54 pages • 1 hour read
Louise PennyThe Nature of the Beast
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 28-36Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 28 Summary
The next morning, Brian approaches Gamache and explains that he heard the conversation with Mary Fraser. Brian now understands that Couture’s role as the designer of the gun may have led to Antoinette’s death, but he doesn’t know anything about the plans for the weapon. Gamache is departing for his delayed trip to Highwater and offers to drop Brian off at the local theatre on the way.
Meanwhile, Clara and Myrna speak with Professor Rosenblatt to see if he knows anything that could help them to understand what happened to their friend, Antoinette. Rosenblatt is unwilling to disclose any confidential information, but because he knows that Clara is an artist, he shows her a photograph of the etching on the gun (the image of the Whore of Babylon).
Chapter 29 Summary
Gamache and Brian arrive at the theatre, where Antoinette had already begun to assemble the set and staging for the play. Gamache realizes that the stagecraft includes items from Antoinette’s home and surmises that the plans could be somewhere amongst the items that have been taken to the theatre. He immediately calls Lacoste to come and search these items. Gamache also realizes that the photo of Bull and Couture together was taken in Brussels (the final location where Bull lived before being assassinated). This realization confirms that Bull and Couture not only knew each other, but that Couture had “stayed on to work with Dr. Bull while Project Babylon was being developed” (250).
When Jean-Guy and Lacoste arrive at the theatre, Gamache explains that in the last few days before her death, Antoinette moved many items from her home (which was formerly the home of her uncle) to the theatre. She did so under the guise of using them as part of the set, but the real reason was to conceal these items. This act therefore implies that Antoinette knew about her uncle’s connection to the supergun. The investigators now wonder Laurent’s killer also killed Antoinette. However, it is also possible that there are two separate killers. A thorough search of the theatre begins as the investigators look for the plans and the firing mechanism, but the process is expected to take days to complete.
Gamache leaves the theatre and travels to Highwater, following the route that he knows the CSIS agents to have taken. He walks through a deserted area of woods and observes rails and broken pieces of machinery; they reveal that the supergun was initially located there and then moved to another location.
Chapter 30 Summary
Lacoste, Jean-Guy, and Gamache continue to discuss Antoinette’s murder, considering different suspects and motives. They are distracted when Adam Cohen shares information about Al Lepage, who is now being investigated as a possible suspect in his son Laurent’s murder. Cohen has learned that Al is not a draft dodger, as he claimed; instead, he is a deserter from the American army. He served in the Vietnam War and participated in the Son My massacre, in which unarmed civilians, including women and children, were assaulted and killed by American forces. When he was about to be indicted for war crimes, Al (whose real name is actually Frederick Lawson) fled to Canada and changed his name. He was “not running from a war he didn’t believe in, but from justice” (262).
Adam’s research has also revealed that Guillaume Couture owned land near the village of Highwater; Gamache confirms that this land is where two superguns (one a much smaller model) were initially assembled before the larger one was moved to the location near Three Pines. Rosenblatt arrives at the gathering, and Gamache invites him to look through the seemingly random items that they gathered at the theatre. Rosenblatt fiddles with some of them and figures out how they can be assembled to create the firing mechanism for the supergun.
Chapter 31 Summary
Gamache and Rosenblatt speak in private. Gamache asks Rosenblatt about Highwater, and the professor reveals that he has known all along about the existence of another, much smaller, supergun. Rosenblatt now tells Gamache openly about the trajectory of the project. The smaller supergun at Highwater was designed first and was nicknamed Baby Babylon. Quite a few people knew about it, but they did not believe that it would actually work. Couture and Bull tested the gun but were unable to accurately control its trajectory, so they abandoned it. After that, Bull moved to Brussels, and there were occasional rumors that he was working on a new supergun, but nothing was ever confirmed. While most people “dismissed Gerald Bull as a fool, a dilettante” (270), there was enough fear and suspicion about his work that he was eventually assassinated. However, because Couture was the one with the intelligence to actually design a working supergun, he went on to build Big Babylon, the large supergun that was found near Three Pines.
