The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (5 page)

How different real monsters were from the film kind.

John Fleming was famous indeed.

*   *   *

Ruth closed the last page of the script and laid a blue-veined hand on the stack of paper.

Then, making up her mind, she lit the logs in the hearth and held the script over it until her thin skin sizzled. But she couldn’t do it.

“Stay here,” she commanded Rosa, who watched from her flannel nest.

Finding a small shovel, Ruth went outside, and sinking to her knees she hacked at the earth. Cutting away at the grass. Digging deeper, fighting the ground for every inch, as though it knew her intention and was resisting. But Ruth didn’t give up. If she could have dug down to the bedrock, she would have. Finally she was deep enough for her purpose.

Picking up the script, Ruth placed it in the hole. Then she covered it up, shoving the dirt in with her hands. Sitting back on her heels, kneeling under the night sky, she wondered if she should say something. A thin prayer. A curse?

“
And now it is now
,” she whispered, quoting her own poem over the fresh-turned earth.

And the dark thing is here,

and after all it is nothing new;

it is only a memory, after all:

She got to her feet and stared down and thought about what she’d done. And what he’d done.

A memory of a fear.

Perhaps she should say something to Armand. But maybe it would be all right. Maybe it would stay buried.

Ruth went inside, locking the door behind her.

CHAPTER 4

“I’m thinking of quitting the play,” said Gabri.

The breakfast rush at the bistro was over and his guests at the B and B had left after the weekend. Now he sat in a comfortable armchair in the bay window of Myrna’s New and Used Bookstore. Myrna sat across from him in her own chair, unmistakable because it had taken on, over the years, her ample form. Beside her, on the floor, was a stack of books to be priced and put on shelves.

From the outside they might have looked like mannequins in a window display, except for their grim expressions.

“I’ve decided to quit,” said Myrna.

“Are we doing the right thing?” Gabri asked. “It’s so close to opening night, and if we pull out I don’t know what Antoinette will do.”

“What she should have done all along,” came Clara’s voice from the body of the store. She’d been browsing the “New Arrivals” shelf. Though “new” was a relative term. “She’ll pull the play.”

“That was banned, you know,” Myrna said to Clara when she saw what book Clara was holding.
Fahrenheit 451
.

“Was it also burned?” asked Clara, joining them. “Maybe that’s what hellfire’s made of. Burning books. I wonder if they’d appreciate the irony.”

“I doubt it,” said Myrna. “But are we doing the same thing?”

“We’re not burning the play,” said Gabri. “We’re just refusing to support it. Conscientious objectors.”

“Look, if we’re going to do this, we have to face the truth of what we’re doing and why,” said Myrna. “We’re demanding that a play not be produced not because it contains anything vile, but because we don’t like the man who wrote it.”

“You make it sound like a personality conflict,” said Gabri. “It’s not that we don’t like John Fleming, it’s because of what he did.”

“Knock, knock,” came a familiar voice at the door to the bookstore.

They looked up to see Reine-Marie, Armand and Henri.

“We were out for a walk and saw you in the window,” said Armand.

“Are we interrupting?” Reine-Marie asked, looking at their faces.

“No,” said Clara. “You can guess what we’re talking about.”

Reine-Marie nodded. “The same thing we were talking about. The play.”

“The goddamned play,” said Myrna. “I’m going to quit and Antoinette’s going to have a fit. I feel like such a shit.”

“Did you realize that all rhymed?” asked Gabri. “Quit, fit, shit. Like a Shakespearean sonnet.”

“You feel you’re letting down a friend,” said Reine-Marie.

“Partly, but I run a bookstore,” said Myrna, looking at the row upon row of books, lining the walls and creating corridors in the open space. “So many of them were banned and burned. That one,” she pointed to the
Fahrenheit 451
Clara still had in her hands.
“To Kill a Mockingbird. The Adventures of Huck Finn
. Even
The Diary of Anne Frank
. All banned by people who believed they were in the right. Could we be wrong?”

“You’re not banning it,” said Clara. “He’s allowed to write and you’re allowed to pull your support.”

“But it comes to the same thing. If Gabri and I pull out and tell the others, it’ll ruin the production. And you know what? I want it to. Once she knew who’d written the play, Antoinette should never have produced it. Right, Armand?”

“Right.”

If they were expecting a hesitation, some anguish over the answer, they were disappointed. His answer was quick and unequivocal.

Armand Gamache was in absolutely no doubt. This was a play that should never have seen the light of day. Just as its author should never again see the light of day.

“But other killers have written books, plays even,” said Myrna.

“John Fleming is different,” said Clara. “We all know it.”

“You’re an artist,” said Reine-Marie. “Do you think a work should be judged by its creator? Or should it stand on its own?”

