A Great Reckoning

by Louise Penny

  Beauvoir closed the drawer, but not before Gamache saw something Jean-Guy had not.

  What was inside that drawer. Even from a distance, it was unmistakable.

  “As tempting as it is to start the investigation, we need to wait. Call Isabelle back, Jean-Guy, and report in more detail. She should be here soon with the homicide team. Can you please go to the main door and show her up here?”

  “Now?”

  “Is there a better time?”

  “Don’t you want me to help here?”

  “There’s nothing we can do to help. I just need the doctor to confirm he’s dead. You know the drill. Then I’ll lock the door and wait for you to return with Chief Inspector Lacoste.”

  Beauvoir looked down at the body.

  “Suicide?”

  “Maybe,” said Gamache. “Does something strike you as strange?”

  Beauvoir examined the scene more closely.

  “Oui. The gun. It’s on the wrong side. If he’d killed himself, it’d be on the same side as the entrance wound.”

  Gamache nodded, lost in thought.

  Beauvoir left, stopping at his own rooms to throw on some clothes.

  When he walked back down the corridor, the door to Leduc’s rooms was closed and Gamache was nowhere to be seen.

  * * *

  Armand stood over the body of Serge Leduc, careful to avoid contaminating evidence more than he already had.

  His eye took in the placement of furniture, the curtains and books. The ashes in the hearth.

  But his eye kept returning to the body, and the weapon. As Jean-Guy had said, on the wrong side of the body, for suicide.

  Yes, it was odd that the weapon was there. But what was odder still was that the murderer must have placed it there.

  For this was murder, Gamache knew. And there was a murderer. And instead of trying to make it look like suicide, as any reasonable killer would, this one had made sure there was no doubt.

  Serge Leduc’s death was deliberate.

  That’s what struck the former head of homicide as strange. Very strange. Not the body. Not even the fact Serge Leduc had been killed. But the behavior of his killer.

  Gamache stood staring. But not at the body. Now his attention had turned to the bedroom. Knowing he shouldn’t, but doing it anyway, Gamache walked swiftly into the bedroom and opened the bedside drawer.

  As he looked down, his face grew as grim as when he’d gazed at the body.

  * * *

  There was an electronic whirring, then a clunk, and the door to the academy opened. Chief Inspector Lacoste stepped inside quickly. Not because there was so much urgency to the case, but because it was so damned cold.

  A damp wind was sweeping across the flatlands, carrying moisture from melting snow and ice, for hundreds of miles, and depositing it in their bones.

  The initial message from Inspector Beauvoir had been brief. Simply that there’d been a death at the academy. Not who. Not how. Not even if it was murder, though the fact the call had been made to her, the head of homicide, was in itself a fairly significant clue.

  She also knew the victim had not been Commander Gamache. Beauvoir would have told her, in words, but also in his tone.

  Once in the car, an agent at the wheel and the Scene of Crime van behind, Isabelle Lacoste received another call from Beauvoir.

  “Tell me what you know,” she’d said.

  On the other end, Jean-Guy gave a brief smile. He wondered if Isabelle realized that was exactly how Chief Inspector Gamache had begun each and every homicide investigation.

  Tell me what you know.

  He told her what he knew, and as she listened she took notes on her tablet. But then she stopped and just listened.

  “The killer?” she asked, when he finished his report.

  “No sign of him,” said Beauvoir. “The cadets and staff are in the dining hall. The academy is on lockdown and they’re doing a head count.”

  “And the body?”

  “Commander Gamache is with him, waiting for the doctor. He’ll lock up and wait for you once death is confirmed.”

  “I’ve called the coroner. She’ll be arriving soon too.”

  “Bon. On first inspection, no one is missing and no one appears obviously guilty. No blood-stained hands.”

  It was not a joke. There would be blood on someone’s hands, and then some. To place a gun at Leduc’s temple like that, and fire.

  Beauvoir had questioned the night guards and staff, but not too closely. Just enough to find out if they’d seen anything that needed immediate action.

