A Great Reckoning

by Louise Penny

  Jean-Guy could hear their breathing now. At least one, perhaps more, of the cadets was on the verge of hyperventilating.

  And still they were still. And silent.

  “But I kept Serge Leduc, the Duke, on.”

  “Why?” asked Nathaniel.

  Looking at the pale young man, Gamache tried to catch his own breath. He looked down at his hands, clasped together. Holding on tight.

  Serge Leduc might have done great damage. But so had he.

  If he expected the students to tell him the truth, he had to be willing to do the same.

  “I didn’t know,” he said, looking back up and into the young man’s cold eyes. “I thought he was a brute, a sadist. I thought he was corrupt. I thought I could gather enough evidence against him to put him in prison, so he couldn’t do the same damage someplace else. I thought I could control him so that while I was there, his abuses would stop.”

  “Don’t believe everything you think,” mumbled Amelia.

  Gamache nodded. “They did not stop. It never occurred to me he could be that sick.”

  “When did you find out?” asked Huifen.

  “Last night, while watching the movie.”

  “Mary Poppins?” she asked. She must’ve missed that scene.

  “The Deer Hunter. The one Olivier was watching.” He leaned toward them. “I’m going to get you help.”

  “We don’t need your help,” snapped Jacques. “There’s nothing wrong with us.”

  Gamache thought before he spoke again. “Do you know where this comes from?”

  He smoothed his fingers over the deep scar by his temple. Three of the cadets shook their heads, but Jacques just glared.

  “There was a raid I led, on a factory. A young agent, not much older than you, was being held hostage and time was running out. We gathered as much intelligence as possible on the terrain and the hostage takers. Their number, their weapons, where they were likely to be positioned. And then we went in. Inspector Beauvoir here was critically injured, shot in the abdomen.”

  The cadets turned in their seats to look back at Inspector Beauvoir.

  “Three agents lost their lives,” Gamache continued. “I went to their funerals. Walked behind the caskets. Spent time with their mothers and fathers and husbands and wives and children. And then I went into therapy. Because I was broken. I still see a counselor when I feel overwhelmed. It’s human. It’s our humanity that allows us to find criminals. But it also means we care, and get hurt in places that don’t bleed. Every day, when I see this scar in the mirror,” this time he didn’t touch it, “it reminds me of the pain. Mine. But mostly theirs. But it also reminds me, every day, of the healing. Of the kindness that exists. We are introduced to Goodness every day. Even in drawing-rooms among a crowd of faults. It’s so easy to get mired in the all too obvious cruelty of the world. It’s natural. But to really heal, we need to recognize the goodness too.”

  “It wasn’t our fault,” said Jacques.

  “That’s not what I mean. I think you know that.”

  “Why should we trust you?” demanded Jacques. “Three agents lost their lives because of you. I saw the recording. I saw what happened. And I also saw that somehow you came out of it a hero.”

  Gamache’s jaw clamped shut, the muscles working.

  Beauvoir stirred but said nothing.

  “It’s a trick,” said Jacques, turning to the others. “He’s just trying to get us to say things that will look bad. We have to stick together. Don’t tell him anything.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything,” agreed Gamache. “Only if you want to.”

  He paused, to let them think, before going on.

  “When did it start?”

  He asked Jacques and Huifen. Who said nothing.

  Then he turned to the other two.

  Nathaniel opened his mouth, but a sound from Huifen made him close it. It was Amelia who finally spoke.

  “When I refused to have sex with him, he decided to fuck with me in every other way,” she said, hurrying on before she changed her mind. “I had to do it, he said, or be expelled. He said you never wanted me there, and he was the one fighting to keep me. But if I refused, he’d let you throw me out.”

  Gamache listened and nodded.

  “You believed him, of course. Why wouldn’t you?”

  “I didn’t believe him,” said Amelia. “I knew he was a shit. And you seemed so,” she searched for the word, “kind.”

  They looked at each other, in a moment of intimacy that was almost painful. Jean-Guy felt he should look away, but did not.

  He knew what was in that box. And he knew what was in Gamache’s stare. And he also knew that Amelia Choquet almost certainly had no idea who she was.

