A Great Reckoning

by Louise Penny

  And he knew.

  CHAPTER 38

  When the movies ended, their guests left. Gélinas stayed up for a final drink by the fireplace, then went to bed while Reine-Marie and Armand cleaned up.

  “It was pretty bad?” she asked. Thinking his pallor must have come from the shoe box, still sitting on the kitchen table. She was wrong.

  “Young lives wasted,” he said. “The Hell where youth and laughter go.”

  “Armand?” she asked, having rarely seen him so upset.

  “Désolé. I was just thinking about what they were made to do.”

  She thought he was talking about the boys in the box. She was wrong.

  “Did you find the young Turcottes?” she asked.

  He took a deep breath and brought himself out of it. “Non. Those telegrams might’ve been lost. It’s surprising so many were kept.”

  He looked at her and forced a smile. “Did you enjoy the movie?”

  “I must’ve seen it a hundred times, and I still love it.”

  She hummed “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” while handing him warm, wet dishes.

  “Coming?” she asked, when the kitchen was clean and in order.

  “No, I think I’ll stay up for a bit.”

  She kissed him. “You okay?” When he nodded, she said, “Don’t be late.”

  Reine-Marie climbed the stairs to bed while he sat by the fireplace in the living room, Henri’s head on his lap.

  Their home creaked and then was quiet again, except for the sleet scratching the windows. He just needed a few quiet minutes to himself. To think.

  Then Armand got up and began turning off lights. As he approached the front door to lock up, the handle began to turn. It was midnight. Everyone had gone home. Everyone else was in bed.

  Gamache gestured Henri to his side, then the two moved swiftly to stand behind the slowly opening door. Henri’s ears were pointed forward, his hackles up, a snarl coming from him.

  But he stood slightly behind Gamache. In case.

  Armand motioned with his hand, and Henri’s growling stopped. But he remained alert. Ready to run away at any moment.

  Gamache watched the door push open. And his racing mind remembered the car at the top of the hill, looking down into the village. And then withdrawing. Backing up. Waiting, perhaps, for a better time.

  And this, he thought, was it.

  The intruder was almost certainly armed, and Gamache was not. But he had the great advantage of surprise. And surprised he was, when he saw who appeared.

  “What’re you doing here?”

  “Holy shit, Armand, you scared me to death.”

  Henri gave a little yelp of pleasure, and relief. His tail wagging furiously, he looked from Jean-Guy Beauvoir to the bowl of treats by the door, then back again. A dog with an agenda. A big one, with only one entry.

  As Jean-Guy gave Henri a biscuit, Armand hung up his coat and reflected that it was the first time, ever, that Jean-Guy had called him Armand. He’d asked his son-in-law many times, since the marriage, to do that in private, but the younger man had never quite managed it. Settling on patron as a compromise.

  But the shock had jarred loose an “Armand.”

  “Why are you here? Annie’s all right, isn’t she?”

  “If she wasn’t, I’d call,” Jean-Guy pointed out. “Not drive all this way through a fucking awful night. Pardon my English.”

  He took off his boots and put on the slippers he kept by the door.

  “Then what is it? Not that I’m unhappy to see you.”

  “Annie told me to come.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I told her about Gélinas’s suspicions and she’s worried.”

  Armand was on the verge of asking why Beauvoir would do such a thing when he remembered that he told Reine-Marie everything. Or nearly everything.

  And now Jean-Guy had found a confidante in his own wife. Gamache could hardly protest, though he wanted to.

  Looking at the familiar face, at a man he trusted with his life, Armand felt a surge of relief, and was grateful to Annie for sending him down.

  “Where’s Gélinas now?” asked Beauvoir.

  “In bed, asleep. Come with me,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

  “Starving,” said Jean-Guy.

  In the kitchen, Beauvoir went over to the cage in the corner. “How’s Gracie settling in?”

  He bent down, then straightened up and stepped back on seeing what was sleeping in there.

  “Are dragons a real thing?” he asked.

