A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12)(108)

“You need to know something, madame. I held your husband’s hand as he lay dying. On that factory floor. I’ve never told you this. You didn’t need to know. He knew he was dying. I knew it. He could barely breathe, but he managed to say one last thing.”

“Isabelle—” said Gamache.

“I had to lean over to hear it,” said Lacoste. “He whispered, ‘Reine-Marie.’ And I knew he wanted me to tell you how much he loves you. Forever. Eternally. I never had to tell you that. Until now. Armand Gamache would never murder anyone, for all sorts of reasons. One of them is that he would never, ever do anything to hurt you, Reine-Marie.”

Reine-Marie brought her hand to her mouth, and screwed her eyes shut. She stood there for a second, a minute. Years.

And then she dropped the hand and reached for the harbor of her husband, even as she noticed the look that passed between Lacoste and Beauvoir.

Armand kissed her, and whispered in her ear. Something that made her smile. Then he motioned to the pew at the front of the chapel, and while the investigators took seats there, Olivier and Reine-Marie sat at the very back.

“Did anything come out of your interviews?” asked Gamache.

“Not much,” said Lacoste. “But Cadet Choquet didn’t seem surprised when I told her her prints were on the murder weapon.”

“It was an extrapolation,” Gamache reminded her.

“I didn’t tell her that.”

“Did she explain it?”

“No. She did say that Leduc threatened to expel her if she didn’t have sex with him.”

“And did she?” asked Gamache.

“She says not, but she’s used to trading sex for what she wants.”

Gamache gave a curt nod.

“I haven’t had a chance to tell you,” said Lacoste, “but I called the UK and spoke to the woman at the gun manufacturer that Jean-Guy interviewed.”

“Madame Coldbrook-Clairton?” asked Gamache.

Lacoste laughed. “I had this conversation with Jean-Guy on the drive down. There’s no Clairton, just Coldbrook.”

“Then why—” Gamache began.

“Did she sign her name with Clairton?” asked Lacoste. “Good question. She says it was a mistake.”

“Odd,” said Gamache, frowning. “But she confirmed the revolver that killed Leduc and the one in the window are both McDermot .45s?”

*

“Did he say Clairton?” asked Olivier, sitting in the back with Reine-Marie. “There’s a town in Pennsylvania called that.”

“Now how would you know that, mon beau?” asked Reine-Marie.

“I don’t know how I know about Clairton,” said Olivier, drawing his brows together in concentration. “I just do.”

“Maybe you were born with the knowledge,” suggested Reine-Marie with a smile.

“That would be a shame. So many more useful things I could innately know. Like how to convert Fahrenheit into Celsius, or the meaning of life, or how much to charge for a croissant.”

“You charge?” asked Reine-Marie with exaggerated surprise. “Ruth says they’re free.”

“Oui. Like the Scotch is free.”

*

“She confirmed the guns are the same,” said Jean-Guy. “But I can’t see how it could matter.”

“Neither can I,” admitted Gamache.

He turned to look at the stained-glass window. He’d seen it so often over the years that he felt he knew each pane. And yet, he always seemed to discover something new. As though the person who made it stole into the chapel at night and added a detail.

He still marveled that over the years he’d never noticed the map poking out from the boy’s rucksack.

Gamache realized he’d spent so much time staring at the one boy, he’d all but ignored the other two.

He looked at them now. Unlike the soldier who was looking straight at the observer, the others were in profile. Moving forward. One boy’s hand was just touching the arm of the soldier in front. Not to pull him back. But for comfort.

Less effort had been put into them. Their faces looked exactly the same, like they were the same boy, with exactly the same expression.

There was no forgiveness there, only fear.

And yet they moved forward.

Gamache’s eyes dropped to the third boy’s hands. One grasped a rifle. But with the other he seemed to be casually pointing. Not ahead, though, but behind.

*

“Do you know something strange?” asked Reine-Marie.

“I know someone strange,” offered Olivier.

“I’ve been sorting through the papers from the archives of the historical society in Saint-Rémy. The letters and documents and photographs go back a few hundred years. Not the pictures, of course. Though some of them are very old. Fascinating.”

“That is strange,” said Olivier.

“No, not that,” she laughed, and gave him a little elbow. “I didn’t realize until this very moment that I haven’t found anything from the First World War. The Second, yes. All sorts of letters home, and pictures. But none from the Great War. If there were, I might be able to find that boy. Find all three of them, in fact, by comparing the faces in the window with photographs in the local archives.”