The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel

Armand Gamache was eternally grateful to the judge who’d had the courage to enact that most extreme of clauses. And he wondered if the courtroom had been scrubbed down when it was over. Disinfected. Burned to the ground.

Or had they simply closed the doors and gone back to their lives and, in the nighttime, in the darkness, had they prayed to a God they hoped was powerful, to forget? Prayed for dreamless sleep. Prayed to turn back the clocks to a time when they did not know.

Knowledge wasn’t always power. Sometimes it was crippling.

Myrna had suggested therapy could, over time, rid Fleming of his demons. But Armand Gamache knew that wasn’t true. Because John Fleming was the demon.

And now, from that prison cell, he’d managed to escape. He’d slid out between the bars. In the form of words.

John Fleming was out in the world again.

He’d come to play.





CHAPTER 5

“What do you want?” Antoinette called into the darkness.

She stood on the brightly lit stage, her hand to her forehead, peering like a mariner looking for land.

“To talk to you,” came Armand’s voice from the theater.

“I think you’ve done enough, don’t you?”

Brian came out of the wings carrying a prop lamp. “Who’re you talking to?”

Armand climbed the steps onto the stage. “Me. Salut, Brian.”

“Are you happy?” Antoinette demanded, walking over to him. “Myrna and Gabri have quit. Brian here has to take over Gabri’s lead role—”

“I do?”

“A play’s hard enough to put on without actors dropping out,” she said.

“You’re going on with the production then?” Gamache asked.

“Of course,” she said. “Despite all your efforts. The other actors are going to be here in a few minutes. I’d like you to leave before you do more damage.”

“Are you going to tell them who wrote the play?”

“Because if I don’t you will? Is that why you’re here? To make sure you well and truly destroy the production? Christ, you’re a fascist after all.”

“I don’t want to debate with you,” said Gamache.

“Of course not, because that would be more free speech,” said Antoinette. For his part, Brian stood by the sofa, still holding the lamp. Like a failed Diogenes.

“Gabri and Myrna made up their own minds,” said Gamache. “But I didn’t try to dissuade them. I think doing the play is wrong.”

“Yes, I got that. But we’re doing it anyway. And you know why? Because while the man might be horrible, his play is extraordinary. If you have your way, no one will ever read it or see it performed. What a champion of the free society.”

“A free society comes at a cost,” he snapped, then reined himself in.

Antoinette smiled. “Hit a nerve, did I? What’re you so afraid of, Armand? The man’s in prison, has been for years. He’ll never get out.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“You’re terrified,” said Antoinette. “If I was casting a man driven by fear, I’d beg you to do the role.”

“I’d like to talk,” said Gamache, ignoring what she just said. “Can we sit down?”

“Fine, but make it quick before the others arrive.”

“Can I join you?” Brian asked, putting the lamp down. “Or is this private?”

“Yes,” said Armand. “This involves you too.”

He sat on a threadbare armchair, part of the stage set. The few times he’d actually been on a stage, it had surprised him how very shabby everything was. From a distance, from the audience, the actors could look like kings and queens, titans of business. But close up? The costumes were cheap, worn, often smelly. Their castles were falling apart.

The illusion shattered. That was the price of looking at things too closely.

As an investigator he’d spent his career examining things, examining people. Looking behind the fa?ade, at what was really there. The worn and shabby and threadbare interiors.

But sometimes, sometimes, when he pulled back the illusion, what he found was something shiny, bright, far better than the stage set.

He looked at Antoinette. Middle-aged, clinging on perhaps a little too tightly to the illusion of youth. Her hair was dyed purple, her clothes could have been considered bohemian, had they not been so studied.

He genuinely liked Antoinette and admired her. Admired her even now, for standing up for what she believed in. And, after all, she didn’t know the full truth about Fleming.

“I’m here because we’re friends,” he said. “I don’t want this disagreement to come between us.”

“You didn’t even read the play, Armand,” Antoinette said, the anger draining from her voice. “How can you condemn it?”

“Perhaps the life of the writer shouldn’t matter,” he said, his own voice soft now. “But it does to me. In this case.”

“I’m not going to pull the play,” she said. “It might be crap now, with Brian in the lead—”

“Hey,” said Brian.

“I’m sorry, you’ll be fine, but you don’t have much time to rehearse, and when you came in late for rehearsal today I thought you’d also—”