Chapter 32 Summary
Gamache confirms to Lacoste and Jean-Guy that “Project Babylon” refers to the creation of not one, but two superguns. They confront Mary and Sean with this information, and the CSIS agents claim that they knew about Baby Babylon. (They secretly went to Highwater to check on it, which is how Gamache tracked them.) However, they state that they never knew of the existence of the second, larger gun. Mary and Sean continue to insist that keeping the gun a secret is of vital importance, but the police counter that the agents should instead be contributing to the investigation of the two murders.
Meanwhile, Clara confides to Gamache that she believes Evie Lepage (Laurent’s mother) to be the artist who drew the etching of the Whore of Babylon on the supergun. Clara became familiar with Evie’s artistic style when she saw drawings of lambs at the Lepage home. When she later saw the photo of the etching, she realized that they must have been made by the same artist. Gamache tells her to go to Lacoste with this information immediately. Clara does so, and Clara, Lacoste, and Jean-Guy go together to confront Evie. However, Evie is confused and explains that the drawings Clara saw were sketched by Al. Police agents go to question Al.
Chapter 33 Summary
Having pieced together some important aspects of the case, Gamache questions Ruth and Clement Beliveau. They admit that in the early 1980s, Guillaume Couture told them about a large mansion that was being built in an isolated area of the nearby woods. This false claim was meant to provide an explanation for any noises or unusual occurrences that the residents of Three Pines might notice while the supergun was being assembled. A short time later, two men who claimed to be affiliated with the construction project approached Clement and asked if he knew any local artists. The men made Clement uncomfortable, and he sent them to ask Ruth.
Ruth was also uncomfortable, but she referred the men to Al Lepage, since she knew that he was a talented artist. One of the men who was particularly frightening explained that he wanted to commission an artist to draw the Whore of Babylon. He also pressured Ruth to write poetry to accompany the art. Ruth refused to participate in the project. Looking back, Ruth admits that the frightening man terrified her. She states, “I threw them Al Lepage, in the hopes they’d take him and leave me” (285). Ruth also explains that after this interaction, she went to the local church and wept out of shame and distress.
At first, Gamache is confused. One of the men who eventually hired Al Lepage to design the etching is clearly Gerald Bull, but at first he doesn’t know the identity of the third man who terrified Ruth and Clement. Then he realizes that the third man is John Fleming.
Chapter 34 Summary
Gamache continues to question Ruth and Clement. They admit to knowing that Al was not a draft dodger, although they weren’t clear on the full nature of his participation in war crimes. When John Fleming was seeking a collaborator, they sent him to Al partially because “Al Lepage or Frederick Lawson or whatever he chose to call himself was already damned” (288). Gamache tells Lacoste and Jean-Guy that John Fleming collaborated with Guillaume Couture and Gerald Bull. Fleming is the third man in the photo of the group that was taken in Belgium, but no one initially recognized him.
Lacoste, Gamache, and Jean-Guy question Al and Evie Lepage. The investigators believe that Al was aware of the supergun all along because he designed the etching for it. They wonder if he killed his own son when Laurent discovered the gun. However, Al claims that he simply took the commission because he needed money, but he had no idea how the art would be used. From the photo, he identifies Bull and Fleming as the two men who hired him. Gamache and Jean-Guy reveal to Evie that her husband is not a draft dodger, and that he committed war crimes, including harming women and children. Evie is devastated and enraged. Lepage admits that he has been haunted by his actions ever since, and he drew on those memories to create the etching.
Chapter 35 Summary
Gamache and Jean-Guy are both very disturbed upon hearing Lepage confess to killing innocent civilians. Gamache announces that he will go to the maximum-security prison to speak with Fleming. Jean-Guy insists on accompanying him.
Chapter 36 Summary
Gamache questions Fleming, who refuses to reveal how he first began to work with Gerald Bull. Gamache tells Fleming that both guns have been discovered, along with the connections to Guillaume Couture and Al Lepage. Because Gamache already seems to know everything, Fleming openly admits to having murdered Gerald Bull on the instructions of a fourth party. Gamache realizes that there is another player in the supergun plot: someone who took the photo of the three conspirators (Fleming, Bull, and Couture). Eventually, Gamache concludes that Fleming knows where the plans for the gun are located. Fleming makes Gamache an offer, saying, “Come back and let me loose so I can give you the plans for Armageddon, and then disappear” (313).
