A Great Reckoning (36 page)

It was said with a strange mixture of humor and anger. Was he joking, Gélinas wondered, or was the insult real?

He looked over at Gamache, who'd raised his brows but was also smiling. And Gélinas understood then how well these two men knew each other. And while there was malice, there was also a closeness. An intimacy.

It was a bond that could only have been formed over many years. But hate bonds as surely, and closely, as love.

Paul Gélinas made a mental note to look into their pasts. He knew them professionally, but now it was time to dig into their personal lives.

“The murder of Serge Leduc didn't happen out of the blue,” said Brébeuf. “If it had, you'd have caught the person by now. No. It was considered. He enjoyed tormenting people. Especially people who couldn't fight back. But he obviously chose the wrong target.”

“You think Leduc hurt and humiliated someone so badly that they got their revenge?” asked Gamache.

“I do, and I can see you do too. And you, Deputy Commissioner?”

“I reserve judgment. You're both more experienced in murder than I am.”

“Do you think he means murder, or investigating murder, Armand?” asked Michel as they got to their feet.

“I think Monsieur Gélinas says exactly what he means,” said Gamache.

“Then I think you're in a bit of trouble,” said Brébeuf. He laughed. With genuine pleasure.

Paul Gélinas felt nauseous as he walked down the hall. Made seasick by Brébeuf's wildly corkscrewing emotions.

Neither man looked behind him, but they could feel Brébeuf's eyes on their backs. And then they heard the office door quietly click shut.

“You two were friends?” asked Gélinas.

“Best friends,” said Gamache. “He was a good man, once.”

“What happened?”

“I don't know.”

“Do you think he still is?” Gélinas asked when they reached the stairs.

Gamache paused at the top step. The stairwell was flooded with light from the three-story window that framed the vast thawing prairie.

The echo of cadets calling to each other to hurry bounced off the walls, and urgent steps were heard on the marble stairs below.

And Armand remembered how he and Michel would race up an old, scuffed mahogany staircase, taking them two at a time. Late for class. Again. Because of some sudden discovery the young men had made. A trap door. The way into the attic. A bone that might be human. Or from a chicken.

The poor pathology professor. Dr. Nadeau. Armand smiled slightly at the memory of the harried man, bothered yet again by the two cadets and another bone, or a piece of hair, that might be human. Or mouse.

And each time the verdict. Not human.

But Michel and Armand developed a pet theory. Their finds were in fact some poor victim, and Dr. Nadeau the killer. Covering up. They didn't believe it, of course, but it became a running joke. As was their search for more and more ludicrous things to take to the poor man for analysis.

“Gamache?” said the RCMP officer. “Do you think Brébeuf is still a good man, underneath?”

“I wouldn't have brought him here if I didn't think there was good still in him,” said Gamache, the distant laughter echoing off the glass and concrete.

“But do you regret the decision? Do you think he killed Leduc?” asked Gélinas.

“Not long ago you were accusing me, now you're accusing him,” said Gamache, taking the steps down, his hand on the rail. He stopped on the landing as cadets raced by, late for class. They paused to salute, then ran on, taking the stairs two at a time.

“I've found in homicide it's natural and even necessary to suspect everyone,” said Gamache, when the stairwell was clear, “but best not to say it out loud. Undermines your credibility.”

“Thanks for the advice. Fortunately, in the field of homicide, I have no credibility.”

Gamache grinned at that.

“I actually thought you might've done it together,” said Gélinas, as they continued down the steps.

“Killed him together? Why in the world would we do that?”

“To get rid of a problem. You wanted Leduc dead, to protect the cadets. But you couldn't quite bring yourself to do it. But you knew someone who could. Someone who owed you. That would also explain Brébeuf's presence at the academy. As an object lesson for the students, perhaps, but mostly as a tool for you. To get rid of someone you couldn't just fire. So while it was your idea and planning, Brébeuf was the one who actually did it. It was one last spectacular amend for what he did to you.”

“And now?”

“I no longer think that.”

