A Great Reckoning (14 page)

He looked at his watch at the same moment Gamache did.

It was six twenty-three in the morning.

There was silence now. Except for a tiny sound like a squeal. Both Gamache and Beauvoir looked up and down the corridor. It was still empty. But still the sound came closer.

Then around the corner came Hugo Charpentier in his wheelchair.

“What's happened?”

Professor Charpentier's progress stopped when he saw Gamache's face.

“As bad as that?”

Gamache didn't move.

“Where're the others?” Charpentier asked.

“Securing the building. The staff and students are being taken to the dining hall.”

“And they forgot about me,” he said. He started to wheel forward. “Can I help?”

“
Non, merci
. Just join the others, please.”

As he turned back down the hall, Gamache also marveled that they'd forgotten Professor Charpentier. He felt slightly ashamed, but mostly he tucked that information away. How easily overlooked that man was. And he thought about what an invisible man could get away with.

He also noted the squeal of Charpentier's wheelchair, as he withdrew. Something Gamache had never noticed before.

And then he turned his attention to the doorway and what lay beyond.

Who lay beyond.

Serge Leduc was crumpled on the floor.

It was all too obvious what had happened. By the body, and the blood. He'd been shot in the head. The gun still lay by his side.

And while it was also clear, by the glaring eyes and open mouth, and the pallor, never mind the wound, that he was dead, Gamache still bent down and felt for a pulse, his hand coming away with a bit of blood, which he wiped off with a handkerchief.

Jean-Guy's practiced eye swept the scene, then he looked toward the bedroom.

Gamache gave a brief nod and Beauvoir covered the ground swiftly.

“Nothing,” said Jean-Guy a moment later.

“That's enough,” said Gamache from the bedroom door, when Beauvoir opened a drawer in the nightstand. “I doubt the murderer's in the drawer. Let's leave it for Lacoste and the Scene of Crime team.”

Beauvoir closed the drawer, but not before Gamache saw something Jean-Guy had not.

What was inside that drawer. Even from a distance, it was unmistakable.

“As tempting as it is to start the investigation, we need to wait. Call Isabelle back, Jean-Guy, and report in more detail. She should be here soon with the homicide team. Can you please go to the main door and show her up here?”

“Now?”

“Is there a better time?”

“Don't you want me to help here?”

“There's nothing we can do to help. I just need the doctor to confirm he's dead. You know the drill. Then I'll lock the door and wait for you to return with Chief Inspector Lacoste.”

Beauvoir looked down at the body.

“Suicide?”

“Maybe,” said Gamache. “Does something strike you as strange?”

Beauvoir examined the scene more closely.

“
Oui
. The gun. It's on the wrong side. If he'd killed himself, it'd be on the same side as the entrance wound.”

Gamache nodded, lost in thought.

Beauvoir left, stopping at his own rooms to throw on some clothes.

When he walked back down the corridor, the door to Leduc's rooms was closed and Gamache was nowhere to be seen.

*   *   *

Armand stood over the body of Serge Leduc, careful to avoid contaminating evidence more than he already had.

His eye took in the placement of furniture, the curtains and books. The ashes in the hearth.

But his eye kept returning to the body, and the weapon. As Jean-Guy had said, on the wrong side of the body, for suicide.

Yes, it was odd that the weapon was there. But what was odder still was that the murderer must have placed it there.

For this was murder, Gamache knew. And there was a murderer. And instead of trying to make it look like suicide, as any reasonable killer would, this one had made sure there was no doubt.

Serge Leduc's death was deliberate.

That's what struck the former head of homicide as strange. Very strange. Not the body. Not even the fact Serge Leduc had been killed. But the behavior of his killer.

Gamache stood staring. But not at the body. Now his attention had turned to the bedroom. Knowing he shouldn't, but doing it anyway, Gamache walked swiftly into the bedroom and opened the bedside drawer.

As he looked down, his face grew as grim as when he'd gazed at the body.

*   *   *

There was an electronic whirring, then a clunk, and the door to the academy opened. Chief Inspector Lacoste stepped inside quickly. Not because there was so much urgency to the case, but because it was so damned cold.

