The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel

There was no need to ask what “that” was.

“You’re aware of the play?” Beauvoir asked, holding it up. He thought for a moment Madame Proulx was going to cross herself again. But she didn’t. Instead she straightened up completely and stood, tall and formidable, facing both him and John Fleming’s creation.

“We all were. It’s a travesty. How she couldn’t see that is beyond me. I’m not a prude, if that’s what you’re thinking. But it’s not right.”

No philosophical debate, no discussion of the evils of censorship. Just a clear statement of fact. Producing the Fleming play wasn’t right. But exactly how wrong it was wasn’t yet clear.

At the door Beauvoir asked about Brian.

“We liked him,” said Madame Proulx, apparently speaking for the whole neighborhood. “Now if he killed her we could understand. But he seemed to really care for her.” She shook her head. “Happens a lot, doesn’t it? You look at a couple and wonder what they see in each other. You never know, if you know what I mean.”

Beauvoir did know. You never knew.

They got in the car and headed back to Three Pines.

“Why did you take the play with you?” Lacoste asked Beauvoir as he drove.

“It’s been nothing but trouble,” he explained. “And whoever killed Antoinette was looking for something. Maybe it was the play.”

“But there’re lots of copies out there.”

“True, but that’s the original. I thought it was worth a read.”

Isabelle Lacoste nodded. He was right. She wished she’d thought of that.

There were times when she felt completely up to the job of Chief Inspector. And times when she knew it should have gone to this man.

“Is there anything else I missed?” she asked him.

“You don’t miss much, Isabelle,” said Beauvoir. “And what you do, I pick up. And vice versa. It’s what makes us a strong team.”

“Do you miss Monsieur Gamache?” she asked.

“It’s no reflection on you, but I’ll always miss Chief Inspector Gamache.”

“So will I,” she said. They drove a few more miles before she got up the courage to ask a question that had been bothering her since her appointment.

“Should you have been made Chief Inspector?”

She immediately regretted asking. Suppose he said yes?

“I would’ve liked it,” he said at last. “But I wasn’t expecting it. Not after all that happened.”

“You mean the drinking?” she asked. “And the drugs? Or when you shot Chief Inspector Gamache?”

“When you say it like that it sounds pretty bad,” said Beauvoir, but he smiled as he said it. They both knew pulling the trigger was the one thing he did right. He’d saved Gamache’s life, by almost taking it.

Few, if any, would have had the courage to shoot. Lacoste wasn’t sure she would have.

“You could’ve stopped me, you know,” he said. “You had me in your sights, just as I had him. You had no idea why I was about to gun down the Chief. Why didn’t you stop me?”

“By shooting you?” she asked.

“Yes. Others would have. Anyone else would have.”

“I almost did. But you pleaded with me to trust you.”

“That’s it?”

“It wasn’t your words, it was your voice. You weren’t angry or deranged. You were desperate.”

“You trusted your instincts?”

She nodded, gripping her hands together to stop the trembling that always overcame her when she thought of that horrific day. Having Beauvoir in her sights, her finger on the trigger. And hesitating. And watching him not hesitate. Watching him gun down Chief Inspector Gamache.

It had felt as though she herself had been shot.

Then seeing Chief Inspector Gamache’s body leave the ground. Then hit the ground.

“You trust your instincts,” Jean-Guy said. “That’s why you’ll make one of the great leaders in the S?reté, Isabelle. And why I will be your loyal right hand for as long as you need me.”

“And would you shoot me?”

“In an instant, patron.”

She laughed. Then realized it was the first time he’d called her patron.

The Fleming play sat in the backseat like a passenger. Listening to them. Absorbing the talk of murder.





CHAPTER 24

“Bonjour,” said Armand Gamache.

He’d found Mary Fraser alone in the small library at the back of the B and B. She was in a comfortable chair, her back to the corner bookshelves and her feet on a hassock, stretched out toward the mumbling fire in the grate.

Her sweater was pilled and her big toe stuck out of one stocking. She did not bother to conceal it, nor did she seem at all embarrassed by this sartorial underachievement.

What she clearly did not want him to see, though, was the file she was reading. She closed it as soon as Gamache entered and splayed her hand over it. It was done without haste, almost languidly. But still the result was a closed and secret document.