A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12)(124)

“Whoever killed him tried to implicate you,” Beauvoir said. “By placing your fingerprints on the revolver. Making it look like you’d murdered Leduc. It was Charpentier, wasn’t it?”

Gamache looked at the kitchen clock. Three thirty in the morning.

“We need to get some sleep,” he said. “We have a big day ahead of us.”

But sleep eluded Jean-Guy. He lay staring at the ceiling. Gamache had asked if he could imagine. He lay there and tried to imagine what it was like for those cadets, who were not just cadets. They were someone’s sons and daughters. Someone’s children.

And he imagined his own child, in that situation. With no one doing anything to stop it. To help them. And Jean-Guy began to understand that look of savagery on his father-in-law’s face.

But he also, then, remembered something else. The subtle movement of Gamache’s foot as he shoved something between the chair and the wall.

Unable to sleep, Jean-Guy got up and tiptoed down the stairs, into the kitchen. Turning on the lamp, he found the box and picked it up. And held it, staring at the lid. There were fingerprints on it. One set, and one set only, he knew.

Gamache’s.

He stared at the shoe box. It wasn’t one of the ones from the historical society. He knew that. This one was private and personal.

And in it sat the answer to so many questions.

Then he slowly bent down and replaced it.

Turning around, he almost fainted. There in the doorway stood Gamache.

“Did no one tell you, Jean-Guy, if you’re going to do a clandestine search, never turn the light on?”

“I missed that class.”

Gamache smiled and, walking forward, he stopped in front of Jean-Guy and looked from the man to the box on the floor, then back to the man.

“Merci.”

“I shouldn’t have even considered looking,” said Jean-Guy. “I’m sorry.”

“Non, not at all. It’s human to be curious. It was superhuman to put it back down. Thank you for respecting my privacy.”

Then Armand Gamache walked past Jean-Guy, picked up the old box, and handed it to his son-in-law.

Without a word, he returned upstairs, while Jean-Guy returned to the armchair and opened the box.





CHAPTER 39

Armand Gamache looked at the cadets, one at a time.

First Nathaniel, then Huifen, then Jacques, and finally his eyes rested on Amelia.

“I know,” he said quietly.

Jacques turned his head slightly, eyes narrowing. “Know what?”

“I know what happened in Leduc’s rooms.”

There was silence then. The cadets looked at each other, and then all, naturally, turned to Huifen.

“What?” she asked. There was defiance in her voice.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir was sitting a few benches back. He and Armand had brought the young people up to the chapel first thing in the morning. They needed to speak to them, and they needed someplace private. And neutral. And peaceful.

“I’ve long known that Serge Leduc was corrupt,” said Gamache. “I came out of retirement to clean up the academy. And not just of corruption. It was clear by the quality of new agents entering the S?reté that something was very wrong at the school. They were competent in the techniques, but they were also cruel. Not all, of course, but enough. More than enough. There was something wrong either with the recruitment process, or with the training. Or both.”

As he spoke, Commander Gamache watched them. And they watched him.

If Gamache and Beauvoir thought the four would break down and tell them everything, they were wrong. The conspiracy of silence was so ingrained as to be almost unbreakable.

“The first thing I did was fire most of your professors, and I brought in my own. Officers with real-life experience of investigations. Men and women with integrity. But who also know that with power comes temptation. Those are the real threats to S?reté agents. The self-inflicted wounds.”

Jean-Guy could hear their breathing now. At least one, perhaps more, of the cadets was on the verge of hyperventilating.

And still they were still. And silent.

“But I kept Serge Leduc, the Duke, on.”

“Why?” asked Nathaniel.

Looking at the pale young man, Gamache tried to catch his own breath. He looked down at his hands, clasped together. Holding on tight.

Serge Leduc might have done great damage. But so had he.

If he expected the students to tell him the truth, he had to be willing to do the same.

“I didn’t know,” he said, looking back up and into the young man’s cold eyes. “I thought he was a brute, a sadist. I thought he was corrupt. I thought I could gather enough evidence against him to put him in prison, so he couldn’t do the same damage someplace else. I thought I could control him so that while I was there, his abuses would stop.”

“Don’t believe everything you think,” mumbled Amelia.

Gamache nodded. “They did not stop. It never occurred to me he could be that sick.”

“When did you find out?” asked Huifen.

“Last night, while watching the movie.”

“Mary Poppins?” she asked. She must’ve missed that scene.

“The Deer Hunter. The one Olivier was watching.” He leaned toward them. “I’m going to get you help.”