The Nature of the Beast (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #11)

“We put them in the blanket box over there.” He waved at the pine chest in front of the fireplace. They’d been using it as a coffee table and footstool for years.

“We always meant to read them,” said Gabri, following Gamache over there. “Some are really old.”

Beauvoir arrived and joined them at the blanket box.

“They found papers when they did the renovations,” said Gamache, kneeling in front of the box. “They’re all in here.”

“Let me help.”

They looked up and into the eyes of Professor Rosenblatt.

“Please,” said the elderly scientist.

Gamache and Beauvoir exchanged a quick glance, then Gamache nodded. They emptied the contents of the heavy wooden box onto the area rug. Behind them the fire in the grate mumbled and popped as though sensing something flammable nearby.

Gabri and Olivier joined them on the floor and Professor Rosenblatt sat on the sofa as they divvied up the pile.

“Carefully,” said Gamache. “No panic, look at everything carefully. The plans might appear to be something else. Examine a piece of paper, then set it aside, then take the next—”

But they were already racing through the great mound of papers.

The phone rang and Olivier got up to answer it.

“It’s for you.” He held the receiver out to Jean-Guy.

“Take a message.”

“The message is ‘Fuck you,’” said Olivier, returning to the hunt. “I think you can guess who that was. She wants the two of you to share a Lysol.”

After a minute or so, Gamache looked at Beauvoir. “I think you should go see her.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” said Beauvoir, getting up.

“Who?” asked Rosenblatt, setting aside a copy of the Québec Gazette from 1778.

“Ruth,” said Gabri.

“He’s going to help her clean? Now?”

Olivier shrugged.

“Keep looking,” said Gamache, kneeling by the overturned blanket box. He could feel the fire behind him and hear the clock above him.

CHAPTER 40

“What is it?” Beauvoir asked, taking a seat next to Ruth in her living room.

Monsieur Béliveau sat across from them on a lawn chair that looked familiar because it had once belonged to the grocer.

Ruth’s home was furnished with what she described as “found” objects. Found, that is, in other people’s homes.

“I know where the plans are.”

“Where?” he asked.

She leaned forward and tapped the play, which was sitting on a plank of wood held up by a stack of books found in Myrna’s bookstore.

“The play?” demanded Jean-Guy. “We already know that.”

“Not the play, numbnuts,” she snapped. “This.”

She thumped the cover and now his eyes widened in frustration.

“For Christ’s sake, what are you saying?”

But then he saw what she’d been indicating. Not the play itself, but the title.

“She Sat Down and Wept?” he said. “You think the title’s the key?”

“It’s a reference to Babylon, isn’t it?” said Ruth. “And what would Fleming want to immortalize? What would give him the most pleasure?”

“A moment of despair,” said Monsieur Béliveau.

“I don’t understand.”

“He came asking for help and I sent him to Al Lepage,” she said. “I’d have done anything to get him away from me.”

Beauvoir was listening, nodding. None of this was new, so why was she repeating herself? Once again, she tapped the title.

She Sat Down and Wept.

“Why did he call it that?” Ruth asked. “We just read it. At no stage does any woman actually sit down and weep. No one does. So why call it that?”

*   *   *

Gamache looked at the mess on the floor of the bistro. Old newspapers and magazines were scattered everywhere. But no plans.

What was he missing? It was ten to six and they were no closer to finding the designs for Project Babylon.

He looked at the play, the goddamned play, which he’d tossed onto one of the armchairs at the bistro. Had Fleming lied? It seemed likely now.

She Sat Down and Wept. She Sat Down and Wept.

It was, he had to admit, a strange title. No one in the play, man or woman, ever sat down and cried. Or stood up and cried. No one wept at all.

And the actual biblical quote was “By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept.” We sat down, not she. It was a misquote. But Fleming knew the Bible, so it must’ve been done on purpose. With a purpose. Gamache remembered Fleming caressing the play with that one finger. But he wasn’t just touching the script, he was stroking the words of the title when he’d said, “You have no idea why I wrote this, do you? If you did, you wouldn’t need to be here.”