“And yet you just asked if I thought he'd killed Leduc.”

“I asked if you thought he did it, I didn't say I thought so.”

“You mean you wanted to see if I'd throw him under a bus, to save myself?”

Gélinas was silent. That was exactly what he'd done. He'd handed Gamache an opportunity to condemn Michel Brébeuf. And he hadn't taken it.

“Brébeuf is the only person in this whole place who actually needed the dead man alive,” said Gélinas. “While I said I'd learned never to underestimate hatred, I've learned something else since the death of my wife.”

Gamache stopped at the next landing and gave his full attention to Paul Gélinas.

“Never underestimate loneliness,” said the Mountie. “Brébeuf wouldn't kill the only person not just willing but happy to keep him company. What did he call Leduc?”

“His life raft. And now? Are you still lonely?”

“I was talking about Brébeuf.”

“
Oui
.”

He paused to let Gélinas know he was listening, if he wanted to talk. The RCMP officer said nothing more, but his lips compressed, and Gamache turned away to give the man at least the semblance of privacy.

He looked out the window, across a snowy field gleaming in the sun, to an outdoor rink where the village children were playing a pickup game of hockey. One of the last of the season. Even from a distance, Gamache could see the puddles where the ice was melting. Before long the rink would be gone, would be grass, and another game would begin.

It seemed not so much a window as an opening into another place and time. A million miles from where they stood.

“I remember doing that on the lake at our chalet in the Laurentians,” said Gélinas, so quietly it was almost a whisper. “When I was a kid.”

When I was a kid
, thought Gamache. Now there was a sentence.
When I was a kid
 …

The two men stood in silence, watching the game.

“They could be using the indoor rink of the academy,” Gélinas gestured toward the arena. “But maybe they prefer to be outside.”

“Would you have?” asked Gamache, and Gélinas smiled and shook his head.

“
Non
. Give me a warm arena and scalding hot chocolate from the vending machine after the game,” he said. “Heaven.”

“The mayor has stopped them coming to the academy,” said Gamache.

He watched as one of the players had a breakaway and another plowed him into the snowbank surrounding the rink. There was a great poof of flakes and then they emerged, covered in snow, red-faced, laughing.

“They'll be back,” said Gélinas. “Give it time.”

The kids skated up and down, up and down the rink, chasing the puck. All of them wore blue and red tuques with bobbing pompoms and Montréal Canadiens hockey sweaters. It was impossible to tell one team from another. But they seemed to know. By instinct.

They knew who was on their side.

When did it get so difficult to tell? Gamache wondered.

 

CHAPTER 29

“I'm sorry, but there's no Mrs. Clairton here,” said the pleasant young woman on the phone.

“I said, ‘Clairton,'” repeated Isabelle Lacoste.

“Yes. No. Exactly. Clairton.”

Lacoste stared at the phone. She hadn't been looking forward to this call, knowing it would probably end up like this. The woman with the thick British accent trying to understand the woman with the Québécois accent.

Both speaking apparently unintelligible English.

It was doubly annoying that Beauvoir, whose rough English had been picked up on the streets of east-end Montréal, had absolutely no trouble making himself understood. And understanding. While she, who'd actually studied English, was constantly misunderstood.

Lacoste looked down at the email from the woman at the gun manufacturer, McDermot and Ryan, in the UK.

She'd clearly signed it Elizabeth Coldbrook-Clairton.

“This is McDermot and Ryan?” asked Lacoste.

“No, you've reached McDermot and Ryan.”

Lacoste sighed at the completely predicable response.

“Well, good-bye then,” said the cheerful young woman.

“Wait,” said Lacoste. “How about Coldbrook? Do you have an Elizabeth Coldbrook?”

There was a long pause, during which Lacoste wondered if the receptionist had hung up. But finally the voice came down the line.

“No, but we do have an Elizabeth Coldbrook.”

“Yes, yes,” said Lacoste, hearing the desperation in her own voice.

“One moment, please.”

