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

Finally he poured a drink for Reine-Marie and one for himself, then he picked up the goddamned play, and read.

He had to remind himself that there was nothing supernatural about what he held in his hands. Nothing malevolent. It contained only the power he gave it.

Armand forced himself to read a few more pages, then looked over at the bookcases lining their walls crammed with cherished volumes.

Where once his grandparents put up crucifixes and images of the benediction on their walls, he and Reine-Marie put up books on theirs. History books. Reference books. Biographies. Fiction, nonfiction. Stories lined the walls and both insulated them from the outside world and connected them to it.

He laid the script on the sofa and got up, browsing the shelves. Reading the familiar titles. Touching the covers.

Renewed, he returned to the play. And plowed onward.

A few minutes later the phone rang and Gamache realized he was gripping the play so tightly it took an effort to let it go.

“Chief?” said Lacoste. There was excitement in her voice.

“Oui?”

“Can you come over to the Incident Room? We’ve found something.”

“About the Lemaitre case?”

“Yes, but something else too.”

“I’ll be right there.”

He asked Reine-Marie to hold dinner for a few more minutes and explained where he was going.

“Invite them back if you’d like,” she called after him. “There’s plenty.”

She was four courses upset and considering an amuse-bouche.

*   *   *

“Adam,” said Gamache, taking the younger man’s hand in a grip that was strong and enveloping. “A sight for sore eyes.”

“Chief,” said Adam Cohen with delight.

“Are you one of the investigators on the Lemaitre case?”

“Oh, God no, sir. They won’t let me near the place,” said Agent Cohen. “Chief Inspector Lacoste barely lets me leave my desk at headquarters.”

“And yet, here you are in Three Pines. You’ll have to come down more often. I normally have to content myself with my son-in-law.”

Gamache gestured toward Jean-Guy Beauvoir.

“I’m afraid your daughter has shown questionable taste, sir.” Agent Cohen lowered his voice in the pretense of a whisper.

“It runs in the family,” said Gamache. “Her mother did too.”

He examined the young agent. Cohen had washed out of the academy and taken a job as a prison guard. But he’d come to Gamache’s aid during a terrible time, when everyone else was deserting the Chief, and Gamache had not forgotten. He’d managed to get Cohen back into the academy, tutoring him until he’d graduated.

Gamache had asked Lacoste, as one of her first acts and his final one, to take on Adam Cohen as a trainee and protégé. To take care of him.

“What are you doing here?” Gamache asked.

“Chief Inspector Lacoste asked me to look into Antoinette Lemaitre’s family. I tried to send what I found, but the Internet connection here is so weak I decided to bring it down myself to make sure it arrived.”

“He gnawed through his chain,” said Beauvoir, leading everyone over to the conference table.

Gamache sat down and looked from one to the other to the other, finally settling on Isabelle.

“What have you found?”

She leaned forward. “The home Antoinette Lemaitre was living in was in her name, but before that it belonged to her uncle.”

Gamache nodded. He knew that. Brian had told them.

Armand noticed that in front of Agent Cohen there was a page, facedown.

Cohen, Gamache realized, had more than a little bit of the dramatist about him. He must have studied under Jean-Guy Beauvoir.

“Guillaume Couture’s family was from the area,” Agent Cohen reported. “He built the house on some of the land they owned. There were no other relatives. He retired in the early 1990s.” Cohen’s fingers moved to the edge of the paper. “He died in 2005. Cancer. But before he retired he held a fascinating job.”

“He was an engineer,” said Gamache. “Antoinette said he built overpasses. Not dull, but not what I’d describe as fascinating.”

Adam Cohen turned the page over.

It was a grainy black-and-white photograph blown up from a smaller image. It showed a group of men standing in what looked like a tube.

Gamache put on his glasses and leaned closer.

“That,” Adam Cohen pointed, “is Guillaume Couture.”

The nondescript man grinned, almost maniacally, into the camera. His hair was lank and he wore glasses with thick black frames and an ill-fitting suit and tie. Two men stood on either side of him. The one in a cap was caught looking down and away from the camera, while the other appeared disinterested, even disdainful. Impatient.