The Nature of the Beast

“Should you have been made Chief Inspector?”

She immediately regretted asking. Suppose he said yes?

“I would’ve liked it,” he said at last. “But I wasn’t expecting it. Not after all that happened.”

“You mean the drinking?” she asked. “And the drugs? Or when you shot Chief Inspector Gamache?”

“When you say it like that it sounds pretty bad,” said Beauvoir, but he smiled as he said it. They both knew pulling the trigger was the one thing he did right. He’d saved Gamache’s life, by almost taking it.

Few, if any, would have had the courage to shoot. Lacoste wasn’t sure she would have.

“You could’ve stopped me, you know,” he said. “You had me in your sights, just as I had him. You had no idea why I was about to gun down the Chief. Why didn’t you stop me?”

“By shooting you?” she asked.

“Yes. Others would have. Anyone else would have.”

“I almost did. But you pleaded with me to trust you.”

“That’s it?”

“It wasn’t your words, it was your voice. You weren’t angry or deranged. You were desperate.”

“You trusted your instincts?”

She nodded, gripping her hands together to stop the trembling that always overcame her when she thought of that horrific day. Having Beauvoir in her sights, her finger on the trigger. And hesitating. And watching him not hesitate. Watching him gun down Chief Inspector Gamache.

It had felt as though she herself had been shot.

Then seeing Chief Inspector Gamache’s body leave the ground. Then hit the ground.

“You trust your instincts,” Jean-Guy said. “That’s why you’ll make one of the great leaders in the Sûreté, Isabelle. And why I will be your loyal right hand for as long as you need me.”

“And would you shoot me?”

“In an instant, patron.”

She laughed. Then realized it was the first time he’d called her patron.

The Fleming play sat in the backseat like a passenger. Listening to them. Absorbing the talk of murder.

CHAPTER 24

“Bonjour,” said Armand Gamache.

He’d found Mary Fraser alone in the small library at the back of the B and B. She was in a comfortable chair, her back to the corner bookshelves and her feet on a hassock, stretched out toward the mumbling fire in the grate.

Her sweater was pilled and her big toe stuck out of one stocking. She did not bother to conceal it, nor did she seem at all embarrassed by this sartorial underachievement.

What she clearly did not want him to see, though, was the file she was reading. She closed it as soon as Gamache entered and splayed her hand over it. It was done without haste, almost languidly. But still the result was a closed and secret document.

“Old school?” he asked, indicating the dossier. “Before everything was put on computer? Or maybe some things are best left as hard copies. More easily managed. And destroyed.”

He sat down in the other comfortable chair in the library.

Mary Fraser took her feet off the hassock and replaced them in her shoes. She crossed her legs and looked at him.

“What a funny thing to say, Monsieur Gamache,” she said, a cordial smile on her face. “Most of our files are still paper. To be honest, I prefer it that way.”

“Fahrenheit 451?” he asked.

She looked baffled, and then she caught the reference and looked at him as his third-grade teacher, Madame Arsenault, had when he’d finally said something clever.

“I wasn’t planning to burn it,” she said.

“Though you could.”

“Of course. Can I help you?”

“I’m just wondering why you’re not more interested in the Supergun.”

His voice was pleasant, matter-of-fact, but his sharp eyes studied her.

Her indifferently dyed hair. Her face without makeup, except some lipstick and slightly clotted mascara. She didn’t wear contacts, preferring glasses in unfashionable frames. She hid nothing. Not wrinkles, not flawed eyesight, not even the hole in her pantyhose. And that was one of Mary Fraser’s great advantages, he was beginning to think. Being able to make artifice look genuine. Giving the impression all was revealed, when in fact very little of substance was revealed.

This CSIS woman had appeared like Mary Poppins, descending on the village to make everything all right. Only everything wasn’t all right. He knew it. And she knew it.

No, he didn’t trust Mary Fraser, but he did find her interesting.

Now she was giving him an equally assessing look.