  They had not.

  Which led to an obvious conclusion.

  The killer hadn’t left, and hadn’t arrived. Because he was already there, hidden within these walls.

  * * *

  Isabelle Lacoste walked beside Jean-Guy Beauvoir down the deserted halls. The Scene of Crime team was behind them, their feet clacking on the marble floor.

  It was her first time in the new academy and she was curious. She’d heard rumors of extravagance. Of the project being wildly over budget.

  And then quieter whispers, of kickbacks and bribes and contract fixing. But nothing had ever been proven. Most likely because the Sûreté and the Québec government had bigger and more immediate messes to clean up.

  But those piles of merde were now under control. Those caught up in the corruption scandal within the Sûreté and the government were dead, in prison, or had been fired. And slowly, she suspected, the spotlight was turning toward the academy.

  Did that explain Armand Gamache taking over as commander?

  Did that explain the murder?

  She realized she’d linked the two, and now she stopped herself. Far too early for speculation.

  They turned the corner and saw a man standing outside a door. At his feet was a tray and shattered glass and china.

  As she drew closer, Isabelle Lacoste recognized him.

  Not Armand Gamache. It was Superintendent Brébeuf. And she checked herself yet again. Just plain old Brébeuf now. No longer a superintendent. Though she was so used to seeing him as that, it was her automatic reaction. Old habits, she thought. Very dangerous. As was he.

  Brébeuf was alone in the middle of the wide corridor, looking like a man lost, or abandoned.

  Isabelle felt her disgust growing with each step. She didn’t think it showed on her face, but it must have. He backed up slightly and nodded to her but didn’t offer his hand. Not wanting, she suspected, to risk her rejecting the offer in front of so many witnesses.

  “Chief Inspector Lacoste,” he said. “This is a terrible business.”

  “Yes.”

  He’d aged in the few years since she’d last seen him. Lacoste knew that the former superintendent of the Sûreté was the same age as Gamache, but he looked ten, fifteen years older. And while never a robust man, there’d been a sort of wiry vitality about him that many had admired. Including herself.

  But now he seemed desiccated. Withered.

  “Commander Gamache is inside with the body.”

  “So I understand,” said Chief Inspector Lacoste. “And why are you here?”

  He bristled slightly, but only slightly. The instinctive reaction of a once great man, reduced.

  “Monsieur Gamache asked me to get the academy doctor from the infirmary. I did. He confirmed that Professor Leduc is dead.”

  “Is the doctor still in the room?”

  “No, he left as soon as death was confirmed.”

  Isabelle Lacoste continued to stare at him, while her team stood behind her, kits at the ready.

  Those who knew who this man was, and once was, were watching with open curiosity.

  Brébeuf squared his shoulders, but somehow it only made him look more pathetic. And a thought drifted into her mind. Lacoste wondered if he knew that was the effect. And did it on purpose.

  And the purpose was obvious.

  It was easier, natural even, to dismiss those who were pathetic. Not to take the

m seriously, and certainly not to see a threat. There was even an instinctive desire to get out of their company. People who were pathetic were natural targets for the vicissitudes of life. And if you were standing beside one, you might get hit too. Collateral damage.

  “I stayed in case he wanted something else,” said Brébeuf.

  And now, before her eyes, Michel Brébeuf evolved into something else. Not a man disgraced, but a once beloved old mutt, waiting for attention from his master. A smile, a pat. Even a kick.

  Anything.

  In a very subtle way, Brébeuf seemed to be positioning himself as a loyal servant, and Gamache as a brute. It didn’t work on her. She knew the truth. But she suspected some might be taken in.

  “And that?” She pointed to the tray and toast and broken glass.

  “A cadet found the body,” said Beauvoir, stepping forward to answer the question. “He dropped the tray. We left it there.”

  “I’ll take samples,” said one of the forensics team, and he did, while another looked for prints and DNA on the door handle, and still another took photographs. And Lacoste wondered at this transformation in Michel Brébeuf.