Clara gave a huge sigh. “I know the right answer to that. And I know how I feel. Would I want a painting by Jeffrey Dahmer, or to serve a meal from the Stalin family cookbook? No.”

“That’s not the issue,” said Gabri. “It’s about options, letting people make their own choices. Maybe Antoinette should produce it, and let people decide if they’ll go or not.”

“Are you having second thoughts about quitting?” asked Myrna.

“Hell no,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere near that play again. The play was written by a shit and there’s shit all over it. Fair or not, that’s just the way it is.”

“Look at Wagner,” said Reine-Marie. “He’s so associated with the Nazis and the Holocaust that his music, however brilliant, is spoiled for many.”

“It doesn’t help that Wagner was also a raging anti-Semite,” said Gabri.

“But is that a reason not to perform music that is sublime?” asked Reine-Marie.

“Reason has very little to do with this,” said Myrna. “I’m the first to admit I’d lose every debate over whether Fleming’s play should be banned. Intellectually I know he has a right to write it, and any company has a right to produce it. I just don’t want to be a part of it. I can’t defend my feelings, they just are.”

“I go back to the question,” said Reine-Marie. “Should the creation be judged by its creator? Does it matter?”

“It matters,” said Gamache. “Sometimes censorship is justified.”

They looked at him, surprised by his certainty. Even Reine-Marie was taken aback.

“But, Armand, you’ve always championed free speech, even when it’s used against you.”

“There’re exceptions in a free society,” said Armand. “There are always exceptions.” And John Fleming, he knew, was exceptional.

“Is the play about the murders?” Clara asked.

“No,” admitted Gabri. “It’s actually quite funny. It’s about a guy who keeps winning the lottery and squandering the chances he’s been given. He keeps ending up at the same rooming house, with the same people.”

“It’s hilarious in places,” Myrna agreed. “But then you find yourself incredibly moved. I don’t know how he did it.”

“So it has nothing to do with Fleming and his crimes?” asked Reine-Marie. “Nothing to do with him as a man?”

“It has everything to do with him,” said Armand, his voice clipped, strained. They looked at him. Never had they heard him come even close to being upset with his wife. “If John Fleming created it, it’s grotesque. It can’t help but be. Maybe not obviously so, but he’s in every word, every action of the characters. The creator and the created are one.” He laced his fingers together. “This is how he escapes. Through the written word, and the decency of others. This is how John Fleming gets into your head. And you don’t want him there. Believe me.”

For a moment he looked like a man possessed. And then it passed, and faded, until Armand Gamache looked simply haunted. Silence settled over the bookstore, except for the jingle of Henri’s collar as he stepped beside Armand, and leaned against his leg.

“I’m sorry,” said Armand, rubbing his forehead and giving them a feeble smile. “Forgive me.” He took Reine-Marie’s hand and squeezed it.

“I understand,” she said, though she knew she didn’t really. The Fleming case was the only one Armand never talked to her about, though she’d followed it in the media.

“The sooner we tell Antoinette we’re out, the better,” said Gabri. “I have some cleaning up to do at the bistro. Why don’t I come by in about an hour and pick you up, Myrna? We can drive over together.”

Myrna agreed. Gabri left, followed by Clara, waving good-bye with her book.

“I’m heading over to the general store,” said Reine-Marie, leaving Armand and Henri in the bookstore.

Myrna settled into her chair and looked at Armand, who’d taken the armchair vacated by Gabri.

“Do you want to talk some more about the play?” she asked.

“God no,” he said.

She was about to ask why he was there, but stopped herself. Instead she asked, “What do you know that we don’t?”

It was a while before he answered.

“You have experience with the criminally insane,” he said, kneading Henri’s enormous ears and looking at the groaning shepherd as he spoke. But then he looked up and Myrna saw sorrow in Armand’s deep brown eyes. Genuine pain.

He held on to the dog as though to a life raft after the ship had sunk.

Myrna nodded. “I had my own private practice but I also worked part-time at the penitentiary, as you know.”

“Did you ever work at the Special Handling Unit?” he asked.

“The SHU? For the worst offenders?” asked Myrna. “I was asked to take on some cases there. I went there once, but didn’t get out of my car.”

“Why not?”

She opened her mouth, then shut it again, gathering her thoughts. Trying to find words to express what was not, in fact, a thought at all.

“You know the term ‘godforsaken’?”

He nodded.

“That’s why. I sat in the parking lot of the SHU, staring at those walls.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t go inside that godforsaken place.”

Both of them could see that building, a terrible monolith rising out of the ground.

“You continued counseling prisoners at the other penitentiaries,” he said. “Murderers, rapists. But you stopped eventually and came here. Why?”

“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.