The Nature Of The Beast Part 63

But then all amus.e.m.e.nt disappeared. "You need to know," said Rosenblatt, "the clock hasn't stopped. It has simply been reset."

Armand Gamache had watched him walk away, believing he was looking at the taproot. From which Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme and John Fleming had sprung.

Jean-Guy and Armand strolled in silence around the village green, through the cold, crisp fresh autumn evening.

"Professor Rosenblatt might not have been in any danger when he stepped in front of the gun, but you were, patron." Beauvoir stopped and turned to face his father-in-law. "Thank you."

"Not everyone would have burned those plans, mon vieux. It was one of the most magnificent things I've ever seen. And I'm a man who's seen the Manneken Pis."

A laugh escaped Beauvoir, and then a smaller, deeper sound before he m.u.f.fled it.

"You're a brave man in a brave country, Jean-Guy. A man so remarkable needs to pa.s.s that courage on to his children."

They walked in silence, by choice for Gamache, by necessity for Jean-Guy, who couldn't yet speak.

"Merci," he finally said. Then fell silent again.

As they pa.s.sed the B and B, Armand saw a shadow in a window. An elderly man, preparing for bed. Where he would dream, perhaps, of children and grandchildren and friends. A warm hearth, a good book, quiet conversation. A life that might have been.

The next morning a dark police van drove up to the Canadian side of the U.S. border crossing at Richford.

A man and a woman in the uniform of the Judge Advocate General's office in the States stood just on the other side of the barrier, military police at their side.

Waiting.

The van stopped twenty meters short, its engine running. The army officers looked at each other and shifted from foot to foot. Antsy.

The van door slid open and a large, burly man with wild gray hair stepped out. Then he turned and reached out his hand to help an elderly woman from the vehicle. And, after her, a tall elderly man.

They walked on either side of Al Lepage. Their pace measured, their faces solemn. Returning the man. Finishing the deed.

The bar lifted, but just before he crossed, Ruth stopped him.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I sent John Fleming to you."

"I know."

"No, you don't know. He terrified me and I wanted to get rid of him. I gave him you to save myself."

Al Lepage considered Ruth Zardo.

"I could have sent him away too. That's the difference between us. You saw evil and wanted nothing to do with it. But I invited him in."

Al looked at the officers waiting for him. Then turned to the man and woman who had saved him once. He shook Monsieur Beliveau's hand, then looked at Ruth.

"May I?" he asked, and when she nodded, he kissed her on one cheek. "I have no right to ask this, but please look after Evelyn. She knew none of this."

Then he stepped across the border and became Frederick Lawson once again.

Before taking Al Lepage across the border that morning, Ruth had something she needed to do.

She picked up Rosa and walked over to Clara's cottage. Letting herself in, she found Clara where she knew she'd be. Ruth sat on the sprung and lumpy sofa that smelled of banana peels and apple cores and watched Clara at the easel, staring at Peter's portrait.

"Who hurt you once, so far beyond repair?" said Ruth.

"The line from your poem," said Clara, turning on the stool to look at Ruth.

"I was asking you, Clara. Who hurt you once?" Ruth gestured to the easel. "What're you waiting for?"

"Waiting?" asked Clara. "Nothing."

"Then why're you stuck? Like the characters in that G.o.dd.a.m.ned play. Are you waiting for someone, something to save you? Waiting for Peter to tell you it's okay to get on without him? You're looking for milk in the wrong place."

"I just want to paint," said Clara. "I don't want to be saved, I don't want to be forgiven. I don't even want milk. I just want to paint."

Ruth struggled out of the sofa. "I did."

"You did what?" asked Clara.

"The answer to that question. All those years when I couldn't write, I blamed John Fleming. But I was wrong."

Clara watched Ruth and Rosa waddle away. She had no idea what the crazy old woman was talking about. But sitting in front of the canvas, it slowly sank in.

Who could do such damage? Who knew where the weaknesses, the fault lines lay? Who could cause all that internal bleeding?

Clara turned back to the portrait of Peter.

"I'm sorry," she said, looking into his faded face. "Forgive me."

She placed it carefully against a wall, and put up a fresh canvas.

She knew now why she was blocked. She was trying to do the wrong painting. Trying to make amends by turning painting into penance.

