The Nature of the Beast

“Oh God,” sighed Armand.

Jean-Guy lowered his hands and instinctively drew his arm across his wet face before reaching for a tissue.

Both men wiped and blew and finally stared at each other.

Armand was the first to smile.

“Well, that feels better. We must do this again sometime.”

“Is that why you came in here, patron?” asked Jean-Guy, reaching for another tissue and wondering how many tears these books had seen while the rest of the world saw a calm, determined visage.

“No,” said Armand with a small laugh. “That was a surprise. I came in because there’s something I’ve known I should do for a while but haven’t wanted to. But after talking to Ruth, there was no way out of it.”

“What’s that?”

“I have an appointment at the SHU tomorrow morning. I need to speak to John Fleming.”

Gamache tried to make it sound like any other rendezvous, but couldn’t quite pull it off. The hand holding the tissue trembled slightly, until he closed it into a fist, crushing the moist tissue.

“I see,” said Beauvoir. And he did. He knew slightly more than the public about the Fleming case. He’d followed the trial and he’d heard the rumors swirling around Sûreté headquarters. And he knew, though he was never told outright, that there’d been a secret trial. A trial within a trial, and the Chief Inspector had been part of it, though in what capacity Beauvoir didn’t know.

“What’cha reading?” he asked, in an intentionally hyper-cheerful voice, and nodded toward the file on Gamache’s knees. “Is it about a serial killer?”

But he could see by the grim expression on Gamache’s face that he’d overstepped, in the question and in the ill-timed attempt to lighten the mood.

“It is,” said Gamache. He closed the file, resting a heavy hand on it, then he looked at Jean-Guy. “Why did you leave when Lepage was telling us about the Son My Massacre?”

“I was overcome,” he said. “I was afraid I was going to either be sick or attack him. That something awful was going to happen. I couldn’t believe anyone could do those things. And then the girl.”

His voice trailed off and he rubbed his face again.

He wanted with all his heart to tell this man everything, and he almost did. But then stopped himself.

“What did John Fleming really do, patron? What don’t we know that you do?”

Gamache felt the file folder under his hand, but didn’t look down at it.

As soon as they’d arrived home, Armand had gone to the locked room in the far corner of the basement. In the course of a long career investigating murder, he’d come across things that could not be used, were not pertinent. Other people’s secrets, their shames, even their crimes.

He’d kept them in files in his basement, under lock and key, where he could guard them, and hide them, and get at them if he needed to. And today, he needed to. The rest of the basement had bright lights, but this room had just the single bulb hanging from the ceiling. It swung a little when Armand pulled the chain, dirt and dead bugs baked onto the bulb. The light revealed boxes neatly arranged, like bricks in a wall. And bricked up, at the very back, was the box he was looking for.

He’d brushed off the dust and spiderwebs and brought it upstairs into the study. And then he’d had a long, long shower. And dinner. Only later did he return to the box sitting so innocently on the floor of the study.

Gamache had opened the lid, half expecting a shriek to escape. But of course there was only silence, except for the comforting murmur of Reine-Marie and Jean-Guy in the next room.

Closing his eyes for a moment and steeling himself, he opened the first file, and started to read. To remember. And then the screaming started. Not from the files, but from inside his own head as the sights and sounds from the trial of John Fleming burst out from where he’d locked them away.

He saw again the images and imagined the sounds. The crying and the pleading.

Had one of Fleming’s victims knelt silently, not begging for mercy? Not screaming in terror, not crying out for her mother, her father, her God? Had she instead looked at him with pity?

“I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know, Jean-Guy. John Fleming killed seven people over the course of seven years. One in each decade of life. A woman in her twenties, a man in his thirties, and so on. Made him very hard to catch since the murders seemed completely unrelated and were a year apart.”

Beauvoir noticed that the Chief did not mention any victim younger than twenty, though Jean-Guy knew they existed.