A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12)(50)

It was midafternoon and the bistro was filling up, but their table was private. At Gamache’s request, Olivier had given them a place in the corner, tucked between the wall and the window. When Commander Gamache walked in, they’d stood up, but now he waved them to their seats and grabbed a chair for himself from another table.

Amelia found herself at home in the faintly familiar surroundings. It didn’t smell of urine and cigarettes, like the rooming house. It didn’t sound hollow, like the academy. Instead, it smelt of wood smoke and coffee, and she could hear the fire crackle in the grate and the murmur of muffled conversation nearby, spiced by laughter. Not the loud, often jarring, bursts of laughter that reverberated down the halls of the academy. This was a low rumble. An undertone of good humor.

After being marched out of the academy, she’d been taken to an unmarked S?reté vehicle, already running, with Nathaniel waiting in the backseat and two plainclothes agents in the front seat. As they’d been driven deeper and deeper into the wilderness, away from the academy and way away from S?reté headquarters, her disquiet had grown.

The car had turned off the main road and taken progressively smaller back roads. Then, finally, a dirt road.

“Where’re you taking us?” she demanded, just as the car slowed and crested a hill. “Where are we?”

“Well, we’re not in Kansas anymore,” said one of the plainclothes agents, turning around.

It was Gabri. And Amelia immediately recognized the village.

“Three Pines,” she said. “But why?”

“Honestly,” said Olivier, as they pulled up to the bistro, “I have no idea why Monsieur Gamache wants you back. But he does.”

The cadets were shown to the table reserved for them, and Olivier explained that Commander Gamache had asked that they wait there for him.

They’d been joined shortly after that by Huifen and Jacques. The two women who’d driven them down, the bookstore owner and the artist, left them at the table. The artist woman went home, but the bookstore owner found a table across the room, ordered a beer and a sandwich, and watched them.

The cadets had had lunch, and then endless cups of coffee, waiting. And then the Commander had arrived.

“Why’re we back here?” Jacques repeated Huifen’s question when Commander Gamache sat down.

Armand asked Olivier for a double espresso, then turned his attention to the cadets. “I had my friends bring you here because secrecy is vital. Chief Inspector Lacoste and Inspector Beauvoir know you’re here. But no one else. I didn’t even want agents to drive you down. No one must know where you are.”

They moved forward then, drawn toward the Commander.

Huifen and Nathaniel immediately asked, “Why not?”

But Amelia and Jacques did not. And Gamache wondered if they knew. They were suspected. Of being the killer. Or being the next victim.

As he looked at their young, troubled faces, he saw the village beyond and the hill they’d driven down. And he remembered the headlights up there, that first night the cadets had visited.

The lights, like eyes, had stared down at them, then had slowly, slowly withdrawn.

Gamache had no idea who was in the car, and he’d assumed whoever it was had been following him. But now he wondered. And now his worry increased.

Suppose he wasn’t the target? Suppose whoever was in the car had been following the cadets?

All of them.

Or just one of them.

“Why are we here?” Huifen asked, almost demanded.

“I brought you here because I have a job for you.”

“Let me guess,” said Jacques. “You want us to shovel your walk and cook your meals.”

He’d spoken loudly, and the tables immediately around them shot glances their way before returning to their own business.

“I think you’re mistaking me for someone else,” said Gamache, his voice reasonable. Not taking offense. A bird of prey unbothered by a moth. “No. In fact what I’m going to ask you to do is quite difficult and very important. And needs to be kept quiet. I hope it will help in the investigation of Professor Leduc’s murder.”

He could not have put together a string of words more potent for the young men and women. Even Jacques grew quiet and attentive, and Amelia sat forward.

So very young, he thought. So young they don’t know it.

“A copy of this map was found in Professor Leduc’s night table,” said Gamache as he placed the map on the table.

Only Nathaniel noticed the blood seep from Amelia’s face. Already pale to begin with, she now looked translucent.

“No one outside of the homicide investigators knows that,” the Commander was saying. “We don’t yet know how he got it, or why he had it.”

“Whose is it?” asked Huifen.

“Others are looking into that question,” said Gamache.

Amelia was staring at him, though she said nothing.

“Is that why they told us to find our copies?” asked Jacques.

“It is. I hope you brought them, because I need you to find some things out.”

His eyes, as always, came to rest on Amelia.

He’d been watching her progress since the first day.

She was top of her class. Top of the entire freshman intake, in fact. By a long shot. But she hadn’t chosen a volunteer assignment, belonged to no clubs or sports teams, and sat alone at meals.