A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12)(36)

“Is the doctor still in the room?”

“No, he left as soon as death was confirmed.”

Isabelle Lacoste continued to stare at him, while her team stood behind her, kits at the ready.

Those who knew who this man was, and once was, were watching with open curiosity.

Brébeuf squared his shoulders, but somehow it only made him look more pathetic. And a thought drifted into her mind. Lacoste wondered if he knew that was the effect. And did it on purpose.

And the purpose was obvious.

It was easier, natural even, to dismiss those who were pathetic. Not to take them seriously, and certainly not to see a threat. There was even an instinctive desire to get out of their company. People who were pathetic were natural targets for the vicissitudes of life. And if you were standing beside one, you might get hit too. Collateral damage.

“I stayed in case he wanted something else,” said Brébeuf.

And now, before her eyes, Michel Brébeuf evolved into something else. Not a man disgraced, but a once beloved old mutt, waiting for attention from his master. A smile, a pat. Even a kick.

Anything.

In a very subtle way, Brébeuf seemed to be positioning himself as a loyal servant, and Gamache as a brute. It didn’t work on her. She knew the truth. But she suspected some might be taken in.

“And that?” She pointed to the tray and toast and broken glass.

“A cadet found the body,” said Beauvoir, stepping forward to answer the question. “He dropped the tray. We left it there.”

“I’ll take samples,” said one of the forensics team, and he did, while another looked for prints and DNA on the door handle, and still another took photographs. And Lacoste wondered at this transformation in Michel Brébeuf.

A leopard might not change its spots, but the former superintendent of the S?reté had never been a leopard. He was then, and always would be, a chameleon.

When the technician gave the all-clear, she stepped across the threshold, relieved to be away from him. A dead body was preferable to a living Brébeuf.

Though prepared for what she’d see, violent, deliberate death still surprised Isabelle Lacoste. And it had clearly surprised Serge Leduc.





CHAPTER 12

“The academy doctor confirmed the death,” said Gamache, standing to one side as the Scene of Crime team got to work.

“I’m assuming the cause is obvious,” said Lacoste.

She stood next to her former chief, with Beauvoir on the other side of him. It still felt natural to be on either side of Armand Gamache. It felt safe. Though there was now a sense of nostalgia. Like going back to a childhood home.

Gamache simply nodded.

“We’ll have to wait for the coroner to give us the official cause of death, but yes,” said Beauvoir, looking down at Serge Leduc. “It would be hard to miss.”

“When was he last seen alive?” asked Chief Inspector Lacoste.

“He was at dinner in the dining hall,” said Commander Gamache. “That’s the last I saw of him.”

“Me too,” said Beauvoir. “That would be about eight o’clock.”

They looked around. There was no evidence that Leduc had entertained anyone in his rooms the evening before.

Neither Gamache nor Beauvoir had ever been in these rooms, the private territory of the Duke.

The apartment was the same layout as the Commander’s, only the mirror image. A living room led to a bedroom, with an en suite bath. But while Gamache’s was furnished in a modern style that suited the building and managed to make it inviting, this room felt stuffed, stifling.

The furniture was heavy, Victorian. Dark wooden sideboard, massive horsehair sofa upholstered in a deep purple crushed velvet. It felt oppressive, but also vaguely effeminate. A contrast to the stark, linear world beyond his front door.

It was like stepping into a boudoir, or a stage set.

And yet Gamache had the feeling this was not staged. It was a reflection of who this man really was. Or at least an element of him. Much of the furniture, Gamache suspected, had been inherited, passed down within the family, perhaps for generations.

Serge Leduc had wrapped himself in tradition. Even as he broke rule after rule.

But then, the Victorians had revered the Great Man model. A single extraordinary individual for whom the normal rules didn’t apply. Great Men should rule and others should revere them. Leduc lived as though he believed it.

“What sort of a man was he?” asked Lacoste.

“What sort would you guess?” asked Gamache. “Judging by what you see.”

“Fussy,” she said immediately. “Rigid. Probably pedantic and officious.”

She looked down at the dead man, still in his street clothes. A jacket and tie. Neat. So at odds with what lay above the collar.

“Am I close?”

“Inspector Beauvoir, how would you describe Serge Leduc?”

“A brute and a bully,” said Beauvoir. “Cunning and stupid. A weasel and a rat.”

“Both the hunter and the hunted. An uncomfortable position,” said Gamache, looking around.

“I would’ve thought he’d have lots of leather chairs,” said Beauvoir. “And antlers on the walls. Not this.”

“I wonder if he was happy, when he stepped in here,” said Gamache. “He was clearly not happy outside these rooms.”