A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12)(34)

He held their eyes. “Understood?”

“Understood.”

“Quickly, then. If someone is hurt or missing, we need to know.”

The professors split up, shepherding reluctant students back down the hallway.

Commander Gamache still had not entered the room.

“Professor McKinnon, take a couple of teaching assistants and gather up the staff. Secretarial, grounds, maintenance, kitchen. Everyone. Take them into the dining hall as well. Ask the head of operations to confirm everyone is who they say they are, and that no one is missing.”

“D’accord, Commander.” And she hurried down the hallway. Leaving just one other professor standing there.

“What would you like me to do, Armand?”

“Nothing,” came his curt response.

Michel Brébeuf stepped away and watched as Gamache stared into the room.

“Actually, there is one thing you can do,” said Armand, turning back to Brébeuf. “Get the doctor.”

“Of course.”

Brébeuf walked quickly down the corridor, though he knew he’d been given the least urgent, the least important, of the tasks. He knew by Gamache’s orders and actions that there was no real need of a doctor.

“Isabelle’s on her way,” said Beauvoir, arriving back at Gamache’s side and marveling at the now-empty corridor.

He looked at his watch at the same moment Gamache did.

It was six twenty-three in the morning.

There was silence now. Except for a tiny sound like a squeal. Both Gamache and Beauvoir looked up and down the corridor. It was still empty. But still the sound came closer.

Then around the corner came Hugo Charpentier in his wheelchair.

“What’s happened?”

Professor Charpentier’s progress stopped when he saw Gamache’s face.

“As bad as that?”

Gamache didn’t move.

“Where’re the others?” Charpentier asked.

“Securing the building. The staff and students are being taken to the dining hall.”

“And they forgot about me,” he said. He started to wheel forward. “Can I help?”

“Non, merci. Just join the others, please.”

As he turned back down the hall, Gamache also marveled that they’d forgotten Professor Charpentier. He felt slightly ashamed, but mostly he tucked that information away. How easily overlooked that man was. And he thought about what an invisible man could get away with.

He also noted the squeal of Charpentier’s wheelchair, as he withdrew. Something Gamache had never noticed before.

And then he turned his attention to the doorway and what lay beyond.

Who lay beyond.

Serge Leduc was crumpled on the floor.

It was all too obvious what had happened. By the body, and the blood. He’d been shot in the head. The gun still lay by his side.

And while it was also clear, by the glaring eyes and open mouth, and the pallor, never mind the wound, that he was dead, Gamache still bent down and felt for a pulse, his hand coming away with a bit of blood, which he wiped off with a handkerchief.

Jean-Guy’s practiced eye swept the scene, then he looked toward the bedroom.

Gamache gave a brief nod and Beauvoir covered the ground swiftly.

“Nothing,” said Jean-Guy a moment later.

“That’s enough,” said Gamache from the bedroom door, when Beauvoir opened a drawer in the nightstand. “I doubt the murderer’s in the drawer. Let’s leave it for Lacoste and the Scene of Crime team.”

Beauvoir closed the drawer, but not before Gamache saw something Jean-Guy had not.

What was inside that drawer. Even from a distance, it was unmistakable.

“As tempting as it is to start the investigation, we need to wait. Call Isabelle back, Jean-Guy, and report in more detail. She should be here soon with the homicide team. Can you please go to the main door and show her up here?”

“Now?”

“Is there a better time?”

“Don’t you want me to help here?”

“There’s nothing we can do to help. I just need the doctor to confirm he’s dead. You know the drill. Then I’ll lock the door and wait for you to return with Chief Inspector Lacoste.”

Beauvoir looked down at the body.

“Suicide?”

“Maybe,” said Gamache. “Does something strike you as strange?”

Beauvoir examined the scene more closely.

“Oui. The gun. It’s on the wrong side. If he’d killed himself, it’d be on the same side as the entrance wound.”

Gamache nodded, lost in thought.

Beauvoir left, stopping at his own rooms to throw on some clothes.

When he walked back down the corridor, the door to Leduc’s rooms was closed and Gamache was nowhere to be seen.

*

Armand stood over the body of Serge Leduc, careful to avoid contaminating evidence more than he already had.

His eye took in the placement of furniture, the curtains and books. The ashes in the hearth.

But his eye kept returning to the body, and the weapon. As Jean-Guy had said, on the wrong side of the body, for suicide.

Yes, it was odd that the weapon was there. But what was odder still was that the murderer must have placed it there.

For this was murder, Gamache knew. And there was a murderer. And instead of trying to make it look like suicide, as any reasonable killer would, this one had made sure there was no doubt.