A damp wind was sweeping across the flatlands, carrying moisture from melting snow and ice, for hundreds of miles, and depositing it in their bones.

The initial message from Inspector Beauvoir had been brief. Simply that there'd been a death at the academy. Not who. Not how. Not even if it was murder, though the fact the call had been made to her, the head of homicide, was in itself a fairly significant clue.

She also knew the victim had not been Commander Gamache. Beauvoir would have told her, in words, but also in his tone.

Once in the car, an agent at the wheel and the Scene of Crime van behind, Isabelle Lacoste received another call from Beauvoir.

“Tell me what you know,” she'd said.

On the other end, Jean-Guy gave a brief smile. He wondered if Isabelle realized that was exactly how Chief Inspector Gamache had begun each and every homicide investigation.

Tell me what you know
.

He told her what he knew, and as she listened she took notes on her tablet. But then she stopped and just listened.

“The killer?” she asked, when he finished his report.

“No sign of him,” said Beauvoir. “The cadets and staff are in the dining hall. The academy is on lockdown and they're doing a head count.”

“And the body?”

“Commander Gamache is with him, waiting for the doctor. He'll lock up and wait for you once death is confirmed.”

“I've called the coroner. She'll be arriving soon too.”

“
Bon
. On first inspection, no one is missing and no one appears obviously guilty. No blood-stained hands.”

It was not a joke. There would be blood on someone's hands, and then some. To place a gun at Leduc's temple like that, and fire.

Beauvoir had questioned the night guards and staff, but not too closely. Just enough to find out if they'd seen anything that needed immediate action.

They had not.

Which led to an obvious conclusion.

The killer hadn't left, and hadn't arrived. Because he was already there, hidden within these walls.

*   *   *

Isabelle Lacoste walked beside Jean-Guy Beauvoir down the deserted halls. The Scene of Crime team was behind them, their feet clacking on the marble floor.

It was her first time in the new academy and she was curious. She'd heard rumors of extravagance. Of the project being wildly over budget.

And then quieter whispers, of kickbacks and bribes and contract fixing. But nothing had ever been proven. Most likely because the Sûreté and the Québec government had bigger and more immediate messes to clean up.

But those piles of
merde
were now under control. Those caught up in the corruption scandal within the Sûreté and the government were dead, in prison, or had been fired. And slowly, she suspected, the spotlight was turning toward the academy.

Did that explain Armand Gamache taking over as commander?

Did that explain the murder?

She realized she'd linked the two, and now she stopped herself. Far too early for speculation.

They turned the corner and saw a man standing outside a door. At his feet was a tray and shattered glass and china.

As she drew closer, Isabelle Lacoste recognized him.

Not Armand Gamache. It was Superintendent Brébeuf. And she checked herself yet again. Just plain old Brébeuf now. No longer a superintendent. Though she was so used to seeing him as that, it was her automatic reaction. Old habits, she thought. Very dangerous. As was he.

Brébeuf was alone in the middle of the wide corridor, looking like a man lost, or abandoned.

Isabelle felt her disgust growing with each step. She didn't think it showed on her face, but it must have. He backed up slightly and nodded to her but didn't offer his hand. Not wanting, she suspected, to risk her rejecting the offer in front of so many witnesses.

“Chief Inspector Lacoste,” he said. “This is a terrible business.”

“Yes.”

He'd aged in the few years since she'd last seen him. Lacoste knew that the former superintendent of the Sûreté was the same age as Gamache, but he looked ten, fifteen years older. And while never a robust man, there'd been a sort of wiry vitality about him that many had admired. Including herself.

But now he seemed desiccated. Withered.

“Commander Gamache is inside with the body.”

“So I understand,” said Chief Inspector Lacoste. “And why are you here?”

He bristled slightly, but only slightly. The instinctive reaction of a once great man, reduced.

“Monsieur Gamache asked me to get the academy doctor from the infirmary. I did. He confirmed that Professor Leduc is dead.”

“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 Sûreté 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.