  A leopard might not change its spots, but the former superintendent of the Sûreté had never been a leopard. He was then, and always would be, a chameleon.

  When the technician gave the all-clear, she stepped across the threshold, relieved to be away from him. A dead body was preferable to a living Brébeuf.

  Though prepared for what she’d see, violent, deliberate death still surprised Isabelle Lacoste. And it had clearly surprised Serge Leduc.

  CHAPTER 12

  “The academy doctor confirmed the death,” said Gamache, standing to one side as the Scene of Crime team got to work.

  “I’m assuming the cause is obvious,” said Lacoste.

  She stood next to her former chief, with Beauvoir on the other side of him. It still felt natural to be on either side of Armand Gamache. It felt safe. Though there was now a sense of nostalgia. Like going back to a childhood home.

  Gamache simply nodded.

  “We’ll have to wait for the coroner to give us the official cause of death, but yes,” said Beauvoir, looking down at Serge Leduc. “It would be hard to miss.”

  “When was he last seen alive?” asked Chief Inspector Lacoste.

  “He was at dinner in the dining hall,” said Commander Gamache. “That’s the last I saw of him.”

  “Me too,” said Beauvoir. “That would be about eight o’clock.”

  They looked around. There was no evidence that Leduc had entertained anyone in his rooms the evening before.

  Neither Gamache nor Beauvoir had ever been in these rooms, the private territory of the Duke.

  The apartment was the same layout as the Commander’s, only the mirror image. A living room led to a bedroom, with an en suite bath. But while Gamache’s was furnished in a modern style that suited the building and managed to make it inviting, this room felt stuffed, stifling.

  The furniture was heavy, Victorian. Dark wooden sideboard, massive horsehair sofa upholstered in a deep purple crushed velvet. It felt oppressive, but also vaguely effeminate. A contrast to the stark, linear world beyond his front door.

  It was like stepping into a boudoir, or a stage set.

  And yet Gamache had the feeling this was not staged. It was a reflection of who this man really was. Or at least an element of him. Much of the furniture, Gamache suspected, had been inherited, passed down within the family, perhaps for generations.

  Serge Leduc had wrapped himself in tradition. Even as he broke rule after rule.

  But then, the Victorians had revered the Great Man model. A single extraordinary individual for whom the normal rules didn’t apply. Great Men should rule and others should revere them. Leduc lived as though he believed it.

  “What sort of a man was he?” asked Lacoste.

  “What sort would you guess?” asked Gamache. “Judging by what you see.”

  “Fussy,” she said immediately. “Rigid. Probably pedantic and officious.”

  She looked down at the dead man, still in his street clothes. A jacket and tie. Neat. So at odds with what lay above the collar.

  “Am I close?”

  “Inspector Beauvoir, how would you describe Serge Leduc?”

  “A brute and a bully,” said Beauvoir. “Cunning and stupid. A weasel and a rat.”

  “Both the hunter and the hunted. An uncomfortable position,” said Gamache, looking around.

  “I would’ve thought he’d have lots of leather chairs,” said Beauvoir. “And antlers on the walls. Not this.”

  “I wonder if he was happy, when he stepped in here,” said Gamache. “He was clearly not happy outside these rooms.”

  “Well, not since you arrived, anyway,” said Beauvoir.

  Isabelle Lacoste took that in with interest.

  “It wasn’t suicide,” she said. “He was shot in the right temple, but the gun’s on the left side of the body. Now why would that be? Is that his weapon?”

  “I don’t know,” said Gamache. “I ordered that there be no firearms within the academy, except those locked in the armory.”

  “Does he have a key?”

  “He did, when he was second-in-command. But I took it from him and changed the locks. I have a key and the weapons instructor has one. It takes both to open the armory.”

  “Any ideas who could have done this?”

  “He was a divisive figure,” said Gamache, after considering for a moment. “Admired by some. Most of the professors who admired him are gone. A lot of the senior class looked up to him. But that, I think, was more fear than respect. This room might look like it belonged to a Victorian gentleman, but the Duke was really from the Dark Ages. He believed in swift and brutal punishment and that you could shape young people by battering away at them, as though they were horseshoes.”

