The Nature Of The Beast Part 2

"Probably true," said Myrna.

"Yeah, well, earthquakes and tornados are part of nature too," said Gabri.

"So you really don't think Clara can be convinced to help us with the sets," said Brian. "We're just a few weeks from opening night and we can use the help. It really is a great play, even if no one knows who wrote it."

"What?" said Isabelle Lacoste, looking down at the cover sheet of the script and noticing for the first time that there was no name below the t.i.tle.

"No one knows?" she asked. "Not even you?"

"Well, we know," said Antoinette. "We're just not saying."

"Believe me," said Gabri. "We've asked. I think it was David Beckham."

"But he's-" Jean-Guy started to say before Myrna cut him off.

"Don't bother. Last week he decided Mark Wahlberg wrote it. Leave him his fantasies. And mine. David Beckham." Her voice became dreamy. "He'd have to come to opening night. Alone. He and Victoria would've had a fight."

"He'd stay in our B and B," said Gabri. "He'd smell like leather and Old Spice."

"He'd need a book to read, at bedtime," said Myrna. "I'd bring some over-"

"Okay, enough," said Jean-Guy.

"I want to hear more," said Reine-Marie, and Armand looked at her with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"You'll never guess who wrote the play," said Brian, laughing and tapping the place where the name had been whited out. "You wouldn't know him. A fellow named John Fleming."

"Brian," snapped Antoinette.

"What?"

"We agreed not to tell anyone."

"No one's ever heard of him," said Brian.

"But that's the point," Antoinette huffed. "Acht." She waved in his direction. "You're a surveyor, what would you know about marketing. I wanted to build up mystery, suspense. Get people wondering. Maybe it was written by Michel Tremblay, or a lost cla.s.sic by Tennessee Williams."

"Or George Clooney," said Gabri.

"Oooh, George Clooney," said Myrna, and her eyes again became unfocused.

"John Fleming?" said Gamache. "Do you mind?" He reached out and picked the play up from the table and stared at the t.i.tle. She Sat Down and Wept.

"We got in touch with the copyright people to see who we had to pay for permission, but they had no record of it or of any playwright by that name," said Brian, as though he had to explain to the cops.

The script in Armand's hand was dog-eared, stained with coffee, and covered in notes.

"It's old," said Reine-Marie.

The typeface was ragged, not the clean look of a computer, but rather the chunky print of a typewriter.

Armand nodded.

"What is it?" she asked quietly.

"Nothing." He smiled but no laugh lines radiated from the corners of his eyes.

"I'm in the play too," said Brian, holding up his copy of the script.

"My gay roommate," Gabri explained to them.

"He's not gay, and neither are you," snapped Antoinette in exasperation.

"Don't tell Olivier," said Myrna. "He'll be a little disappointed."

"And very surprised," said Gabri.

Decaying leaves still sticking to his torn jacket and jeans, the boy swept up the last of the broken gla.s.s and trudged back to the table.

"Just so you know," he said, handing the broom and pan to Olivier. "I'm pretty sure there're some diamonds in there."

"Merci," said Olivier.

"Come on," said Armand, getting up and giving the stick back to the boy. "It's getting late. Grab your bike. I'll put it in my car and give you a lift home."

"The gun was really, really big, patron," said the boy, following Monsieur Gamache out of the bistro. "As big as this building. And there was a monster on it. With wings."

"Of course there was," they heard Armand say. "I'll make sure it doesn't hurt you."

"And I'll protect you," said the boy, swishing the stick so violently it struck Armand in the knee.

"I hope you have another husband waiting in the wings," said Antoinette. "I'm not sure this one will survive the walk to the car."

They watched Armand put the bicycle in the back of the Volvo, then he put the stick in the backseat, but the boy took it out and stood firm. He was going nowhere without it in his hands. It was, after all, a dangerous world.

Armand admitted defeat and relented, though they could see him giving the boy ground rules.

"I'd go on match.com right now, if I were you," said Myrna to Reine-Marie.

After a few kilometers the boy turned to Gamache.

"What're you humming?"

"Was I humming?" said Armand, surprised.

"Oui." And the boy perfectly reproduced the tune.

"It's called 'By the Waters of Babylon,'" said Armand. "A hymn."

John Fleming. John Fleming. He a.s.sociated the hymn with him, though Gamache could never figure out why.

It couldn't be the same man, he thought. It's a common name. He was seeing ghosts where none existed.

"We don't go to church," said the boy.

"Neither do we," said Armand. "Not often anyway. Though sometimes I sit in the little one in Three Pines, when no one else's there."

"Why?"

"Because it's peaceful."

The boy nodded. "Sometimes I sit in the woods because it's peaceful. But then the aliens arrive."

The boy began humming again, in a high, thin voice, a tune Gamache recognized from long, long ago.

"How do you know that song?" Gamache asked. "It's way before your time."

"My dad sings it to me every night at bedtime. It's by Neil Young. Dad says he's a genius."

Gamache nodded. "I agree with your father."

The boy clutched the stick.

"I hope the safety's on," said Gamache.

"It is." He turned to Armand. "The gun's real, patron."

"Oui," said Gamache.

But he wasn't listening. He was watching the road, and thinking of the tune stuck in his head.

By the waters, the waters of Babylon, We sat down and wept.

But the play wasn't called that. It was called She Sat Down and Wept.

The play could not possibly be by that John Fleming. He didn't write plays. And even if he did, no director in his right mind would produce it. It must be another man with the same name.

Beside him, the boy looked out the window at the early fall landscape and clutched the stick just below where his father had etched his name into the hilt.

Laurent. Laurent Lepage.

CHAPTER 3.

Their dinner guests had already arrived and were sipping drinks and eating apple and avocado salsa with corn chips by the time Armand returned.

"Got Laurent home all right, I see," said Reine-Marie, greeting him at the door. "No alien invasions?"

"We nipped it in the bud."

"Not quite," said Gabri, standing at the door to their study. "One got through Earth's defenses."

Armand and Reine-Marie looked into the small room off the living room where an elderly, angular woman with ladders up her stockings and patches on her sweater sat in an armchair reading.

"It's the mother s.h.i.t," said Gabri.

A strong smell of gin met them. A duck sat on the old woman's lap and Henri, the Gamaches' German shepherd, was curled at her feet. Gazing up adoringly at the duck.

"Don't worry about greeting me at the door," Armand said to Henri. "It's fine. Really."

He looked at the dog and shook his head. Love took all forms. This was, though, a step up from Henri's previous crush, which was the arm of the sofa.

"The first hint of infestation was the smell of gin," said Gabri. "Her race seems to run on it."

"What's for dinner?" their neighbor Ruth Zardo demanded, struggling out of the armchair.

"How long have you been there?" Reine-Marie asked.

"What day is it?"

"I thought you were out clubbing baby seals," said Gabri, taking Ruth's arm.

"That's next week. Don't you read my Facebook updates?"

"Hag."

"f.a.g."

Ruth limped into the living room. Rosa the duck goose-stepped behind her, followed by Henri.

"I was once head of homicide for the Srete du Quebec," said Gamache wistfully as they watched the parade.

"I don't believe it," said Reine-Marie.

"Bonjour, Ruth," said Antoinette.

Ruth, who hadn't noticed there was anyone else in the room, looked at Antoinette and Brian, then over to Myrna.

"What're they doing here?"

"We were invited, unlike you, you demented old drunk," said Myrna. "How can you be a poet and never notice anything and anyone around you?"