The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel

“Because it was too much. It wasn’t their failure, it was mine. They were too damaged. I couldn’t help them.”


“Maybe some can’t be repaired because they were never damaged,” he suggested.

Through the window he could see splashes of astonishing color in the forest that covered the mountains. The maple and oak and apple trees turning. Preparing. That was where the fall began. High up. And then it descended, until it reached them in the valley. The fall was, of course, inevitable. He could see it coming.

“Coffee?” he said, hauling himself out of the chair and stepping over Henri.

“Please.”

As he poured he spoke. “John Fleming was arrested and tried eighteen years ago.”

“Crimes like those don’t fade, do they?” said Myrna, taking the mug and finishing his thought. “Do you know him?”

“I followed the case,” said Gamache, retaking his seat. “He committed his crimes in New Brunswick, but he was tried here because it was felt he couldn’t get a fair trial there.”

“I remember. Is he still here?”

Gamache nodded. “At the Special Handling Unit.”

“That’s why you asked me about the SHU?”

Gamache nodded.

“Is he getting help?” Myrna asked.

“He’s beyond help.”

“Believe me, I’m not saying he’d ever be a model citizen,” said Myrna. “I’m not saying I’d ever trust him with a child of mine—”

It was subtle, but Myrna, who knew every line of Armand’s face, was sure she saw a movement. A flinch.

“—but he’s a human being and he must be in torment, to have done those things. It’s possible, with time and therapy, he can be helped. Not released. But helped to release some of his demons.”

“John Fleming will never get better,” Gamache said, his voice low. “And believe me, we don’t want his demons released.”

She was about to argue with him, but stopped. If anyone believed in second chances, it was the man who sat before her. She’d been his friend and his unofficial therapist. She’d heard his deepest secrets, and she’d heard his most profound beliefs, and his greatest fears. But now she wondered if she’d really heard them all. And she wondered what demons might be nesting deep inside this man, who specialized in murder.

“What do you know, Armand, that we don’t?”

“I can’t say.”

“I also followed the court case—” She stopped, and regarded him.

Then it dawned on her. What he was really saying by not saying anything.

“We didn’t hear everything, did we, Armand? There was another trial, a private one, for Fleming.”

A trial within a trial.

Myrna knew, from her association with the law, that the system allowed for such things, but she’d never ever heard of one actually being held.

There would be the public trial for public consumption, but behind closed and locked and bolted doors, there would be another. Where evidence, deemed too horrific for the community, would be revealed.

How bad, Myrna wondered, would something have to be to go against the fundamental beliefs of their society? How horrific would that truth have to be, to hide it from the public? Only the accused, the judge, the prosecutor, the defense attorney, a guard, a court reporter would be present. And one other.

One person, not associated with the case, would be chosen to represent all Canadians. They would absorb the horror. They would hear and see things that could never be forgotten. And then, when the trial was over, they would carry it to their grave, so that the rest of the population didn’t have to. One person sacrificed for the greater good.

“You more than read his file, didn’t you?” said Myrna. “There was a closed-door trial, wasn’t there?”

Armand stared at her, his lips compressed slightly.

*

Gamache and Henri left the bookstore and walked around the village green, feeling the fresh, cool autumn air on their faces. Breathing in the scent of overripe apples and fresh-cut grass, their feet shuffling through newly fallen leaves.

He didn’t tell Myrna, of course. He couldn’t. It was confidential. And even if he was allowed to tell Myrna what he knew about the crimes committed by John Fleming, he wouldn’t do it.

He wished he himself didn’t know.

Each day, when the door had been unlocked and he’d been allowed out, Armand had returned to his office at S?reté headquarters in Montréal and stared out the window at the people below. Waiting for lights to change. Going for drinks, or to the dentist. Thinking about groceries, and bills, and the boss.

They didn’t know. They read the newspapers and saw the television reports on the trial and thought Fleming a monster. But they didn’t know the half of it.