A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12)(79)

“I think there’s something else at work here,” she said. “I saw his face as he watched the video of that raid. He was shocked. But not in the usual way. He seemed to have walked right into the screen. To experience it, as it was happening. It’s a rare ability, to empathize that intensely. It’s almost as though he was there.”

On seeing Gamache’s face, she repeated, “Almost.”

Gamache looked toward the dining room, then back at Myrna.

“He saw all of them,” said Armand. “Réal and Etienne and Sarah.”

He recited the names of the dead, as Ruth had done the day before.

Myrna nodded. “And Jean-Guy. And you. I think for the first time he realized what being a S?reté agent would mean. The Duke, that’s what they called him?”

Gamache nodded.

“The Duke probably filled them with stories of power and glory, and any violence was heroic and cartoonish, like the old war movies or westerns. Death was clean, and mostly us doing it to them. And they loved him for it. But the video shows how horrific it really is. I think it’s terrified him. And he hates you for it.”

Gamache realized he’d been wrong. He’d been afraid Cadet Laurin wasn’t taking this seriously enough, when in fact he was near paralyzed with fear.

Jacques was asking himself the question they all did, eventually. When faced with it, would he move forward or would he run away?

“It’s time he learned what might be expected of him,” said Gamache. “It’s time they all learned.”

Then he smiled. Quickly, briefly. Sincerely.

“That’s a nice thought, Myrna. That good might come out of what happened. Their deaths might save lives. Might save his life, especially if it convinces him to quit.”

“Do you think he will?”

“I think perhaps he should.”

“But will he die at the appointed hour anyway?” she asked. “In his bed, in his car, or in a gun battle?”

“Fate? Don’t start on that again,” said Gamache. It was a conversation they often had, but not that day.

The two men left, as did Myrna and Clara, but the cadets stayed behind.

Huifen, after all, had dishes to do. Amelia grudgingly got up to help her. Then Nathaniel joined in. And finally Jacques came into the kitchen. Grabbing the dish towel from Nathaniel, he snapped it at him before picking up a wet dish.

Nathaniel laughed, knowing it was done in jest. And yet, there had been something vicious about that snap, and the sting it left behind.





CHAPTER 26

“He could have done it,” said Isabelle Lacoste.

They’d gathered in the conference room at the S?reté Academy. Gamache, Professor Charpentier, Beauvoir, and Gélinas listened as Lacoste reported on their early morning meeting with the mayor.

Light poured in through the picture window, and outside the snow was melting in the brilliant sunshine.

“He had the motive and the opportunity. Even, perhaps, the expertise to override the security system here.”

“Though we don’t know if it was done intentionally, or the system just failed on its own,” said Beauvoir.

“What did you make of Mayor Florent?” Gamache asked.

“I liked him. An interesting man. He put up a sort of mist of bonhomie. Of good cheer. But he readily, almost cheerfully, admitted he could’ve left his home, driven over here, killed Leduc and got back home without anyone knowing he was gone.”

“But when you asked if he killed Leduc, he said no,” Gélinas pointed out. “So I guess he didn’t do it.”

“You tried that again?” asked Gamache.

“Still hasn’t worked, eh?” said Beauvoir.

She shook her head and smiled. “One day it will and we can all go home early.”

“But the mayor did admit he despised the man,” said Gélinas, watching with interest and some envy the easy familiarity of these people. He had to remind himself that his job was to judge them, not join them. “That was the word he used. ‘Despised.’ And that he prayed him dead.”

“If everyone we prayed dead died, the streets would be littered with corpses,” said Beauvoir.

“Non,” said Gélinas. “We might wish someone dead, but for a religious man to sit in a church, before God, and pray that someone dies? Not a loved one who’s sick and in pain, whose suffering we want to see ended, but a vigorous man who could live, should live, another forty years? To pray that man dead is something else entirely. It’s a hatred that overwhelms his morals and ethics and beliefs. It’s a hatred that’s hooked in the soul.”

Gamache listened to Gélinas and wondered if he was himself a religious man.

“So you think Mayor Florent is a religious fanatic and God was his accomplice?” asked Beauvoir.

“Now you just make it sound silly,” said Gélinas with a rueful smile, then he shook his head. “He might be a religious man, but I think if he killed Leduc, it was driven by hatred of the man and not love of God. I’ve learned never to underestimate hatred. There’s a madness that goes with it.”

“We have the forensics report,” said Beauvoir, tapping the screen of his tablet.

It was a relief to be investigating a murder in a place with high-speed Internet. The report flashed up on all their screens.