The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel

“You think I don’t know that?” shouted Gamache. “You think I don’t know he was probably lying, and even if he does know where the plans are, he almost certainly won’t tell us? I know that.”


“Then why do it? Why even consider it?”

“What happens if we leave Fleming where he is and those plans are found by another arms dealer?”

He stared at Beauvoir, challenging him. Daring him to go where Gamache himself stood. In the whirlwind.

The two men were ten feet apart, glaring at each other.

“You think,” growled Gamache, “I want to release Fleming? To bring him to Three Pines? It sickens me. But we might have no choice. Fleming might not tell us where the plans are. And yes, he might escape. But I don’t know where the plans are. You don’t know where they are. God knows I’ve been desperate to find them.”

“And Fleming probably doesn’t either. He’d say anything to get out of there.”

“But he might. He might know. He could be our only hope.”

Beauvoir stared at him, appalled. “You’re pinning hopes on that creature? What if the lives he takes next time belong to Madame Gamache, or Annie, or your granddaughters? Would you be so cavalier then?”

“Cavalier? You think that’s what I am? If those plans are found, how many more wives and husbands, children and grandchildren will be killed? Tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. No one would be safe.”

It was a grotesque equation, and Gamache looked like he was about to pass out. He was contemplating being an accessory to a slaughter, for the greater good.

Mary Fraser had been wrong about Gamache. He’d done it before, and he’d do it again. Send a few to possible death, to save the many. Those decisions had finally torn him to shreds, and he’d crawled to Three Pines to heal. But not, it would appear, to hide.

Beauvoir opened his mouth, his breathing heavy, his eyes wide.

“Annie’s pregnant, Armand.”

It took a moment for the words to penetrate Gamache’s defenses, to get through his turmoil. But then his shoulders dropped, his face softened.

And he understood.

“Oh my God,” he whispered.

In long, swift strides he covered the distance between them, and gathering Jean-Guy in his arms, he held the sobbing man.

“We’ll find the plans,” he repeated over and over, until Jean-Guy had calmed down. “We’ll find them.”

Though he didn’t know how.

*

Armand drove the rest of the way home, giving Jean-Guy a chance to recover and to talk about the new baby. And Annie.

“Please don’t tell Madame Gamache,” said Jean-Guy. “Annie would kill me. She wants to do it herself.”

“I won’t, but you have to tell her soon because she might pry it out of me. She’s very cunning.”

As they talked about this happy news, Gamache could almost forget where they’d been, and what lay ahead. After a few miles they once again lapsed into silence.

Gamache went back over his interview with Fleming, struggling to bring it into focus.

“Fleming admitted he knew Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme,” he said, and Beauvoir nodded. Jean-Guy had also been replaying the meeting with Fleming, with growing urgency, pursued by the ticking clock and the realization of just how monstrous Fleming really was.

“But he said something,” said Armand. “Something I thought at the time I needed to remember, but then it got lost.”

“Misdirection,” said Beauvoir. “Fleming probably knew he’d said too much and tried to hide it under a pile of crap.”

“But what was it?” asked Gamache.

They racked their brains. Al Lepage? Brussels. The agency. What was it Fleming had said?

Jean-Guy got there first. It wasn’t something Fleming had said. It was something Gamache said.

“The play,” he said. “You mentioned the play, and put it on the table, remember?”

“That’s it,” said Gamache. “He asked if I’d read it.”

“You said it was beautiful, and that surprised him, but it was something else.”

Beauvoir reached behind him to the backseat and, picking up the satchel, he took out the worn and dirty script.

“He touched it and said if you’d really understood it, you wouldn’t need to be speaking with him.”

“Yes, yes,” said Gamache. “We wouldn’t need to visit Fleming because we’d have the answer.”

“The hiding place of the plans is in the goddamned play,” said Beauvoir, looking down at She Sat Down and Wept. “You read it, I read it. I don’t remember anything about plans or papers or anything hidden, do you?”

Gamache thought, scouring his memory. The play was set in a boardinghouse. The main character was a sad-sack fellow who kept winning the lottery. He’d lose all the money and end up back there. Then win again. And lose again. It was excruciating but also sensitively observed, insightful and very funny.

“The winning ticket wasn’t hidden or lost, was it?” asked Beauvoir.

Gamache shook his head. “No, he kept it on the chain around his neck, remember? Where the crucifix once was.”

“Shit. What else, what else? Did anyone lose a key? A glove, anything?”