by Louise Penny
“And you’re not Sûreté officers,” snapped Gamache. “You’re cadets and I’m your commander. And you’ll do as I say. I’m losing patience with you, young man. The only reason I tolerate your insubordination is because I think someone messed with your head. Told you all sorts of things that aren’t true.”
“So you’re here to reeducate me, is that it?” demanded Jacques.
“Yes, as a matter of fact. You’re very close to graduation, and then what?”
“I’ll be a Sûreté officer.”
“Will you? Things have changed at the academy and you’re not changing with them. You’re stuck. Frozen. Perhaps even petrified.” Gamache lowered his voice, though the rest of the table could still hear. “The time has come, Jacques, to decide if you are going to move forward, or not.”
“You have no idea who I am, and what I’ve done,” Jacques hissed back.
“What have you done?” Gamache demanded, holding the young man’s eyes. “Tell me now.”
Huifen reached out. The warning touch. Again. Subtle, but Gamache saw it.
And the moment passed when Jacques might have said something.
Gamache glared at Huifen, then turned to Nathaniel and Amelia. “You’ve done well.”
“What should we do now?” Nathaniel asked.
“Now you join us for dinner,” said Gamache, getting up. “You must be hungry.”
“Us too?” asked Huifen, also rising along with Jacques.
The Commander looked at them and gave a brusque nod before going to the long wooden bar and paying for the cadets’ food and drinks for that day, and inviting Olivier to join them.
* * *
“You okay?” asked Annie.
Jean-Guy was rubbing her swollen feet and both were on the sofa, watching the news. Though Jean-Guy was clearly distracted.
“Just thinking.”
“About what?”
He hesitated, not wanting to upset Annie with ideas that seemed at one moment crazy and the next perfectly plausible.
“Do you think your father could have ever…”
“Oui?”
She took a huge bite of the éclair she’d been having as an hors d’oeuvre.
Now, looking into his wife’s unsuspecting gaze, it seemed crazy to Jean-Guy. Armand Gamache would never—
“Nothing.”
“What is it?” She lowered the éclair to a plate. “Tell me. Is Dad in trouble? Is something wrong?”
There, he’d upset her after all, and he knew she wouldn’t let it go until he told her.
“There’s a senior officer from the RCMP who’s joined us as an independent observer and he seems to think your father might’ve—”
“Had something to do with the murder?” asked Annie.
“Well, no, not really, it’s just, well—”
She swung her legs off his lap and sat up. Annie the lawyer was in the building.
“Is there any evidence?” she asked.
Jean-Guy sighed. “Circumstantial, at best.”
“And what’s the worst?”
“Fingerprints.”
Annie’s brows shot up. She hadn’t expected that.
“Where?”
“On the murder weapon.”
“Jesus. Which was a revolver, right?”
“Your father said he never touched it, never even knew Leduc had it.”
“He wouldn’t allow it,” said Annie, her eyes narrowing in thought.
“That’s what he said. The prints are partials. His and one of the cadets and Michel Brébeuf’s.”
“Partials?” The tension left her face. “Then they’re not admissible. And they’re obviously not his.”
“He told me this afternoon that they were.”
“Wait a minute.” She leaned toward her husband. “He says he never touched it, but also says the prints are his. That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know. He said he thinks the solution to the murder lies in those prints.”
“The other ones, then. Uncle Michel and the cadet,” said Annie. “That’s what he must mean. Who is he?”
“The cadet? She. Amelia Choquet.”
He watched his wife, but there was no reaction to the name. Jean-Guy struggled with what to say next and Annie homed in on that.
“There’s more. What is it?”
“There seems a kind of connection between them.”
“Between Dad and Michel Brébeuf, yes, of course. You know that.”
“No, between Amelia Choquet and your father.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice guarded.
“I don’t know. I just wondered if the name meant anything.”
“Should it? Come on, Jean-Guy, tell me what you’re thinking.”
He heaved a sigh and wondered how much damage he was about to do.
“Do you think your father could’ve had an affair?”
The question landed on Annie like an anvil on a cartoon cat. She looked dazed and he could almost see stars and little birds flying around her head.
Annie stared at him, incapable of speech. Finally blurting out, “Of course not.”
“Many men do,” said Jean-Guy gently. “Away from home. Tempted. A moment of weakness.”
“My father is as human as the next man, and he has his weaknesses,” said Annie. “But not that. Never that. He would never, ever betray my mother. He loves her.”
“I agree. But I had to ask.” He took her hand and absently turned her wedding ring around and around. “Have I hurt you?”
“You’ve made me angry that you’d even ask. And if you have to ask, then what must others think? Like that RCMP person. He doesn’t know Dad, does he?”
“No, but he’s staying with your folks in Three Pines.”
“You have to go down there, Jean-Guy. You have to be with Dad. Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”
“Like kill someone or have an affair?”
“Well, seems you’ve already messed that up,” she said with a wan smile.
“I offered to go down, but he wanted me to be with you.”
“I’ll be fine. Baby isn’t due for a few weeks.”
He got up and hauled her off the sofa.
“You want me gone so you can finish off that box of éclairs, don’t you?”
