The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel

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 bo?tes 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.