The Nature of the Beast (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #11) - Louise Penny Page 0,64

eighties,” he said. “You were here then. Do you remember anything? It must’ve made a racket in the forest. You couldn’t miss it.”

“It’s a question only a city person would ask. You think the countryside is silent, but it isn’t. It would put New York City to shame some days. Chain saws are going around here all the time. Clearing land, cutting down trees, sawing off branches hanging too close to Hydro lines. People getting wood for the winter. Between the chain saws and the lawnmowers it can be deafening. And don’t get me started on the frogs and beetles in spring. No one would notice, or remember, a particular racket in the woods thirty years ago.”

Beauvoir nodded. “He didn’t hire locals?”

“Well, he didn’t hire me,” said Ruth. She slugged back the tea.

* * *

Monsieur Béliveau looked more morose than ever.

“Désolé, I wish I could help. I was here at the time and running the general store, but I don’t remember anything.”

“The gun is huge,” Chief Inspector Lacoste said. “Massive. Whoever built it would’ve needed help clearing the land and bringing in the pieces, and then assembling it. Can you remember any activity in the forest?”

“Non,” he said, shaking his head.

She waited for more, but no more was offered. She would have to go in and get the information, pull it from him.

“If he was going to hire someone to clear the site, who would it have been back then?”

“Gilles Sandon did a lot of work in the woods,” said Monsieur Béliveau. “But he’s too young. And Billy Williams has a backhoe and is handy with a chain saw, but he’s had the municipal contract for forty years. Keeps him pretty busy.”

Lacoste had already spoken to both men. Neither knew Gerald Bull. Neither knew anything about the gun. Neither had been hired to clear the land or bring in strange machinery back in the mid to late 1980s.

“Most everyone around here has a chain saw and cuts wood for the winter. Most do odd jobs for cash.” He shook his head. “Not exactly skilled labor.”

“No.”

“How’s this supposed to help find who killed the Lepage boy?” asked Monsieur Béliveau.

Isabelle Lacoste picked up the photograph.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “But that gun and Laurent’s death are connected. He was killed because he found it. I don’t suppose you remember anyone, a stranger, coming here in the last few years, asking about a gun in the woods?”

“Non, madame, no one came into my store asking for a Supergun.”

His morose and serious tone made his answer all the more ludicrous.

She put the photograph of Dr. Bull back into her pocket. They were doing the forensics, doing the interviews, collecting all the facts. But it wasn’t a fact that had killed Laurent. It was fear. Someone was so frightened of what the boy had found, by what the boy would do or say, that they had to kill him.

It took a certain type of person, and a certain type of secret, to kill a child. And a great, big, stinking, putrid emotion.

Chief Inspector Gamache had taught her that.

Yes, collect evidence, collect facts. Absolutely. The facts would convict him, but the feelings would find him.

* * *

Clara had put the shepherd’s pie and apple crisp in the fridge. They’d been her own comfort food, after Peter had gone. She’d followed the casseroles back to sanity. Thanks to the kindness of neighbors who kept baking them, and kept bringing them. And who’d kept her company.

And now it was Clara’s turn to return the comfort and the casseroles and the company.

“Where’s Al?” she asked. The large man was usually at home, fixing something or sorting baskets of produce.

“In the fields,” said Evie. “Harvesting.”

Clara looked out the kitchen window and saw Al Lepage, his gray ponytail falling down his broad back as he knelt in the squash patch.

Immobile. Staring down at the rich earth.

It seemed far too intimate a moment, and Clara turned back to Evie.

“How’re you doing?”

“It feels like my bones are dissolving,” said Evelyn. And Clara nodded. She knew that feeling.

Evie left the kitchen and Clara and the dog followed her. Clara thought they were going into the sitting room, but instead Evie lumbered up the stairs and stood at a closed door. Harvest had stayed at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at them, either too old to climb, or no longer motivated, without the reward of the boy to play with.

“Al won’t come in here,” she explained. “I have to keep the door closed.