“Actually, the pizza boy’s arriving in a few minutes. I need you gone by then. He’s very jealous.”
“Replaced by a pepperoni. My mother said it would come to that.”
“So did Gloria Steinem.”
CHAPTER 37
“Mary Poppins,” said Clara. “Oh, perfect.”
She sighed with relief as she fell into the sofa and Armand opened the armoire to reveal the television.
They’d had dinner. Shepherd’s pie made by Myrna. Fragrant crispy garlic bread brought by Clara. And a massive chocolate cake that Gabri had baked that afternoon, knowing they’d be working through dinner.
It had been rougher slogging than any of them realized. They’d been so focused on the mystery of the boys in the window, none of them had really thought about what those boxes, forgotten in the basement of the Legion, actually contained.
The remains of so many young men. The Great War had destroyed the flower of Europe and had taken with it the wildflowers of Canada. A generation of young men, gone. And all that was left of them sat forgotten in dusty old boxes in a basement.
One of the letters home contained a poppy. Pressed flat. Frail but still a vibrant red. Picked fresh one morning, just before a battle in a corner of Belgium called Flanders Fields.
The friends had given up then. Unable to go on.
Reine-Marie, Clara, Myrna, Ruth, and Gabri had put down the boxes and filed into the kitchen, where the others had prepared dinner. It was a somber meal until they noticed the young people, gobbling food as though they’d never seen it before. Huge forkfuls of shepherd’s pie disappeared into the four bottomless pits.
They all went back for more. Since the villagers’ appe
tites were gone, there was plenty for the cadets.
Even Ruth smiled at the sight. Though it might have been gas.
“Chocolate cake?” asked Gabri.
The magic words restored the villagers’ appetites, and they all took their tall wedges of moist cake into the living room, along with coffees.
“Mary Poppins?” asked Reine-Marie.
“Mary Poppins,” said Clara. “Oh, perfect.”
“The girls watch it every time they visit,” said Reine-Marie, handing the disk to her husband.
“Girls?” asked Huifen.
“Our granddaughters,” said Reine-Marie. “Florence and Zora.”
“Zorro?” asked Jacques, an earnest expression on his face.
But a stern look from Gamache wiped it away.
“Zora,” he corrected. “She’s named after my grandmother.”
“Not really your grandmother, though,” said Gélinas. “Wasn’t she one of the DPs after the Second World War?”
Gamache looked at him. The message, once again, was clear. Paul Gélinas had done his homework. And the home he’d worked on belonged to Gamache.
“DPs?” asked Nathaniel.
“Displaced persons,” said Myrna. “Those without a home or family. Many of them from the concentration camps. Liberated but with no place to go.”
“My father sponsored Zora to come to Canada,” Armand explained.
He knew he might as well tell them. After all, it wasn’t a secret. And it wasn’t going to remain private for long. Gélinas would see to that.
“She came to live with us,” said Gamache, turning on the receiver and the DVD. “We became her family.”
“And she became yours,” said Gélinas. “After your parents died.”
Gamache turned around and faced Gélinas. “Oui.”
“Zora,” said Reine-Marie with fondness. “The name means ‘the dawn.’ The beginning of light.”
“And she was,” said Armand. “Now, are we sure we want to watch Mary Poppins? We also have Cinderella and The Little Mermaid.”
“I’ve never seen Mary Poppins,” said Amelia. “Have you?”
The other cadets shook their heads.
“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?” said Myrna. “You’ve never seen Mary Poppins?”
“That’s something quite atrocious,” said Clara. “Okay, Armand. Turn it on.”
“Count me out,” said Olivier, getting up. “That nanny gives me the creeps.”
As the establishing shot of 1910 London appeared, Olivier disappeared into the kitchen. A few minutes later, Armand arrived to make more coffee. He found Olivier in one of the armchairs by the fireplace. The small television was on and he wore headphones.
“What’re you watching?”
Olivier almost leapt out of his skin.
He shoved the headphones off his ears. “Jeez, Armand. You almost killed me.”
“Sorry. What’s on?”
He stood behind Olivier’s chair and watched a very young Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken in a bar.
“The Deer Hunter.”
“You’re kidding,” said Armand. “Mary Poppins scares you, but The Deer Hunter is okay?”
Olivier smiled. “Talking about Clairton reminded me how great this movie is.”
“Why?”
“Well, I think it’s the bond—”
“No, I mean, why Clairton?”
“It’s the town the main characters come from. There, that’s it.”
He waved at the screen as a shot of a steel town in Pennsylvania came on.
“I’ll leave you to it.”
Olivier watched Armand walk back into the living room and the world of Mary Poppins, where the father was singing “The Life I Lead.”
On his screen, Robert De Niro was threatening a barroom brawl with a Green Beret.
* * *
Jean-Guy’s wipers were taking the sleet off the windshield as fast as they could.
He liked driving. It was a chance to listen to music and think. And at the moment he was thinking about those fingerprints, and the blatant contradiction in what his father-in-law had said.
The prints were his. But he had never touched the gun.
The key to the crime was in the prints.