  “Puppy,” said Gamache with conviction, putting a heaping helping of shepherd’s pie in the microwave.

  “Monkey?” asked Jean-Guy.

  Armand refused to reply. The microwave beeped, the dinner was put out, a Coke was poured, and the two men sat at the pine table.

  Jean-Guy took a long sip of his drink and a huge forkful of shepherd’s pie, and looked at his father-in-law.

  “Something’s happened, patron. What is it?”

  “I think I’ve found the motive for the murder, Jean-Guy.”

  Beauvoir lowered his fork.

  “What is it?”

  “First I need you to call the woman at McDermot and Ryan, and ask her about her name.”

  “Coldbrook?”

  “Clairton. Find out why she really used that name in her correspondence with you. Why it was in a slightly different font. Push her, Jean-Guy. And if she won’t tell you, say, Deer Hunter.”

  “Come on. You have to give me more.”

  “I can’t. She has to come up with it on her own. I don’t want you to lead her more than that. And even that you need to keep in your pocket unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “D’accord.” Beauvoir looked at his watch. “Five in the morning in the UK. Too early to call.”

  He looked at his father-in-law. At the drawn expression.

  “But I’ll call and leave a message asking her to get back to me as soon as she gets in.”

  Armand Gamache nodded. “Merci.”

  Beauvoir finished off his dinner while Gamache cut him a huge slice of Gabri’s chocolate cake.

  But didn’t give it to him. Instead Gamache took the cake to the table and placed it in front of himself.

  “Your turn.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have something too, don’t you?”

  Beauvoir had been staring at the cake, and now he raised his eyes.

  “Are you holding that hostage?”

  “I am.”

  “You’re a mean, mean man.”

  “And you have information I want.”

  “It’s not so much information as a thought. You said the key to the crime lies in the fingerprints. You also said the prints on the gun are yours, but that you never touched it. That leaves two possibilities. You’re lying. Or you’re telling the truth, in which case someone else placed your prints there. Not many could do that. And do it so subtly. Not place a great goddamned print on the gun, but to blur it just enough. So that it’s identifiable, but not obvious. I don’t have the skill to do that, I doubt you do.”

  His father-in-law shook his head.

  “But one man does,” Jean-Guy continued. “A former Sûreté officer you yourself recruited, and then invited to the academy as a visiting professor. To teach tactics. A man who uses Machiavelli as a textbook. Manipulation. Hugo Charpentier.”

  “Yes,” said Gamache, sliding the cake across the old pine table. “Hugo Charpentier could certainly do it.”

  “But why would he kill Leduc?”

  “Now there’s a good question.”

  “And he’s hardly Leduc’s match, physically. Leduc could knock him down with a look. Unless Charpentier’s condition isn’t as bad as it looks.”

  “It is,” said Gamache. “I’ve seen his medical records. It is, in fact, worse than it looks.”

  Jean-Guy ate the chocolate cake and thought. “Then he might be a man with nothing to lose. And we know how dangerous the

y can be. Will Madame Coldbrook really be able to tell me why Leduc was killed?”

  “I think she knows more, or suspects more, than she’s willing to volunteer.”

  * * *

  When the phone rang three hours later, Armand was still up. Sitting in the kitchen by the woodstove. A single light on. Staring ahead of him.

  On his lap was a box. But not the one from the basement of the Royal Canadian Legion.

  This one came from his own basement.

  The phone did not ring a second time. Jean-Guy had obviously grabbed it.

  A few minutes later, Armand heard footfalls on the stairs, soft and rapid. Slippered feet hurrying down.

  It took Jean-Guy a moment to find Armand, looking first in the bedroom, then coming downstairs and checking the study. And finally, seeing the glow from the kitchen, he hurried in.

  Gamache had placed the box on the floor and was just shoving it between the armchair and the wall when Jean-Guy arrived. He took in the furtive action but was too overwhelmed by what he’d heard from the UK to question it.

  He stood in the doorway, his eyes wide.

  Armand stood up and turned, and the two men faced each other.

  “She confirmed it?”