Clara picked up her brush and contemplated the empty canvas. She would do a portrait of the person who had hurt her once, beyond repair.

With one bold stroke after another she painted. Capturing the rage, the sorrow, the doubt, the fear, the guilt, the joy, the love, and finally, the forgiveness.

It would be her most intimate, most difficult painting yet.

It would be a self-portrait.

Evelyn Lepage sat in her kitchen contemplating the gas oven. Trying to get up the strength to turn it on. But all the bones of her body had finally dissolved. And she couldn't move. Not to save her life, and not to take it.

Out the window she saw a car pull up. Two elderly people got out.

"We've come to take you home, Evie," came the elderly woman's thin voice from the other side of the door. It was almost unrecognizable for its gentleness. "If you don't mind living with a broken-down old poet and her duck."

Jean-Guy held the phone to his ear and looked out the window of the Gamaches' study, to the quiet village. Then he turned from the window to the papers, neatly stacked, on his father-in-law's desk.

All the offers. The answer to "What next?" was in there.

And then the phone was answered.

"Oui, all?" came Annie's cheerful voice.

"Armand," said Reine-Marie, as they finished the breakfast dishes. "Are you ever going to tell me what John Fleming did?"

Armand put the dish down and dried his hands on the towel.

"What John Fleming did is in the past. It's over, gone."

She studied him closely. "Is it?"

"Oui. But if, after this phone call, you still want to know about Fleming, I'll tell you."

Reine-Marie turned around and saw Jean-Guy in the doorway holding out the phone. She took it, perplexed. And listened.

As the two men watched, the lines of her face re-formed, and her eyes filled with wonder. And all thought of John Fleming, of the Supergun, of the Wh.o.r.e of Babylon vanished, overwhelmed by a far greater force.

Reine-Marie looked at Jean-Guy, who was overcome with emotion. Then she turned to Armand, who was smiling, his eyes glistening. Then Reine-Marie sat down at the old pine table, and wept.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

Gerald Bull was a real man, a scientist, Canadian, an arms designer. I first came across his remarkable story in the mid-1990s when I worked as the host of a current affairs radio program for the CBC. My producer at the time, Allan Johnson, mentioned this man who'd built a ma.s.sive gun called Baby Babylon right on the border with the United States, in Quebec's Eastern Townships. It was, he said, the largest effin (Allan is a great journalist with a vast vocabulary) missile launcher in the world. And it was pointed into the United States.

It was believed that Gerald Bull was building this missile launcher, called Project Babylon, for Saddam Hussein, as the Iraqi dictator edged toward a regional war.

According to reports, Baby Babylon was built but did not work. It was a failure. But Gerald Bull was not put off, and there were rumors in the arms community that Project Babylon was actually two missile launchers, not one. There was a brother to Baby Babylon, called Big Babylon. This was a missile launcher so ma.s.sive it would make the first one look puny. And all the problems of Baby Babylon had been solved.

Big Babylon would work. It would fire a missile into low Earth orbit. The West was not happy. A weapon of that sort could not fall into the hands of an unstable dictator.

In early 1990, Gerald Bull was murdered in Brussels. Five bullets to the head-though, true to his life, even the manner of his death is mysterious. His killers were never found, though they were rumored to be Mossad, the Israeli enforcers.

Dr. Bull's life, his work, his death, was a sort of open secret at the time, though not well known outside a certain circle. With time, more and more information has come out.

Where we live, in Quebec's Eastern Townships, many people remember the man, and many worked on the huge missile launcher. Indeed, my a.s.sistant Lise's husband, Del, drove us to the site of Baby Babylon, still fenced and chained.

Such was the power of the man that people hereabouts are not anxious to talk about him or his gun even now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

LOUISE PENNY is the #1 New York Times and Globe and Mail bestselling author of ten previous Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novels. She has won numerous awards, including a CWA Dagger and the Agatha Award (five times), and was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. She lives in a small village south of Montreal.

Visit her on Facebook or at www.louisepenny.com or sign up for email updates here.

ALSO BY LOUISE PENNY.

The Long Way Home.

How the Light Gets In.

The Beautiful Mystery.

A Trick of the Light.

Bury Your Dead.

The Brutal Telling.

A Rule Against Murder.

The Cruelest Month.

A Fatal Grace.

Still Life.

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