The Nature of the Beast (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #11)
Page 147“This” wasn’t the play, it was the title.
She Sat Down and Wept.
Gamache forced himself to sit in the armchair, the play on his lap. Olivier, Gabri and Rosenblatt stared at him.
“Aren’t you going to do something?” Gabri demanded. “Have you just given up?”
“Shhh,” said Olivier. “He is doing something. He’s thinking.”
“Ahhh,” said Gabri. “That’s what it looks like.”
What did it mean? Gamache asked himself, tuning out the rest of the world.
Fleming hid the plans, then he wrote the play. A play set in a fictional Three Pines. His eyes narrowed. There was one thing every character was looking for.
Milk. In the hardware store. They came there to find it. But it wasn’t there, of course. So where would you find it?
Gamache got up and walked to the door.
* * *
“My store?” asked Monsieur Béliveau. “You think he hid the plans in my store?”
“Where else do you find milk?” asked Beauvoir, walking to the window. Looking out, he saw Gamache standing at the bistro door, also looking toward Monsieur Béliveau’s general store.
Jean-Guy followed the Chief’s gaze. Past Monsieur Béliveau’s store, past the village green, past the three tall pines, past Clara’s place to Jane’s home. At Jane Neal’s now-empty house, Gamache’s gaze paused.
Ruth’s best friend. Instead of recommending Jane for the artwork, she’d tossed Al Lepage into the pit.
“Ruth,” Jean-Guy asked. “After you spoke to Fleming, did you go over to your friend Jane’s place? Did you talk to her about this?”
* * *
Gamache turned from Jane’s home and looked directly across the village green, to Ruth’s place.
He saw movement in the window. Jean-Guy.
Ruth had wanted to see Beauvoir, urgently, but didn’t want anyone else to know why. That’s why she sent the message about Lysol.
Ruth.
Who’d saved herself by betraying someone else. Ruth. Who’d been forced to face a terrible truth. She was a coward.
She’d have turned in the Jews hiding in her attic.
She’d have named names to McCarthy.
She’d have pointed out heretics to the Inquisition, to avoid the flames and save herself.
And then she’d have sat down and wept.
* * *
“No, I didn’t go to Jane’s,” said Ruth. “I was too ashamed. I needed to be by myself.”
“So you stayed here?” Jean-Guy asked. “You drew the curtains and locked the door and stayed in your home.”
“At first.”
“And then?”
“My God,” said Monsieur Béliveau to Ruth. “He must’ve seen.”
“Seen what?” Jean-Guy demanded.
* * *
Gamache’s eyes moved on, swiftly now. Up the hill. Past the old schoolhouse.
And then his gaze stopped. And Armand Gamache started walking. Then running.
* * *
He ran out of Ruth’s home. Gamache was already at the bottom of the wide wooden stairs. He took them two at a time. Beauvoir got there just as Gamache yanked open the large door to the small church.
“Where do you find milk?” Gamache asked, turning around only briefly to speak to Beauvoir.
“A church,” said Jean-Guy. “The milk in the play isn’t literal.”
“It’s a metaphor. For kindness and healing.”
Gamache was scanning the rows of wooden pews, the simple altar, the unadorned walls. More a chapel than a church.
“And forgiveness,” said Beauvoir. “You don’t find it in a hardware store, but you might find it here. Ruth came to St. Thomas’s after betraying Al Lepage. To pray for forgiveness. Looking for milk.”
“John Fleming was a churchgoing man. Enjoying his relationship with a God he mocked and taunted,” said Gamache. “He either followed her or had come here himself, for a moment of gloating, knowing what he’d done to her.”
They heard movement behind them as Ruth and Monsieur Béliveau arrived.
“Where did you sit?” Gamache asked her.