  Jean-Guy nodded, barely able to breathe, never mind speak.

  Armand also nodded, a single, curt movement. It was confirmed.

  Then he sank into the chair and he stared ahead. Out the windows, into the night.

  “How did you know?” Jean-Guy asked quietly, taking the armchair across from him.

  “The revolver,” said Gamache. “There was no reason someone like Leduc would have one. Except there must have been a reason. A purpose. Last night, while everyone else watched Mary Poppins, Olivier came in here and watched The Deer Hunter.”

  Armand refocused on Jean-Guy. “Did you ever see the movie?”

  “Non.”

  “Neither had I. That’s why we missed it when she added Clairton to her name. It meant nothing to us. Only to someone who knew The Deer Hunter well and had seen that scene. Did you have to say the name of the film to Madame Coldbrook?”

  “Oui. I asked her about Clairton, but she just repeated that it was a mistake. It was only when I said Deer Hunter that it all came out.”

  Their conversation was seared into his brain.

  “What did you say?” Madame Coldbrook had asked.

  “The Deer Hunter,” Beauvoir repeated. “The movie.”

  He prayed she wouldn’t ask him why, because he had absolutely no idea.

  “Then you know the scene, with the revolver. What they make Robert De Niro do.”

  “Yes,” Beauvoir had lied.

  There was a long pause.

  “When did you know?” he asked.

  “Not at first. Not from your email or even the beginning of our conversation. And I still don’t know, for sure.”

  “But you suspect. Enough to send us that hint. You wanted me to ask, and I’m asking.”

  “Let me ask you a question, Inspector. Was there a special case made for the revolver?”

  Now it was Beauvoir’s turn to be silent, for a moment.

  “Yes,” he finally said.

  “Then it’s almost certainly true.” He heard the long sigh all the way from England. “We get a lot of calls from police forces saying our handguns had been used in a crime. Most are street violence, gangs. Revolvers aren’t common these days, but neither are they uncommon. It was only when you said that it was uncharacteristic for the victim to have a revolver and he was killed by a single shot to the temple—”

  “You knew then,” said Beauvoir.

  “I wondered. I thought it was something you should consider.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me during our call?” he asked. “Why that vague hint?”

  “It’s against company policy to admit our revolvers are used for something that cruel. I could be fired. But I needed you to know. I realize it wasn’t the most obvious of hints, but it was the best I could do. I was hoping you’d know that scene from the film.”

  “I didn’t, but a colleague saw it last night and put it together. Why did you ask about the special case for the revolver?”

  “From what I gather, a ritual is often created. A special case is made. It becomes a sort of ceremony.”

  He could hear the disgust in her voice.

  “I could be wrong,” she said.

  “But you don’t think you are, do you?”

  Beauvoir was still lost, but one answer had appeared on the very edges of his mind. An outlier. A terrible monster of an idea. Lurking, pacing, just beyond his reason.

  And with the next thing Madame Coldbrook said, it raced across the border, clawing its way to the very front of his mind.

  “Only a revolver can be used. The barrel has to spin for the game to work. Was he killed playing it, do you think?”

  The game.

  The blood raced from Beauvoir’s extremities so quickly he almost dropped the phone.

  The game.

  They now knew why Leduc had a revolver.

  In the single light of the kitchen, Jean-Guy looked at his father-in-law.

  Gamache was staring at the floor and shaking his head slightly.

  “You can’t have known, patron. It must’ve been going on for years.”

  Jean-Guy immediately regretted that last statement, as Gamache winced.

  Then he looked up and met Jean-Guy’s gaze.

  “Can you imagine?” he said quietly. “Their terror? And no one did anything to stop it. I did nothing to stop it.”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “I could have fired him. I should’ve fired him. I kept him on to keep an eye on him while I gathered more information on his corruption. I was looking in that direction and completely missed the worst thing Leduc was doing.”

  “No one saw it.”

  “Oh, someone saw it,” said Gamache, his rage bursting out.

  He managed to rein it in, but it roiled just below his skin. Turning it red.

