A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12)(96)

“Okay, so what else would be in your bedside table? Some AA reading and a photograph of you and Annie. Noooo. The sonogram showing the baby. So that when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, you can look at it.”

Jean-Guy stared straight ahead. It seemed Isabelle had made it well past his drawers and right into his private parts.

“My turn,” he said. “You haaavvvve…”

He thought for a kilometer. The road was getting rougher and rougher as it changed from asphalt to dirt, and the heaves and holes of the spring thaw grew more obvious and devious.

“Used Kleenexes from wiping your kids’ noses when they came to you crying in the night. You have scraps of paper with scribbles on them you can’t make out but are afraid to throw away in case they turn out to be important. Probably a mix of thoughts on a case and random fears about the kids. Oh, and you have the note Robert left you the first time he signed, ‘Love, Robert.’ Oh, and a cigar.”

“A cigar?”

“That was a guess. You seem the sort.”

“Asshole.”

“But I see what you mean,” said Jean-Guy as he turned onto the almost invisible side road. “There’s some junk, but mostly we keep things that are precious in our bedside tables.”

“Or at least intimate things,” said Isabelle. “The map wasn’t like your condoms, shoved there and forgotten. The Duke didn’t just keep it, he kept it close. But not visible. Why?”

Beauvoir tried to imagine Serge Leduc, sleepless, turning on the lamp and opening the bedside drawer and pulling out the old map. As he did the sonogram. Jean-Guy had to admit he was still trying to make out the limbs, the head, the light heart of their baby.

Did Leduc stare at the map, trying to figure it out? Did it give him comfort on long winter nights?

Beauvoir could not imagine Leduc needing comfort, never mind finding it in the odd little map.

“Maybe it wasn’t important to him in a personal way,” he suggested. “People also keep things there they don’t want others to see.”

“But the map wasn’t secret or something to be ashamed of,” said Lacoste. “Monsieur Gamache has the original framed on his wall at the academy. He gave copies to the cadets.”

“Yes, but Serge Leduc didn’t want anyone to know he’d gotten his hands on a copy.”

“But again”—she raised her hands and let them drop into her lap in exasperation—“why did he have a copy?”

She could see his face harden.

“What’s wrong? What’ve you just thought?”

“Leduc probably got the map from Amelia Choquet.”

“Right.”

“Okay, let’s say she gave it to him. And he put it in his bedside drawer. What’s the natural conclusion? What did you really think, Isabelle, when you heard that?”

“I wondered if Professor Leduc hadn’t just gotten his hands on the map, he’d also gotten his hands on the cadet. Had it been found in his office, I probably wouldn’t have thought that, but a bedside table’s different.”

“Yes,” said Beauvoir. “I thought the same thing. I think that’s what everyone would suspect. That Leduc and Cadet Choquet had a relationship. An intimate, sexual one. And the map was a kind of prize, a talisman. Proof of his conquest.”

“A notch in the bedpost,” said Lacoste with distaste.

“And it might be true,” said Beauvoir. “Or it might not.”

“Cadet Choquet is the unusual one, right?”

“That’s one way of putting it. Spiky black hair. Unnaturally pale skin. Nose, eyebrows, ears, lips and tongue pierced.”

“Tattoos,” nodded Lacoste. “I’ve seen her. This isn’t your parents’ academy. What do you think of her? Could she have done it?”

It was the most serious of questions, and needed reflection.

“Absolutely,” he said immediately. “She’s smart and angry.”

“But is she clever?”

Now Jean-Guy reflected. That really was the ingredient necessary to get away with murder. To commit murder, all you needed was rage and a weapon. Any fool could kill. It took cleverness to baffle the best minds in homicide in the nation.

Was she clever? It went beyond smart. Beyond cunning. Clever was a combination of all those things, with an added twist of guile.

“I don’t know if she’s clever. There’s a sort of innocence about her.”

He surprised himself with that, but he knew it was true.

“Probably explains the anger,” said Lacoste. “The innocent are often upset when the world doesn’t live up to their expectations. Doesn’t mean she’s innocent of the crime.”

Jean-Guy nodded. “I spoke to her professors this afternoon. She shows up to class, sits at the back, rarely contributes, but when called upon is almost always unconventional but insightful. She frankly intimidates most of her profs, who don’t much like her.”

“She intimidates with her looks, her demeanor, or because she’s so obviously smarter than they are?”

“Probably all three. She certainly doesn’t conform.”

“And her uniform?”

It was a good question. Many of the freshmen, unused to uniforms, adjusted them to make them more personal and stylish. In the past, Leduc had meted out punishments for that, but Commander Gamache had chosen a different route. Much to the surprise of the seasoned professors, the new commander allowed the adjustments.