A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12)(116)

She opened the door to the corridor and ushered him out.

As he walked one way down the hallway, and she walked the other, Beauvoir wondered how much Madame Marcoux had heard. And he wondered if she’d been Serge Leduc’s assistant, before the putsch and the arrival of Commander Gamache.





CHAPTER 36

“So that was Roof Trusses after all,” said Jacques, when Nathaniel and Amelia finally joined them at their table in the bistro. “You can’t tell the little shithole was ever there.”

“True,” agreed Amelia. “It wasn’t obvious. We had to actually work at it.”

She glared at Jacques before taking the rich hot chocolate, topped with fresh whipped cream, from Olivier. “Merci.”

Slightly startled by the pleasantry, Olivier smiled. “De rien.”

“And after all that, all you found were a couple of buckets of maple syrup.” Jacques shoved his empty mug toward Olivier, who took it and left. “Well done.”

“Sap,” said Nathaniel.

Huifen had been watching the younger cadets’ earlier conversation with the old poet, and while she couldn’t hear what was being said, she could see that it had held the crazy old woman’s attention.

It was more than sap they’d found.

“What did you find?” she asked.

“What’s it to you?” asked Amelia.

“What’s it to us?” asked Huifen. “We might not have been there, but we’re all working together.”

“No, we’re not,” said Nathaniel. “You left me on the side of the road. You got in the car and were about to drive away.”

“No, I wasn’t,” said Jacques. “I just turned it on to get heat and to hurry you up.”

“I wasn’t slow, I was still looking for Roof Trusses and you gave up, you lazy shit.”

“You little piece of crap—” Jacques leaned toward Nathaniel, who jerked away. But Huifen stopped Jacques with a hand to his arm.

Amelia noticed the subtle gesture and not for the first time wondered at the power this small woman held over the large man. And, not for the first time, wondered just how much influence she did have over Jacques.

Huifen could stop him from doing something, but could she also get him to act?

“You’re just afraid to admit you were wrong,” said Amelia.

“I’m not afraid. Of anything.” Jacques glared at Amelia. “How many times do I have to prove it?”

“Oh, you’re afraid now,” Huifen said quietly. “And you were afraid then. We all were.”

The laughter, the warmth of the bistro disappeared as the four young people stared at each other.

And then with a bang they were brought back to the bistro, as the front door slammed shut.

Commander Gamache and Deputy Commissioner Gélinas had just arrived, the door blowing closed behind them.

They stomped their feet, brushed wet snow off their coats, and slapped their hats against their legs. It was a singular Québec jig learned in the womb.

The snow had turned back to sleet as night fell and now it was pelting against the bistro windows and piling up on the mullions.

Gamache took off his wet coat and, after hanging it on a peg by the door, he looked around, rubbing his hands together for warmth and taking in the fires crackling away in stone hearths at either end of the beamed room. The bistro was surprisingly full for such a dreadful night. But some of the regulars were missing.

He’d left Reine-Marie, Clara, Myrna, Ruth, and Gabri at his home in front of the roaring fire in the living room, sipping red wine and going through the boxes and boxes of items found in the basement of the Royal Canadian Legion.

“Look.” Clara had picked up a picture. “There’s my place in the background.”

She showed them the photo of two young men in puttees tied from their knees to their ankles. Their uniforms were too tight and their grins, Clara knew, way too big.

They stood on the village green and between them was a farm woman in her Sunday best, awkward and bashful and full of pride, her robust sons on either side of her, their arms around her soft shoulders.

“Look at the pines,” said Gabri. “They’re the same size as the boys.”

They’d walked right by those same trees on their way to the Gamaches’ home. They now towered over the village, strong and straight and still growing.

“I thought the trees had been here for centuries,” said Myrna. “Like Ruth.”

“They have,” said Ruth. “Three pines of some sort have always been on the village green.”

She spoke with such authority that Myrna began to wonder if Ruth really was a few centuries old. Rooted and pickled. Like an old turnip.

“Maybe the originals died,” said Clara. “Is either of the boys in this photograph also in the stained-glass window?”

Clara passed the picture around.

“Hard to tell,” said Myrna. “They aren’t the main boy, but the other two are in profile.”

“Is there a name?” Gabri asked.

Ruth turned the picture over.

“Joe and Norm Valois,” she read.

The friends looked at her, their encyclopedia of loss.

Ruth nodded. “And there was a third Valois on the wall. Pierre. Probably another brother.”