A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12)(122)

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 S?reté 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 they 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.