The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel

Slowly a murmur of conversation grew around them, the voices a moderate level as reason was restored. For now.

Across from her, Clara saw Armand close his eyes briefly, and take a deep breath.

“Bet you thought you left all the talk of murder behind when Armand retired from the S?reté,” said Myrna.

“Well, we did move to Three Pines,” said Reine-Marie. “We had our doubts.”

“Patron,” said Olivier, bending down to speak into Gamache’s ear. “Isabelle called from the old railway station. She’d like to speak to you.”

“Do you mind?” he asked Reine-Marie.

As he left, he heard Clara ask his wife, “So, did he tell you what they found?”

*

Ruth opened her worn and dog-eared notebook to the page she’d been reading before Monsieur Béliveau arrived.

He’d gone now, back to the bistro. She’d promised to join him there later. To put on a show of normalcy, if such a thing existed for Ruth. For Three Pines. For anyone.

She smoothed the page, thought for a moment, then read.

Well, all children are sad

but some get over it.

Count your blessings. Better than that,

buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.

Ruth looked over at Rosa, snoring in her flannel nest. It sounded like merdemerdemerde. Ruth smiled.

Take up dancing to forget.





CHAPTER 10

The S?reté Incident Room had once again been set up in what had been the railway station, before it was abandoned and put to other use. The long, low brick building across the Rivière Bella Bella from the village was the home of the Three Pines Volunteer Fire Brigade, of which Ruth Zardo was the chief, being familiar, everyone figured, with hellfire.

And now it was being put to an even more dire use.

The old railway station was alive with activity as technicians and agents set up the equipment necessary to investigate a modern murder. Desks, computers, printers, scanners. Telephone lines. Lots of those. Since the village was so deep in the valley, no high-speed Internet, or even satellite signal, reached it. They had to resort to dial-up.

It was infuriating, frustrating, grindingly slow. But it was better than nothing.

Armand Gamache had just arrived and was standing in the disarray. In his late fifties now, he’d started at the S?reté when there weren’t even faxes, just teletype machines.

Isabelle Lacoste watched him and remembered being with Gamache on one of her first murder investigations. They found themselves in a hunting camp, with a body and fingerprints, and no way to transmit the information.

Chief Inspector Gamache had taken the old telephone receiver off its cradle, unscrewed the lower section, removed the voice disc, and hooked directly into the line.

“You hot-wired the phone?” she’d asked.

“Kind of,” he’d said. And then he’d taught her how to do it.

“It must’ve been tough back then,” she’d said. “When this was all you had.”

“It gave us more time to think,” he’d explained.

And then they’d sat by the woodstove, and they’d thought. And by the time the information had chugged its way back down the phone line, they’d all but solved the case.

And now she was the Chief Inspector. And she looked at all the technology being installed, in the absolute certainty it was crucial to solving the case.

But she knew differently. And Jean-Guy Beauvoir knew differently.

And the man who’d just arrived knew differently.

“Thank you for coming, sir,” she said, walking with them through the boxes and wires.

“Anytime,” said Gamache. “How can I help?”

She indicated the conference table, set up at the far end of the old railway station.

“It’s time for a think,” she said, and saw him smile.

She hesitated by the chair at the head of the conference table. This was awkward. Every other time they’d sat there, Chief Inspector Gamache had assumed that seat.

This time, though, he walked right by it and sat to her left. Leaving Inspector Beauvoir to sit on her right-hand side.

Armand Gamache knew his place. Had, in fact, chosen it.

“So, this is what we know,” said Lacoste. “We have a massive gun hidden in the forest and a boy who was killed there and then his body moved. You knew Laurent better than we did,” Lacoste said to Gamache. “What do you think happened?”

“Well, he obviously found the gun,” said Gamache. “It looks like someone wanted to stop him from telling anyone about it.”

“But he’d already told lots of people,” said Jean-Guy. “All of us, for a start. Everyone in the bistro that afternoon heard him.”

“Maybe the murderer didn’t realize that,” said Gamache. “Maybe he wasn’t in the bistro when Laurent came running in.”

“So you think after he left us, he told someone else?” asked Lacoste. “Someone who killed him to keep him quiet.”

Gamache nodded. “It’s also possible he went back there on his own and interrupted someone. Though the site seems abandoned.”

“We’ll know more when forensics is done,” said Lacoste. “But that was my impression too.”