The Nature of the Beast (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #11) - Louise Penny Page 0,45

didn’t care. If he’d treat a former cop like that, how’s he going to treat citizens?”

“You look shaken.”

“I am. I’d hoped by getting rid of the corruption the worst was over, but now…” He shrugged and smiled thinly. “Is he alone, or is there a whole class of thugs entering the Sûreté? Armed with clubs and guns.”

“I’m sorry, Armand.”

She reached across the table and placed her hand on his.

He looked down at her hand, then up into her eyes, and smiled.

“It’s a place I no longer recognize. To everything there is a season. I’m thinking of talking to Professor Rosenblatt about his job at McGill.”

“You think he’s not who he claims to be?”

“Oh, no, not at all. I’m sure Isabelle and Jean-Guy checked him out. No, this is personal interest.”

“Really? Thinking about becoming a physicist?” asked Reine-Marie. When he didn’t answer, she looked at him closely. “Armand?”

She knew he wasn’t considering studying science, but now she understood what he was considering.

If the big question facing both of them was, What next? could the answer be, University?

“Would that interest you?” he asked.

“Going back to school?”

She hadn’t really thought about it, but now that she did she realized there was a world of knowledge out there she’d love to dive into. History, archeology, languages, art.

And she could see Armand there. In fact, it was a far more natural fit than the Sûreté ever seemed. She could see him walking through the hallways, a student. Or a professor.

But either way, he belonged in the corridors of academe. And so did she. She wondered if the killing of young Laurent had finally, completely, put paid to any interest he had in the disgrace that was murder.

“You like the professor?” she asked, going back to her soup.

“I do, though there seems a strange disconnect between the man and what he did for a living. His field was trajectory and ballistics. The main people who’d benefit from his research would be weapons designers. And yet he seems so, so, gentle. Scholarly. It just doesn’t seem to fit.”

“Really?” she asked, trying not to smile. It was what she’d just been thinking about him. A scholarly man who pursued murderers. “I guess we’re not all what we seem.”

“He does seem to know his stuff, though. He identified the weapon immediately. He said it was a Supergun.”

“A Supergun?”

He’d wondered if she’d laugh. Sitting in the warm and cheerful bistro, with fresh warm bread and parsnip and apple soup in front of them, the very word sounded ridiculous. “Supergun.” Like something out of a comic book.

But Reine-Marie didn’t laugh. Instead she remembered, as he did every hour of every day, Laurent. Alive. And Laurent, dead. Because of the thing in the woods. No matter its name, there was nothing remotely funny about it.

“It was built by a man named Gerald Bull,” said Armand.

“But what’s it doing here?” she asked. “Did Professor Rosenblatt know?”

Armand shook his head, then gestured out the window. “Maybe they can tell us.”

Reine-Marie looked out and saw Lacoste and Beauvoir walking across the dirt road, to the path into the woods. And with them were two strangers. A man and a woman.

“Who are they?” asked Reine-Marie.

“At a guess, I’d say National Defence, or maybe CSIS.”

“Or maybe more academics,” suggested Reine-Marie.

* * *

Once again, Jean-Guy Beauvoir attached the huge plug to the huge receptacle and heard the clunk as the huge floodlights came on.

He kept his eyes on the CSIS agents and wasn’t disappointed.

They’d gone from standing shoulder to shoulder, holding their briefcases like commuters at a train station, to looking like two people who’d lost their minds.

Their eyes flew wide open, their mouths dropped, their heads in unison slowly, slowly tilted back. And they stared up. Up. Had it been raining they would have drowned.

“Holy shit,” was all Sean Delorme could say. “Holy shit.”

“It’s real,” said Mary Fraser. “He did it. He actually built it.” She turned to Isabelle Lacoste, who was standing beside her. “Do you know what this is?”

“It’s Gerald Bull’s Supergun.”

“How did you know?”

“Michael Rosenblatt told us.”

“Professor Rosenblatt?” asked Sean Delorme, recovering enough to stop saying “holy shit.”

“Yes.”

“How did he know?” said Delorme.

“He’s seen it,” said Beauvoir. “He’s here.”

“Of course he is,” said Mary Fraser.

“I asked him to come,” said Beauvoir.

“Ahhhh,” said Mary Fraser, turning away. Her eyes dragged back to the giant gun. But she wasn’t looking at the weapon. The CSIS file clerk was staring at the etching.

“Unbelievable,” she said under her breath.

“The stories were true then,” said Delorme, turning to his