The Nature of the Beast

“I won’t, but you have to tell her soon because she might pry it out of me. She’s very cunning.”

As they talked about this happy news, Gamache could almost forget where they’d been, and what lay ahead. After a few miles they once again lapsed into silence.

Gamache went back over his interview with Fleming, struggling to bring it into focus.

“Fleming admitted he knew Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme,” he said, and Beauvoir nodded. Jean-Guy had also been replaying the meeting with Fleming, with growing urgency, pursued by the ticking clock and the realization of just how monstrous Fleming really was.

“But he said something,” said Armand. “Something I thought at the time I needed to remember, but then it got lost.”

“Misdirection,” said Beauvoir. “Fleming probably knew he’d said too much and tried to hide it under a pile of crap.”

“But what was it?” asked Gamache.

They racked their brains. Al Lepage? Brussels. The agency. What was it Fleming had said?

Jean-Guy got there first. It wasn’t something Fleming had said. It was something Gamache said.

“The play,” he said. “You mentioned the play, and put it on the table, remember?”

“That’s it,” said Gamache. “He asked if I’d read it.”

“You said it was beautiful, and that surprised him, but it was something else.”

Beauvoir reached behind him to the backseat and, picking up the satchel, he took out the worn and dirty script.

“He touched it and said if you’d really understood it, you wouldn’t need to be speaking with him.”

“Yes, yes,” said Gamache. “We wouldn’t need to visit Fleming because we’d have the answer.”

“The hiding place of the plans is in the goddamned play,” said Beauvoir, looking down at She Sat Down and Wept. “You read it, I read it. I don’t remember anything about plans or papers or anything hidden, do you?”

Gamache thought, scouring his memory. The play was set in a boardinghouse. The main character was a sad-sack fellow who kept winning the lottery. He’d lose all the money and end up back there. Then win again. And lose again. It was excruciating but also sensitively observed, insightful and very funny.

“The winning ticket wasn’t hidden or lost, was it?” asked Beauvoir.

Gamache shook his head. “No, he kept it on the chain around his neck, remember? Where the crucifix once was.”

“Shit. What else, what else? Did anyone lose a key? A glove, anything?”

Beauvoir opened the script and turned the pages at random, with growing frenzy.

“Call Isabelle,” said Gamache. “Tell her about the CBC news at six, and get her to have every copy of that play picked up.”

“Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme have one,” Beauvoir reminded him, as the phone rang.

“Leave them alone,” said Gamache. “If they’ve read Fleming’s play then they’ve also missed the reference. Let’s keep it that way.”

Beauvoir got Lacoste on the line, put her on speaker and brought her up to speed.

“I know about the CBC,” she said. “Professor Rosenblatt was just in here. He had a call from a journalist asking about the Supergun. They’ve obviously done enough research to know he’s the expert on Gerald Bull.”

“What did he tell them?” Beauvoir asked.

“He says he told them he’s long retired and the case of Dr. Bull was long ago. They asked about finding Project Babylon and he said he thought that unlikely since it probably was never built and wouldn’t work anyway.”

“Did they buy it?”

“Not for a moment,” said Lacoste. “The professor’s afraid he might have even made it worse by denying what they already knew to be true.”

“I don’t think it’s possible to make it worse at this stage,” said Beauvoir.

“Well, the good news is, so far they don’t seem to know where the gun is, and I suspect they’ll zero in on Highwater to begin with. They might even stop there.”

But they all knew that wasn’t going to happen. “You’ll get all the copies of the play? But leave the CSIS agents out of it.”

“I’ll get Cohen on it,” she said.

“No,” Gamache interrupted. “Not Cohen. Can you get another agent to do it?”

“I can,” she said, her voice guarded. “Why?”

“I’d like Agent Cohen to stay in the Incident Room. Do you mind? I’ll explain when we get there.”