A Great Reckoning

CHAPTER 11

Another week passed and by then they were deep into the term.

Some of the older students still grumbled, but less and less. Not necessarily, Gamache knew, because they were coming to terms with the realities of the new regime, but because they were kept too busy to complain.

He was in his rooms early one morning, talking with Reine-Marie on the phone. He’d had late meetings and decided to stay the night at the academy.

“Did I tell you that Clara got a new puppy yesterday?” she asked.

“From that litter she talked about? That was a while ago.”

“No, Billy Williams found these ones in a garbage can.”

He inhaled deeply and exhaled the word “people.” Not so much an indictment as in wonderment. That there could be so much deliberate cruelty and so much kindness in one species.

“Clara took one. A little male she’s called Leo. Adorable. But there is something—”

And that’s as far as she got. Even down the phone line, she could hear the shouting. Reine-Marie couldn’t make out the words, but she could hear the panic.

“I have to go,” said her husband, and the line went dead.

Gamache threw a dressing gown over his pajamas and was out the door in moments, the shouting hitting him in the face as he ran toward it.

One voice. A man’s. Young. Frightened. The terror bounced off the marble floors and walls, magnifying.

“Help,” the voice was screaming. “Help.” The single syllable elongating. “Heeeeelllll-p.” More a sound than a word.

Other professors came out of their rooms, joining in behind Gamache. As he ran past Jean-Guy Beauvoir’s door, Gamache gave it a single pound with his fist, but kept going.

Behind him, he heard the door open and the familiar voice, groggy.

“What the—Jesus.”

Up ahead, the screaming had stopped. But the hallway was still clogged with fear.

Gamache rounded a corner and there, back to the wall, stood Nathaniel Smythe. On the ground in front of him was a tray, with broken glass and china and food.

Stepping in front of the boy, to break his line of sight, Gamache looked quickly, expertly, over him.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

Nathaniel, eyes wide and not quite focusing on Gamache, shook his head.

“Look after him,” Gamache said to whoever had arrived right behind him. “Take him to my rooms. Don’t let him out of your sight.”

“What’s happened?” Jean-Guy Beauvoir asked, skidding to a stop beside Gamache.

Other professors were arriving and craning to see. But the Commander was blocking the open door, and their view.

He himself had yet to look, but as Nathaniel was led away, he turned around.

“Call the police,” he said, speaking to Beauvoir but still staring into the room. Then he looked at Jean-Guy. “Call Isabelle Lacoste.”

“Oui, patron,” his voice betraying none of the surprise he felt. Though shock would be a better word.

He knew what that meant. What Gamache was seeing.

Jean-Guy ran back down the corridor to his rooms to call. As he went, he was met with worried and excited faces all asking, “What’s happened?”

More professors were arriving, and behind them, staff. And behind them, the first of the students.

“Lock the doors to the academy,” Gamache told two other professors. “No one gets in or out.”

They took off down the corridor.

The other professors were crowding around, trying to see what could possibly be in the room. But Gamache blocked their way.

“The head of each year,” he said, scanning the now-crowded corridor. Three professors stepped forward.

“Here, Commander.”

“Make sure the cadets are safe. Get them into the dining hall and do a head count. Keep them there. Give them breakfast, but no one leaves until I say so.”

He held their eyes. “Understood?”

“Understood.”

“Quickly, then. If someone is hurt or missing, we need to know.”

The professors split up, shepherding reluctant students back down the hallway.

Commander Gamache still had not entered the room.

“Professor McKinnon, take a couple of teaching assistants and gather up the staff. Secretarial, grounds, maintenance, kitchen. Everyone. Take them into the dining hall as well. Ask the head of operations to confirm everyone is who they say they are, and that no one is missing.”

“D’accord, Commander.” And she hurried down the hallway. Leaving just one other professor standing there.

“What would you like me to do, Armand?”

“Nothing,” came his curt response.

Michel Brébeuf stepped away and watched as Gamache stared into the room.

“Actually, there is one thing you can do,” said Armand, turning back to Brébeuf. “Get the doctor.”

“Of course.”

Brébeuf walked quickly down the corridor, though he knew he’d been given the least urgent, the least important, of the tasks. He knew by Gamache’s orders and actions that there was no real need of a doctor.

“Isabelle’s on her way,” said Beauvoir, arriving back at Gamache’s side and marveling at the now-empty corridor.

He looked at his watch at the same moment Gamache did.

It was six twenty-three in the morning.

There was silence now. Except for a tiny sound like a squeal. Both Gamache and Beauvoir looked up and down the corridor. It was still empty. But still the sound came closer.

Then around the corner came Hugo Charpentier in his wheelchair.

“What’s happened?”

Professor Charpentier’s progress stopped when he saw Gamache’s face.

“As bad as that?”

Gamache didn’t move.

“Where’re the others?” Charpentier asked.

“Securing the building. The staff and students are being taken to the dining hall.”

“And they forgot about me,” he said. He started to wheel forward. “Can I help?”

“Non, merci. Just join the others, please.”

As he turned back down the hall, Gamache also marveled that they’d forgotten Professor Charpentier. He felt slightly ashamed, but mostly he tucked that information away. How easily overlooked that man was. And he thought about what an invisible man could get away with.

He also noted the squeal of Charpentier’s wheelchair, as he withdrew. Something Gamache had never noticed before.

And then he turned his attention to the doorway and what lay beyond.

Who lay beyond.

Serge Leduc was crumpled on the floor.

It was all too obvious what had happened. By the body, and the blood. He’d been shot in the head. The gun still lay by his side.

And while it was also clear, by the glaring eyes and open mouth, and the pallor, never mind the wound, that he was dead, Gamache still bent down and felt for a pulse, his hand coming away with a bit of blood, which he wiped off with a handkerchief.

Jean-Guy’s practiced eye swept the scene, then he looked toward the bedroom.

Gamache gave a brief nod and Beauvoir covered the ground swiftly.

“Nothing,” said Jean-Guy a moment later.

“That’s enough,” said Gamache from the bedroom door, when Beauvoir opened a drawer in the nightstand. “I doubt the murderer’s in the drawer. Let’s leave it for Lacoste and the Scene of Crime team.”

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 them 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.