A few seconds later another voice, this one more efficient but less cheerful, said, “Hello, how may I help you?”

“Elizabeth Coldbrook-Clairton?”

There was a very slight hesitation. “Elizabeth Coldbrook, yes. Who's this?”

“My name is Isabelle Lacoste. I'm investigating the murder of a professor here in Québec. Canada.”

“Oh yes, I spoke to your supervisor this morning.”

“Actually, I'm the supervisor. Chief Inspector Lacoste, of the Sûreté du Québec. You were speaking with Inspector Beauvoir.”

There was laughter down the line. “Oh, I am sorry. You'd think I'd know better than to assume, especially after all these years in public affairs and being the head of a department myself.
Désolé
.”

“You speak French?” asked Lacoste, still in English.

“I do. Your English is better than my French, but we can switch if you like.”

Oddly, Lacoste could understand this woman's English perfectly. Perhaps her clipped tones made it closer to the mid-Atlantic accent she was used to in Canada.

“English is fine,” said Lacoste. “I'd like to send you a photograph. It's a revolver.”

She hit send.

“I've already seen it. Your colleague emailed it to me this morning,” said Elizabeth Coldbrook. “Oh, wait a minute. This isn't the same picture. What is it?”

“It's a detail of a stained-glass window.”

Lacoste hit send on another picture and she heard the click as Madame Coldbrook opened it as well.

“I see. A memorial window. Striking image.”

“
Oui
. The sidearm the soldier is carrying, can you tell the make?”

“I can. It's definitely one of ours. The styling is distinctive. A McDermot .45. They were issued to most of the British Expeditionary Force in the First World War.”

“This was a Canadian soldier.”

“I believe many of them were also issued that revolver. At least, the officers were. He looks so young.”

Both women, both mothers, looked at the boy, with the rifle and the revolver and the frightened, determined, forgiving expression.

“This is the same make but not the same gun used in your crime,” said Madame Coldbrook. “That revolver was new. Sold to the man just a few years ago.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“You think there's a connection between a man who died and a soldier of the Great War?”

“We're really just tying up details.”

“I see. Well, if there's nothing more I can do…”

“
Merci
. Oh, there is one other little thing. Just curious, but do you go by the name Elizabeth Coldbrook, or Clairton, or Coldbrook-Clairton? For our report.”

“Elizabeth Coldbrook is fine.”

“But you signed your email Coldbrook-Clairton. And I notice the Clairton is in a slightly different font. Is there a reason for that?”

“It's a mistake.”

Chief Inspector Lacoste let that statement sit there. How, she wondered, did someone mistake their own name? Misspell, perhaps. Her best friend had, out of nerves, signed her first driver's license Lousie instead of Louise. That had haunted her well beyond the expiry date, as her friends resurrected the error every time they had a few drinks.

But perhaps Madame Coldbrook had been married and was recently divorced. And reverted to her maiden name. That would explain the disappearing hyphen and the mistake, on all sorts of levels. And her guarded tone when asked about it.

“Thank you for your time,” said Lacoste.

“I hope you find out what happened,” said Madame Coldbrook, before hanging up.

Isabelle put the receiver down but remained unsettled by the conversation. Madame Coldbrook has been polite and helpful, readily volunteering information. But something didn't fit.

It wasn't until she and Beauvoir were driving down to Three Pines later in the afternoon that it struck her.

If Madame Coldbrook had once used her husband's name, hyphenated, then surely the receptionist would have recognized it.

“Unless the receptionist was new,” said Jean-Guy, when she brought up the issue. “The one I spoke to sounded young.”

“True.”

It was just past six in the evening, but the sun was already touching the horizon. After turning off the autoroute onto the secondary road, Beauvoir spoke again.

“You're still not sure?”

“If her separation or divorce was so new that she still mistakenly signed her name that way, then the receptionist must have only just started. She sounded young, but experienced.”

“How do you know? Did you understand a word she said?”

“I understood the tone,” said Lacoste in a mock-defensive voice.