suspicion that it was Professor Rosenblatt. But he couldn’t make the contours of the face, the forehead, the chin fit. Even allowing for thirty years of food, and drink, and worry, it was not Michael Rosenblatt.

  “Who is he, patron?” asked Beauvoir.

  Isabelle Lacoste looked up from the picture and met Gamache’s eyes.

  “My God, it’s John Fleming,” she said, barely above a whisper.

  “Please,” said Beauvoir, with a dismissive snort. But Gamache hadn’t laughed. Didn’t correct Lacoste.

  Jean-Guy looked more closely and remembered the coverage of the trial, years earlier. John Fleming had been both completely unremarkable and completely unforgettable.

  And there he was again. Now that he knew, it seemed so obvious. And yet—

  “How could that be?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Gamache, putting the photograph back in his breast pocket. “But I do know he’s the one who commissioned Al Lepage to create the Whore of Babylon.”

  They looked over at the couple waiting quietly at the table.

  “Why don’t you sit in, patron, while we interview him,” said Lacoste.

  Armand took a seat across from Al Lepage. He looked at the deep blue eyes, the powerful shoulders, the scored and weather-beaten face. Lepage’s bushy gray beard still had a hint of the bright orange it had once been. It was loose today, not bound by a hair band. It gave him an untamed, wild appearance. His long hair was also loose and tangled so that he appeared to be some sort of missing link. Close, but not quite human.

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