A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12)(100)

Very young generals, and a very strange plan.

“Has Armand told you why he has the cadets chasing down that map?” asked Clara.

“No. I think it started as a kind of lark. An exercise. But after the murder, it became something else.”

“But what?” asked Clara. “I don’t see what the map could possibly have to do with the killing of that professor.”

“Neither do I,” admitted Reine-Marie. “And I’m not sure Armand knows. Maybe nothing.”

“It’s funny how often nothing becomes something when Armand is around. But it’s at least kept the students busy. They were off all day.”

The two women had continued to watch the cadets through the windows. But Reine-Marie realized that Clara wasn’t watching the cadets. She was looking at just one. Closely.

“Is it much of an imposition, Clara? Putting her up?”

“Amelia?” Clara was quiet for a moment. Studying the girl. “I wonder how old she is.”

“Armand would know. Nineteen, twenty, I’d guess.”

“In certain light she looks very young. Maybe it’s her skin. But then she’ll turn and her expression will change. She’s like a prism.”

Feeling chilled standing in the damp March evening, the two women had gone inside to join the others around the fireplace.

“A clowder of cats?” said Gabri, reading the huge reference book open on Myrna’s lap.

“A misery,” said Ruth.

“Pardon?” asked Reine-Marie.

“The students,” said Ruth, cocking her wineglass in the direction of the cadets, who were talking animatedly among themselves. “A misery of cadets.”

“I think that’s a misery of poets,” said Gabri.

“Oh, right.”

*

“What’re we going to tell him?” asked Huifen, reaching for another fry, even though she was now feeling overstuffed and a little nauseous. One fry over the line, sweet Jesus. “It’s almost seven. He’s going to be here any minute. Oh, shit.”

Headlights flashed through the window.

“He’s here.”

The light caught their faces, and Reine-Marie, a few tables over, saw what Clara meant. There was anxiety in Huifen’s face. Nathaniel was clearly afraid. Jacques looked defensive, marshaling his excuses.

And Amelia looked resigned. Like she knew what was about to happen. Had been waiting a long time, a lifetime, for it. Perhaps even longer.

She looked old. And very, very young.

She looked a bit like the boy in the stained-glass window.

And she looked a bit like the portrait Clara was painting. Reine-Marie turned to her friend in astonishment.

*

Jean-Guy and Isabelle got out of the car. The snow, which had been melting during the day, was now freezing again as the sun and the temperature dropped.

“The sap’ll be running,” said Jean-Guy, knocking his gloves together in the chill. He turned to look back up the hill, where a car’s headlights had appeared, shining like eyes.

“A good year for maple syrup,” said Isabelle. “We’re taking the kids to a cabane à sucre this weekend.”

Jean-Guy felt a moment of utter joy, like a breath on his face. Next year, he and Annie would be taking their child to a maple sugar shack for the annual sugaring-off celebration. They’d get in a horse-drawn sleigh and go deep into the woods, to a log cabin. There they’d listen to fiddle music and watch people dance, and eat eggs and bacon and baked beans and sweet, sticky tire d’érable, the boiled maple sap poured over spring snow and turned into toffee. Then rolled onto a twig, like a lollipop.

Just as he’d done as a child. It was a tradition, part of their patrimoine. And one they would pass on to their child. His and Annie’s son or daughter.

He glanced toward the bistro and saw the cadets, someone else’s sons and daughters, staring at them.

And he felt an overwhelming need to protect them.

“He’s here,” said Isabelle, and Jean-Guy turned to see that the car had pulled up right behind theirs.

Deputy Commissioner Gélinas and Armand Gamache got out. Gélinas was walking toward them, his feet crunching on the refrozen ice and snow, but Gamache had paused to tilt his head back and look into the night sky.

And then he lowered his eyes and looked straight at Jean-Guy.

And in an instant, Jean-Guy understood how Chief Inspector Gamache must have felt for all those years when he was head of homicide. Commanding young agents.

And losing some of those agents, until the loss had become too great. Until his heart had finally broken into too many pieces to be cobbled together again. When that had happened, he’d come here. To find peace.

But Monsieur Gamache had traded in his peace for the cadets’ safety. He’d left here to go clean up the academy, so that the next generation of young agents might survive long enough to brush gray hair from their faces. And to one day retire, to find their own peace and enjoy their own grandchildren.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir watched Armand Gamache approach, and had the overwhelming need to protect him.

He immediately dropped his eyes, staring at his feet until he could control his emotions.

Hormones, he thought. Damned pregnancy.

*

Gamache and Gélinas had made small talk in the car on the drive down, until it had petered out and both men had been left to the company of their own thoughts.