  “You’re right,” said Jean-Guy. “Someone knew what was happening. They put a gun to Leduc’s head and pulled the trigger.”

  He saw a look on the older man’s face. A primitive, primal, savage moment. Of satisfaction. And then it was gone.

  “Was that the motive?”

  “Oui,” said Gamache. “I think so.”

  Madame Coldbrook had asked if Leduc had died playing the game. He hadn’t. Never did. But still, it killed him. He’d been murdered. Executed. Not in the game, but because of it.

  “Whoever killed him tried to implicate you,” Beauvoir said. “By placing your fingerprints on the revolver. Making it look like you’d murdered Leduc. It was Charpentier, wasn’t it?”

  Gamache looked at the kitchen clock. Three thirty in the morning.

  “We need to get some sleep,” he said. “We have a big day ahead of us.”

  But sleep eluded Jean-Guy. He lay staring at the ceiling. Gamache had asked if he could imagine. He lay there and tried to imagine what it was like for those cadets, who were not just cadets. They were someone’s sons and daughters. Someone’s children.

  And he imagined his own child, in that situation. With no one doing anything to stop it. To help them. And Jean-Guy began to understand that look of savagery on his father-in-law’s face.

  But he also, then, remembered something else. The subtle movement of Gamache’s foot as he shoved something between the chair and the wall.

  Unable to sleep, Jean-Guy got up and tiptoed down the stairs, into the kitchen. Turning on the lamp, he found the box and picked it up. And held it, staring at the lid. There were fingerprints on it. One set, and one set only, he knew.

  Gamache’s.

  He stared at the shoe box. It wasn’t one of the ones from the historical society. He knew that. This one was private and personal.

  And in it sat the answer to so many questions.

  Then he slowly bent down and replaced it.

  Turning around, he almost fainted. There in the doorway stood Gamache.

  “Did no one tell you, Jean-Guy, if you’re going to do a clandestine search, never turn the light on?”

  “I missed that class.”

  Gamache smiled and, walking forward, he stopped in front of Jean-Guy and looked from the man to the box on the floor, then back to the man.

  “Merci.”

  “I shouldn’t have even considered looking,” said Jean-Guy. “I’m sorry.”

  “Non, not at all. It’s human to be curious. It was superhuman to put it back down. Thank you for respecting my privacy.”

  Then Armand Gamache walked past Jean-Guy, picked up the old box, and handed it to his son-in-law.

  Without a word, he returned upstairs, while Jean-Guy returned to the armchair and opened the box.

  CHAPTER 39

  Armand Gamache looked at the cadets, one at a time.

  First Nathaniel, then Huifen, then Jacques, and finally his eyes rested on Amelia.

  “I know,” he said quietly.

  Jacques turned his head slightly, eyes narrowing. “Know what?”

  “I know what happened in Leduc’s rooms.”

  There was silence then. The cadets looked at each other, and then all, naturally, turned to Huifen.

  “What?” she asked. There was defiance in her voice.

  Jean-Guy Beauvoir was sitting a few benches back. He and Armand had brought the young people up to the chapel first thing in the morning. They needed to speak to them, and they needed someplace private. And neutral. And peaceful.

  “I’ve long known that Serge Leduc was corrupt,” said Gamache. “I came out of retirement to clean up the academy. And not just of corruption. It was clear by the quality of new agents entering the Sûreté that something was very wrong at the school. They were competent in the techniques, but they were also cruel. Not all, of course, but enough. More than enough. There was something wrong either with the recruitment process, or with the training. Or both.”

  As he spoke, Commander Gamache watched them. And they watched him.

  If Gamache and Beauvoir thought the four would break down and tell them everything, they were wrong. The conspiracy of silence was so ingrained as to be almost unbreakable.

  “The first thing I did was fire most of your professors, and I brought in my own. Officers with real-life experience of investigations. Men and women with integrity. But who also know that with power comes temptation. Those are the real threats to Sûreté agents. The self-inflicted wounds.”

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