The Nature of the Beast (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #11) - Louise Penny Page 0,35

the department the night before, and old missiles.

When the phone rang half an hour later, he picked it up and heard an unfamiliar voice.

“Is this Professor Rosenblatt?” the man asked in English with a Québécois accent.

“Yes.”

“My name’s Jean-Guy Beauvoir. I’m an inspector with the Sûreté du Québec. McGill University gave me your home number. I hope you don’t mind.”

“The Sûreté?” he asked.

“Yes.” Beauvoir decided not to tell him he was with homicide. The professor already sounded rattled. And elderly. He didn’t want another death on his hands.

“Are you the one who left the message at McGill?” Rosenblatt asked. “I tried to call you back but the man who answered said it was a bed and breakfast.”

Beauvoir apologized.

He sounds nice, Rosenblatt thought. Disarming.

But the professor emeritus knew what that meant. The most dangerous people he knew were disarming. He immediately put up his defenses.

“My cell phone won’t work where I am,” Inspector Beauvoir said. “So I had to leave the main number. I’m at a B and B, investigating a crime. We’ve come across something in the woods. Something we can’t explain.”

“Really?” Rosenblatt felt his curiosity swarming over his defenses. “What?”

“It seems to be a big gun.”

His curiosity skidded to a halt.

“I don’t deal with guns,” said Rosenblatt. “My field is, was, physics.”

“Yes, I know. I read your paper on climate change and trajectory.”

The professor leaned forward at his kitchen table.

“Really.”

Beauvoir chose not to tell him that “stared at” might have been a better description than “read.” Still, his Internet search the night before had yielded Rosenblatt’s name, and this article, and Beauvoir had understood enough to know that this was a man who specialized in great big guns.

And he had one.

“I doubt I can help you,” said Professor Rosenblatt. “That paper was written twenty years ago. I’m retired. If it’s a gun you’ve found, you might want to get in touch with a gun club.”

He heard soft laughter down the line.

“I’m afraid I haven’t described it well,” Beauvoir said. “I don’t have the vocabulary, especially in English. Or in French, for that matter. I’m not talking about a shotgun or a handgun. This seems like a sort of missile launcher, but of a design I’ve never seen before. It’s in the middle of the forest, in the Eastern Townships.”

Professor Rosenblatt leaned back, as though shoved. “In the Townships?”

“Oui. It was hidden under camouflage netting and overgrown. It seems to be old,” Beauvoir went on. “Probably been there for decades. Professor?”

The silence down the line made Jean-Guy Beauvoir wonder if it had gone dead. Or Rosenblatt had.

“I’m still here. Go on.”

Beauvoir took a deep breath, then plunged ahead. “It’s huge. Bigger than any weapon I’ve ever seen. Ten times, a hundred times bigger. We needed ladders to get onto it, and even they aren’t long enough.”

And again, the line appeared to go dead.

“Professor?”

Beauvoir did not expect an answer. What he did expect to hear was a dial tone.

“I’m here,” said Rosenblatt. “Is there anything on it at all that might identify it?”

“Not a serial number or a name,” Beauvoir said. “Though it’s possible we missed something. It’ll take a while to go over every inch.”

Rosenblatt made a humming sound, like his brain was whirring.

“There is one thing,” Jean-Guy said.

“Yes?”

“It’s not exactly an identifying mark, but it is unusual. It’s a design.”

Michael Rosenblatt stood up at his kitchen table, spilling his coffee over that morning’s Montréal Gazette.

“An etching?” he asked.

“Oui,” said Beauvoir, standing up slowly at his desk in the Incident Room.

“At the base?”

“Oui,” said Beauvoir, caution creeping into his voice.

“Is it a beast?” Rosenblatt asked, finding it difficult to breathe.

“A beast?”

“Un monstre.” His French wasn’t very good, but it was good enough for that.

“Oui. A monster.”

“With seven heads.”

“Oui,” said Inspector Beauvoir. He sat back down at his desk in the Incident Room.

Professor Rosenblatt sat back down at his kitchen table.

“How did you know?” Beauvoir asked.

“It’s a myth,” said Rosenblatt. “At least, that’s what we thought.”

“We need your help,” said Inspector Beauvoir.

“Yes, you do.”

CHAPTER 11

“Hello?”

Michael Rosenblatt opened the wooden door and stuck his head in, without great optimism.

This must be a mistake, he thought.

The place looked abandoned, like most of the old train stations in Québec. But the guy at the bistro had pointed him in this direction.

“Bonjour?” he called, louder this time.

As his eyes adjusted, he saw the outline of something large and it stopped him from going further into the gloomy building.

He peered at it. His eyes must’ve been playing tricks on him because it appeared to be a fire