The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel

The play could not possibly be by that John Fleming. He didn’t write plays. And even if he did, no director in his right mind would produce it. It must be another man with the same name.

Beside him, the boy looked out the window at the early fall landscape and clutched the stick just below where his father had etched his name into the hilt.

Laurent. Laurent Lepage.





CHAPTER 3

Their dinner guests had already arrived and were sipping drinks and eating apple and avocado salsa with corn chips by the time Armand returned.

“Got Laurent home all right, I see,” said Reine-Marie, greeting him at the door. “No alien invasions?”

“We nipped it in the bud.”

“Not quite,” said Gabri, standing at the door to their study. “One got through Earth’s defenses.”

Armand and Reine-Marie looked into the small room off the living room where an elderly, angular woman with ladders up her stockings and patches on her sweater sat in an armchair reading.

“It’s the mother shit,” said Gabri.

A strong smell of gin met them. A duck sat on the old woman’s lap and Henri, the Gamaches’ German shepherd, was curled at her feet. Gazing up adoringly at the duck.

“Don’t worry about greeting me at the door,” Armand said to Henri. “It’s fine. Really.”

He looked at the dog and shook his head. Love took all forms. This was, though, a step up from Henri’s previous crush, which was the arm of the sofa.

“The first hint of infestation was the smell of gin,” said Gabri. “Her race seems to run on it.”

“What’s for dinner?” their neighbor Ruth Zardo demanded, struggling out of the armchair.

“How long have you been there?” Reine-Marie asked.

“What day is it?”

“I thought you were out clubbing baby seals,” said Gabri, taking Ruth’s arm.

“That’s next week. Don’t you read my Facebook updates?”

“Hag.”

“Fag.”

Ruth limped into the living room. Rosa the duck goose-stepped behind her, followed by Henri.

“I was once head of homicide for the S?reté du Québec,” said Gamache wistfully as they watched the parade.

“I don’t believe it,” said Reine-Marie.

“Bonjour, Ruth,” said Antoinette.

Ruth, who hadn’t noticed there was anyone else in the room, looked at Antoinette and Brian, then over to Myrna.

“What’re they doing here?”

“We were invited, unlike you, you demented old drunk,” said Myrna. “How can you be a poet and never notice anything and anyone around you?”

“Have we met?” Ruth asked, then turned to Reine-Marie.

“Where’s numbnuts?” she asked.

“He and Annie left for the city, along with Isabelle and the kids,” said Reine-Marie.

She knew she should have chastised Ruth for calling their son-in-law numbnuts, but the truth was, the old poet had called Jean-Guy that for so long the Gamaches barely noticed anymore. Even Jean-Guy answered to numbnuts. But only from Ruth.

“I saw the Lepage boy come flying out of the woods again,” said Ruth. “What was it this time? Zombies?”

“Actually, I believe he disturbed a nest of poets,” said Armand, taking the bottle of red wine around and refilling glasses, before helping himself to some of the salsa with honey-lime dressing. “Terrified him.”

“Poetry scares most people,” said Ruth. “I know mine does.”

“You scare them, Ruth, not your poems.”

“Oh, right. Even better. So what did the kid claim to see?”

“A giant gun with a monster on it.”

Ruth nodded, impressed.

“Imagination isn’t such a bad thing,” she said. “He reminds me of myself when I was that age and look how I turned out.”

“It’s not imagination,” said Gabri. “It’s outright lying. I’m not sure the kid knows the difference anymore himself.” He turned to Myrna. “What do you think? You’re the shrink.”

“I’m not a shrink,” said Myrna.

“You’re not kidding,” said Ruth with a snort.

“I’m a psychologist,” said Myrna.

“You’re a librarian,” said Ruth.

“For the last time, it’s not a library,” said Myrna. “It’s a bookstore. Stop just taking the books. Oh, never mind.” She waved at Ruth, who was smiling into her glass, and turned back to Gabri. “What were we talking about?”

“Laurent. Is he crazy? Though I realize the bar for sanity is pretty low here.” He watched as Ruth and Rosa muttered to each other.

“Hard to say, really. In my practice I saw a lot of people whose grip on reality had slipped. But they were adults. The line between real and imagined is blurred for kids, but it gets clearer as we grow up.”

“For better or worse,” said Reine-Marie.

“Well, I saw the worse,” said Myrna. “My clients’ delusions were often paranoid. They heard voices, they saw horrible things. Did horrible things. Laurent seems a happy kid. Well adjusted even.”