The Nature of the Beast

Jean-Guy was having fun finding words that rhymed with merde, when Ruth reappeared. And glared.

“Had enough?” she asked. “If you keep listening, your brain will turn into something soft and smelly.”

“How do you know? Have you heard it before?”

The mad old poet walked over to her stereo and returned to the sofa holding Al’s record. Her own copy.

“How’d you get this?” Beauvoir asked, taking it from her.

“It’s self-produced. I bought one and listened to it once to be polite, but it’s crap.”

And yet, thought Jean-Guy, she’d kept it. The record didn’t end up in the church rummage sale. Or the dump. And since when was Ruth polite? Or perhaps the question should be, when did she become impolite?

“He used to busk on the street in Cowansville, when he first arrived,” said Ruth. “Sometimes he’d play in the boîtes à chansons in Montréal, but mostly he sang in the coffeehouses around here. That was before Gabri and Olivier opened the bistro.”

“He doesn’t play there now, though, does he?” asked Beauvoir.

“No,” said Ruth. “He stopped singing, thank God.”

Jean-Guy put the album facedown. He didn’t want to look at the smiling young man with the bushy red beard, who had no idea what heartbreak was waiting for him a few decades down the road.

“How did Al Lepage get across the border?” Jean-Guy asked.

“He ran, I guess. Probably chased by a gang of music lovers.”

“Lepage claims he walked across the border from Vermont. But how’d he find Three Pines? He didn’t just stumble into it, did he? He had to have had help.”

“Maybe he was meant to find Three Pines,” she said, getting up again and gathering Rosa in her arms.

“You don’t believe that.”

“You have no idea what I believe,” she snapped, then softened her expression as she made for the stairs to her bedroom. “Turn off the lights when you leave.”

“Are you going upstairs to heave?” he called after her and heard, out of the darkness, a chuckle.

Jean-Guy leaned back and listened to the music, trying not to hear the lyrics. Something about—

Buy, buy this good apple pie.

Oh no, thought Beauvoir, surely not.

Drove my Honda, which I’m fonda …

He tuned out the lyrics and replaced them with the conversation after dinner, when he and Isabelle had walked to the Gamaches’ from Clara’s so he could pick up the record and they could have a brief discussion about the evening.

“What I find strange,” Isabelle had said, as they sat in the Gamaches’ living room, “is that neither the CSIS people nor Rosenblatt picked up on Dr. Bull’s poor academic record and that maybe there was someone else, the real designer, working behind the scenes. I mean, it was right there. Even Madame Gamache found it.”

“Thank you, dear,” said Reine-Marie.

“Désolé. But you know what I mean. These people are supposedly experts on Gerald Bull, and professionals at deciphering information, and yet they miss that?”

Armand nodded. “Why do you think that is? Beyond the obvious answer that Reine-Marie is far smarter than all of them.”

“Merci, mon cher,” said Madame Gamache. “You know, a lot of geniuses did poorly in school. Maybe that was Dr. Bull.”

“Maybe,” said Jean-Guy. “But I think the CSIS people, and perhaps even Professor Rosenblatt, didn’t miss it. They were just hoping we would. I think they know perfectly well someone else was involved with Project Babylon.”

“And that’s why they’re still here,” said Armand, nodding.

“To look for the plans or the person?” asked Isabelle.

“Both,” said Beauvoir.

“You think the person who designed Project Babylon is here in Three Pines?” asked Lacoste.

“I don’t,” said Beauvoir. “Not really. But maybe. I don’t know.”

“Impressive,” said Lacoste.

Jean-Guy smiled tightly and got up. “I’m heading over to Ruth’s place with Al Lepage’s record. I want to hear it. Coming?”

“No, I’m going back to the Incident Room and see if any reports have come in. Both the Canadian government and the Americans are looking into Al Lepage. Does it seem odd that he arrived in Québec already having a French surname?”

“What strikes me as odd,” said Beauvoir, “is that he said he walked across the border and just stumbled into Three Pines.”