  Isabelle Lacoste turned her full attention to Gamache. A man who was the antithesis of what he’d just described.

  “You didn’t like him?”

  “No, I did not. You’re not thinking…” He waved toward the body.

  “I’m just asking. The thinking will come later.”

  He smiled at that. “I neither liked nor trusted him.”

  “Then why—”

  “Did I keep him on? You’re far from the first to ask.”

  “And the answer?”

  “To keep an eye on him. You’re aware of the rumors of bribery and price fixing and even money laundering associated with the awarding of the contracts for this building?”

  “Yes, but not in detail.”

  “That’s because there are no details. Just a whole lot of suspicions. Circumstantial, but no hard evidence.”

  “You were trying to gather it?” she asked. “Did he know?”

  “Yes, I made sure he knew. When I met with him before term started, I showed him what I had.”

  “Why?” both Lacoste and Beauvoir asked, astonished.

  “To shock him.”

  “Well, it just shocked me,” said Beauvoir to Lacoste.

  “While looking for corruption in the Sûreté, I kept coming across references to strange dealings at the academy,” said Gamache, his voice low so that no one else could hear. “But even more disconcerting than suggestions of corruption in the academy was the behavior of the recent graduates. You must have noticed.”

  Both Lacoste and Beauvoir nodded.

  “There’s a brutality about them,” she said. “I won’t have any in my department.”

  “Reconsider that, please, Isabelle,” said Gamache. “They need decent role models.”

  “Indecent,” she said. “That’s the word for them. And I’ll consider it. That’s why you came here?”

  He nodded. “As goes the academy, so goes the Sûreté. I wanted to find out why it was graduating so many cadets steeped in cruelty. And to stop it.”

  “And have you?”

  He sighed. “Non. Not yet. But I knew Serge Leduc was at the center of whatever was happening.”

  “You called him the Duke,” said Lacoste. “Why?”

  “A nickname the cadets gave him,” said Beauvoir. “From his name, obviously. He seemed to like it.”

  “Not surprised,” said Lacoste. “So you showed the Duke what you had on him?”

  “Yes. I needed to shake him up. Show him how close I was. Make him do something stupid.”

  “And did he?”

  “I think he did,” said Gamache, glancing down at the body. “And so did someone else.”

  Isabelle Lacoste’s eyes shifted over to the gun. “A strange choice of weapon. I can see now that it wouldn’t be from the armory. You wouldn’t have a handgun like this there, would you?”

  Gamache shook his head. “Not even for history class. We only have weapons the cadets need to train on. Ones they’ll use in their jobs. No Sûreté agent would have used a gun like that in decades.”

  Lacoste bent down and took a closer look. “I’ve never seen one close up. A revolver. Used to be called a six-shooter, didn’t it?”

  “Oui,” said Beauvoir, joining her.

  She bent closer. “Still five bullets in the chambers.”

  Lacoste looked across the room, where some of her team were following the spray of blood. Trying to find the sixth.

  “On the way down, I was trying to work out why no one heard the shot. Now I know.” She used a pencil to point. “It has a silencer.”

  Lacoste stood back up, but Beauvoir remained on his haunches.

  “I didn’t think revolvers could have silencers,” he said.

  “Silencers can be fitted onto anything but they’re not usually effective on revolvers,” said Gamache.

  “The cadet who found the body,” said Lacoste. “Where is he?”

  “In my rooms,” said Gamache. “With one of the professors. He’s a freshman. Nathaniel Smythe. Would you like to speak to him?”

  “I would.” She turned to Jean-Guy Beauvoir, who was still looking at the gun. Then he stood and turned to her.

  “Trying to decide whether to invite me along?” he asked. “Am I a suspect?”

  “Oui. As is Commander Gamache. For now.”

  Gamache seemed completely unfazed by her statement. He’d come to that conclusion early on.

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