A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12)(47)

Up until then, this somewhat attractive professor had been just that to Amelia. A professor. He taught Scene of Crime management and techniques. He was also, she knew, Commander Gamache’s second-in-command.

And his son-in-law. She’d learned that from the photo she’d seen in the Commander’s home. But it was a secret she was hoarding, to be used at the moment juste.

But Amelia had not thought of him as a full-blown inspector within the homicide department, and one of the more senior officers in the S?reté. Didn’t even know he was that.

Until this moment.

Before her eyes, the professor became the senior inspector.

Amelia shook her head and lifted her hands in resignation.

“I don’t know where it is.”

“Professor Leduc asked you to be one of his servants,” said Beauvoir.

“He didn’t ask,” she said. “He told. And he didn’t describe it as a servant. It was an honor, an opportunity.”

“Did you see it like that?”

“I didn’t think I had much choice. I just did it.”

“You don’t sound like you liked the man.”

“I don’t like anyone,” she said.

“Did you dislike him?”

“I don’t dislike anyone.”

“Really?” he said. “You’re above all that nasty human stuff?”

“Look, I’m here to learn how to be a S?reté agent. Not to make friends.”

“You do know that the people you meet here will be your colleagues for many, many years to come? Perhaps you’d better learn to like, or even to dislike, them.”

“Yessir.”

Beauvoir watched her, and in her eyes he saw intelligence. And if not fear, then worry.

She had reason, he knew, to be worried. She even had reason to be afraid.

Her map was missing. Either she gave it to the dead man, or someone took it and planted it there. Either way, attention was focusing on her. Cadet Choquet was in the crosshairs. He knew it. And clearly she knew it too.

“Pack up a few things, please. You’ll be going away for a few nights. An agent will escort you out.”

“Why? Because of the map?” Amelia called after him, but got no response.

*

“May I come in?” Lacoste asked, knocking once and opening the door. “You’ve had your meeting with the mayor and the police chief?”

Gamache got up from behind his desk and greeted her, motioning to a chair by the sofa, while he took the other one.

“Oui. That poor man. I feel for him. I’ve tried for the last few months to regain the mayor’s trust. He finally, against the wishes of his councilors, endorsed the volunteer program with the academy at the last town meeting, only to have this happen.”

“But the two aren’t connected,” said Lacoste.

“No, but it puts the academy in a very bad light, wouldn’t you say? When one of our own professors is murdered? How can the mayor now say it’s safe for kids to come and use our pool or the hockey rink?”

“I see,” she said, and saw that Gamache was genuinely saddened. But not, she suspected, by the brutal murder of one of his colleagues. He was saddened that a good man like the mayor, and the children of the community, were being hurt, once again, by Serge Leduc.

“The chief of police was more sanguine,” he said. “Offering to help.”

Isabelle Lacoste straightened the crease in her slacks, then looked up at Armand Gamache.

“I had no idea this was such a hostile environment, patron.”

He smiled. “Nor did I, to be honest. I expected resistance when I first arrived, and God knows, I found it. I expected Serge Leduc to try to contaminate and control the feeling on campus. Which he did. I expected that the third-year students would be a lost generation. Which they are. Almost.”

He looked at her and considered for a moment.

“Do you know why the armed forces recruit eighteen-year-olds?”

“Because they’re young and healthy?” she asked.

“Healthier than a twenty-three-year-old? No. It’s because they’re malleable. You can get an eighteen-year-old to believe almost anything. To do almost anything.”

“The same could be said for street gangs and terrorist organizations,” said Lacoste. “Get them young.”

The thought set her back. The words had come out casually, but their meaning took a moment to sink in. Serge Leduc had essentially turned the S?reté Academy into a terrorist training ground.

Within a few short years, he’d soured a once fine institution. Not just the academy—from here his cadets would become S?reté agents. And rise through the ranks. No, not would. Had. They were already inside the S?reté.

And worst of all, these young men and women wouldn’t see anything wrong with what they did. Or were about to do. Because they’d been told it was right.

Armand Gamache had chosen this post for a reason. To right the balance. And to do that he had to stop Serge Leduc.

She watched as Commander Gamache got up and walked to his desk.

An alertness stole over her. The sort that came to highly trained, finely attuned officers.

Serge Leduc had been stopped. Utterly and completely.

But it wasn’t Monsieur Gamache’s doing, she told herself. He had nothing to do with it. He had nothing to do with it. Nothing.