Did he mean Amelia Choquet?
Despite Annie’s protests, and his own gut feeling, Jean-Guy retained a fragment of doubt. Could the Goth Girl be Gamache’s daughter? She didn’t look at all like either Annie or her brother, Daniel. But maybe she did, and he was simply distracted by all the accoutrements. The tattoos and piercings disguising who and what she really was.
Could Amelia, who perhaps not coincidently shared a name with Gamache’s mother, be the result of a momentary lapse twenty years earlier?
But if he knew who she was, why did Gamache admit her to the academy?
Maybe he didn’t know Amelia existed until he saw the application, saw the birth mother, saw the birth date. Saw the name. And put it all together.
And then he’d want to see the girl.
And after the crime, he’d want to protect her. The daughter he never knew he had.
Did Gamache think she killed Serge Leduc? And was he shielding her, intentionally muddying the investigation by admitting the prints were his, when they weren’t?
Misdirection. Another whale.
All truth with malice in it.
The wipers swished the slush, clearing the windshield. And despite the mess, Jean-Guy felt he was seeing clearer. Getting closer.
Suppose he took a different tack? Suppose Gamache was telling the truth. The prints were his, even though he’d never touched the gun.
How could that be?
Swish, swish, swish.
Jean-Guy was almost there, he could feel the answer just ahead, in the darkness.
Swish, swish— He slowed the car and pulled off into a service station. And there he sat in the idling vehicle, the sleet slapping the roof and steamy windows.
If Monsieur Gamache hadn’t touched the revolver, but the prints were his, then someone must’ve placed them there. Someone with such skill and expertise that even the Sûreté’s own lab didn’t detect the fake.
While the Sûreté Academy was stuffed with professors, top in their field, and soon-to-be agents and visiting experts, few people had the ability to do that.
It demanded not just skill, but someone especially gifted in forensics and manipulation. This was a plan that didn’t just happen. It must’ve been months in the making.
It needed patience, and timing, and nerve. To plant evidence like that needed a great tactician. And the academy had one of those. Someone recruited by Gamache himself.
Hugo Charpentier.
Swish, swish, swish.
* * *
Armand placed his hand over Reine-Marie’s, which was gripping the shoe box even as she watched the movie.
Just as Mary Poppins slid up the banister, to the astonishment of the Banks children, Armand leaned over and whispered, “I’ll do this.”
“I should.”
“No, I should.”
Her grip loosened and her hands slid off the old cardboard box.
Armand took it and stepped between the cadets sprawled on the floor, their eyes glued to the screen. Walking into the kitchen, he poured himself another coffee and sat at the harvest table.
At the far end of the room, Olivier had his feet up watching his movie.
Taking a deep breath, Armand looked down at the box filled with telegrams and remembered the number of times he’d been the one to deliver the news.
To see the door open and the expectant, then perplexed, then frightened faces of parents, or spouses, or siblings, or children.
And then to tell them what had happened.
He remembered each and every time over the past thirty years. He closed his eyes and could see all those faces, those eyes, pleading with him. To tell them it wasn’t true. And he could feel their hands gripping his arm, as they fell. Mothers, fathers, h
usbands and wives crumpled to the floor. While he held them, and gently lowered them. To the ground.
And stayed with them until they could get up again. A strange resurrection. Changed forever.
To the accompaniment of Mary Poppins singing about a spoonful of sugar and medicine, he opened the box. And started reading the telegrams. Looking for one name. Turcotte.
He thought he could just hurry through, scanning for the name. But he could not. He found himself reading each and every one. There was a devastating sameness about them. The commanding officers clearly overwhelmed by the number that had to be written. After a while, the telegrams were written in a sort of shorthand, a scrawl, that made sense a hundred years later when the place names were familiar, but that must have, at the moment of delivery, been meaningless. Their child gone, forever. In some unintelligible foreign field.
The worst, perhaps, were the number of missing, presumed dead. The ones lost and never, ever found.
There were plenty of those. Lots of those.
But none of them bore the name Turcotte.
Had he survived?
In his gut Gamache knew the young soldier in the window, with the map, had not come home.
He replaced the lid and sat there, his hand resting on top of the box. He looked over at Olivier and the mute television.
In the background, the Banks children were being warned by Bert, the chimney sweep, that what Uncle Albert suffered from was serious and contagious.
Uncle Albert was giggling, then, unable to contain it any longer, he burst out laughing.
“I love to laugh,” Uncle Albert sang, long and loud and clear.
While on Olivier’s screen, Robert De Niro, filthy and emaciated, spun the barrel of the revolver, then held the gun to his head. His eyes crazed, his mouth open in what must have been a scream, but all Armand heard was Uncle Albert’s laughter, bubbling in from the other room.
De Niro pulled the trigger.
Armand fell back in his chair, his eyes wide, his mouth open, his breathing shallow.
Staring at the gun in Robert De Niro’s hand.
A revolver. A revolver.
Gripping the chair for support, Armand slowly rose. And looked from Olivier’s movie through the door and into the living room. At Jacques, and Huifen, and Nathaniel. And Amelia. Laughing along with Uncle Albert.