The Nature of the Beast (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #11) - Louise Penny Page 0,36

truck. Parked in the middle of an old train station. Which he’d been told was the Sûreté office. Nothing was making sense.

He turned around, unsure what to do next.

“That was fast,” said a man’s voice.

From behind the fire truck came a man with his arm extended.

“Professor Rosenblatt? I’m Jean-Guy Beauvoir,” he said. “We spoke on the phone.”

“How do you do?” said Rosenblatt, taking the strong hand.

Before him was a Sûreté officer in his late thirties. Attractive and well groomed. Slender but not thin, he gave the impression of immense suppressed energy. A slingshot about to be released.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir saw a short elderly man in a tweed jacket and bow tie. His white hair was wispy on top and his midsection was comfortably rounded.

With one soft hand, Professor Rosenblatt pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. With the other he clutched a battered leather satchel.

But the eyes were bright. Sharp. Assessing. Despite his appearance, there was nothing muddled, nothing befuddled about this man.

“Thank you for coming. I didn’t expect you so quickly,” Beauvoir said, and turned to walk back into the old railway station.

“I don’t live all that far from here.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I retired down here, though I have to say this village comes as a bit of a surprise. I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s difficult to find,” said Beauvoir. “Hope you didn’t have trouble.”

“I’m afraid I have no sense of direction,” said Rosenblatt, following Beauvoir. “It’s a source of some embarrassment. I suspect it undermines my credibility as a specialist in guided missiles.”

He described how he’d wandered the back roads, pulling over now and then to consult maps and his GPS. But no village called Three Pines seemed to exist. He grew more and more anxious, turning, turning, turning at random, trying this road, that dead end.

“Three Pines,” said Rosenblatt. “Even the name sounds slightly ridiculous in an area thick with pines.”

But then, just as he was about to give up, he crested a hill, along a rutted dirt road, and put on the brakes.

There appeared below him, like an apparition, a small village. And in the very center were three tall pine trees. Waving.

He looked at his GPS. It showed him in the middle of nowhere. Literally. No where. No roads. No community. Not even a forest. Just blank. As though he’d driven off the face of the earth.

Professor Rosenblatt got out of his car. He needed to gather his thoughts, his wits, before meeting that disarming Sûreté officer. He walked over to a bench on the brow of the hill and was about to sit down when he noticed two phrases, one above the other, carved into the wood on the back.

A Brave Man in a Brave Country

Surprised by Joy

Professor Rosenblatt turned and looked at the village and noticed the people in their gardens, on their porches, walking their dogs. Stopping to chat with each other. It seemed both languid and purposeful.

He wondered who they were, that they should choose to live in the middle of nowhere. And that those phrases should mean so much to them that they were carved at the entrance to the village.

Now Michael Rosenblatt followed the Sûreté officer into the main body of the old train station, where men and women were on phones, at computers, conferring over documents. Chalkboards and corkboards were filling up with photographs and schematics. A huge map of the immediate area had been pinned to a wall.

Inspector Beauvoir walked over to a young woman at a desk.

“Chief Inspector Lacoste, this is the man I was telling you about. Professor Rosenblatt is a physicist. He specializes in ballistics and high altitude.”

“Professor Rosenblatt,” said Lacoste, getting up to greet the older man. “High altitude? An astrophysicist?”

“Well, not quite that high,” said Rosenblatt, shaking her hand. “Just a plain garden-variety physicist. And I’m afraid your colleague should have used the past tense. I’m an old academic.”

“Well, we have an old gun,” said Lacoste with a smile. But he could feel her assessing him. Wondering if he’d gone gaga yet. “Inspector, would you call the Chief Inspector and see if he’d like to join us?”

“I thought you were the Chief Inspector,” said Rosenblatt. He stood gripping his briefcase and willed himself to relax.

“I am. He’s the man I replaced. He retired down here.”

“So did I,” said Rosenblatt. “A peaceful place.”

“I guess it depends where you live,” said Lacoste, taking a seat and indicating one across from her. “There’s something you need to know before we head into the woods. The site