Chapters 28-36 Analysis
As the novel approaches its climax, crucial new information raises and intensifies the implications of The Destructive Consequences of Deception, and to this end, Penny makes sure to include a wealth of historical material, thereby emphasizing that such deceptions have effects in real life as well. Historically, when Bull was hired by the Iraqi government, he was contracted to build two full-sized superguns and a smaller prototype gun. This small gun was built on Bull’s own land in Quebec, near the Canadian-American border. Penny notes in an appendix to the novel that while she was writing, a friend from the area “drove us to the site of Baby Babylon, still fenced and chained” (376), and she clearly uses details from the trip to embellish her own fictitious tale. Within the world of the novel, the discovery of the site of the smaller gun provides further evidence that nothing is as it seems, and in this way, Penny imbues her writing with a larger social commentary, expanding on the theme of The Moral Implications of Art. Additionally, because Gamache finds the location of the site after tracking the movements of the two CSIS agents, the discovery proves that the agents are working toward their own ends and are not committed to supporting Gamache’s murder investigation. This implies that Gamache cannot rely on their support and suggests that the agents may have malevolent intentions.
The theme of The Destructive Consequences of Deception becomes particularly prominent when the narrative reveals two major secrets: the truth about Al’s violent past and the secret that Ruth has been hiding for decades. The revelation that the gentle character of Al is in fact a fugitive from justice and a perpetrator of war crimes emphasizes the looming fact that even the most innocuous of public personas can hide dark and dangerous things. By invoking the controversial events surrounding the Vietnam War, Penny once again crafts a veneer of authenticity by interweaving fact and fiction to relate the subplot of Al’s past history. In the historical massacre of March 16, 1968, American army personnel killed hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians in the area surrounding the village of Son My; they also raped and tortured some of the victims, including women and children. Twenty-six soldiers who participated in the attacks were eventually charged with war crimes, although only one was convicted. The events were concealed for some time, but the massacre eventually received widespread media coverage, including the publication of photographs.
This information completely contradicts Al’s peace-loving persona and renders his character increasingly suspicious, for as Jean-Guy notes, “We now know Al Lepage’s capable of killing a child” (262). The revelation that Al took up a seemingly loving and idyllic life in Three Pines in order to cover up the dark secret of his past crimes foreshadows the later revelation that Brian Fitzgerald is guilty of similarly dark deeds. When Al confesses to participating in the killing, he tries to absolve himself by claiming that he “had no choice. It was strategic. They were the enemy” (293). These comments and the context of Al’s crimes contribute to the novel’s overall critique of war, for almost all of the tragic events that unfold in the plot can be traced back to large-scale military endeavors. Without such projects, the guns would never have been built.
Nonetheless, Al’s life choices prove to be evidence of his essential corruption, and the narrative implies that his morally compromised nature led directly to his participation in the supergun project. When Gamache reflects that Al’s “past had shown up one day, and knocked on his door, and asked him to do an etching” (293), he draws a distinct parallel between the Son My massacre and John Fleming, for both are characterized as being two different embodiments of evil. Ruth reinforces this philosophical connection when she explains that she sent Fleming to see Al Lepage because she perceived Al to be “already damned” (288). Even though Al did not know the purpose for which the etching was being commissioned, his artwork forges an abstract connection between two different historical conflicts: the Vietnam War and the subsequent military threat posed by the Iraqi regime.
The revelation of Al’s secret is directly tied to Ruth’s admission of her own moment of moral failing. She believes that she committed a terrible act when she sent Fleming to see Al, and she has carried a sense of guilt and shame ever since. In some ways, Ruth’s secret has corrupted her, for it leads to her decision to temporarily conceal her past encounter with Fleming from Gamache, even though she could have told him as soon as the authorship of the play was revealed. This subplot also incorporates a key literary allusion that sheds light on the title of the novel. When Fleming tried to convince Ruth to participate in the project, it is revealed that “he was the one who quoted Yeats” (284). By alluding to the poem “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats, Fleming invokes Yeats’s use of biblical imagery from the Book of Revelation, specifically that of a “rough beast.” Significantly, Yeats wrote his poem in 1919, shortly after the conclusion of World War I, which indicates that he also was reflecting on the nature of a chaotic world order unleashed by a large-scale military conflict.
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By Louise Penny