  And who Armand Gamache was.

  “But I didn’t think you could stand up to him,” she admitted. “I couldn’t take that chance. You’d let him stay, after all.”

  It wasn’t meant as a mortal blow, just as an explanation. But Jean-Guy could see the internal bleeding those words produced. Gamache was reduced to silence.

  “We trusted you, sir,” said Huifen. “We thought when you arrived it would end, but it only got worse.”

  Jean-Guy thought he could hear Gamache’s heart pounding in his chest, and expected it to explode at any moment.

  “I made a terrible mistake,” he said. “And you all paid for it. I’ll do all I can to make it up to you.”

  And then there was another sound. Completely unexpected.

  Laughter.

  “The Duke was right,” said Jacques. “You are weak.”

  His laughter was replaced by a sneer.

  “Leduc made me stronger. I arrived a kid. Spoiled, soft. But he toughened me up. Got me ready for my job as a Sûreté agent. He said nothing would scare me again, and he was right. He chose the most promising agents and made them even tougher.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Huifen. “He chose the biggest threats to him. The independent-minded. Those who’d one day have the backbone to stand up to what he was teaching. Do you remember what you were like that first day at the academy? I do. You weren’t soft and spoiled. Leduc told you you were, but you weren’t. You were funny, and smart, and eager. And you wanted to help, to do good.”

  “I was a kid.”

  “You were kind,” said Huifen. “Now look at you. Look at me. He chose us. And he broke us.”

  “I’m not broken,” said Jacques. “I’m stronger than ever.”

  “Things are strongest where they’re broken,” said Amelia. “Isn’t that right, sir? You put that on the blackboard that first week.”

  “As long as they’re allowed to mend,” said Gamache. “Yes.”

  “Three years.”

  They looked at Huifen. She spoke matter-of-factly. Just giving a report to the commanding officer.

  “It began the first month we arrived. We’d never know when the call would come, and we’d have to go to his rooms. Sometimes it would be on our own, but mostly it was with others.”

  “What would happen?” asked Gamache. So clearly not wanting to hear, but needing to know.

  “He’d bring out his revolver,” she said. “He made a whole ritual of it, putting it on a tray engraved with the Sûreté motto. He’d choose one of us to carry it into the living room.”

  “It was an honor,” muttered Nathaniel.

  “But the biggest honor was reserved for the cadet chosen to carry the next tray,” said Huifen. “The one with the bullet.”

  “We’d draw lots,” said Nathaniel. “The long straw won.”

  He started to giggle, and when he couldn’t stop and was on the verge of hysteria, Amelia touched his arm. And steadied him.

  “I won,” Nathaniel said, his voice barely audible now. “Three times.”

  He sat up straight then and looked right at Gamache. His eyes defiant.

  “Three times I had to put that single bullet in the chamber. And spin the barrel…”

  When Nathaniel c

ouldn’t go on, Huifen stepped in.

  “And bring the gun up.” She placed her finger to her temple, mimicking a handgun.

  When she couldn’t go on, Amelia stepped in.

  “And pull the trigger,” she said softly.

  “Three times,” whispered Nathaniel.

  “Twice,” said Amelia. She raised her chin and compressed her lips.

  Neither Huifen nor Jacques said anything, and with horror Gamache realized they’d lost count.

  “You are very brave,” said Gamache, holding their eyes that held a touch of madness.

  “If I was brave,” said Nathaniel, “I’d have refused to do it.”

  Gamache shook his head vehemently. “Non. You had no choice. Sitting here now, safe in this chapel, it seems you did. But you didn’t. It was Serge Leduc who was the coward.”

  “That last time,” whispered Nathaniel, staring at Gamache, his eyes wide and tears rolling slowly down his face, “I prayed it would go off. I wet myself.”

  His voice was barely audible.

  Armand Gamache stood up and drew the young man to him, and held him tight as he sobbed.

  Broken. But now, perhaps, healing.

  There was a slight sound behind Beauvoir and he turned to see Paul Gélinas closing the chapel door.

  And then the RCMP officer joined Beauvoir.

  “He made them play Russian roulette?” said Gélinas.

  “The man was a monster,” said Beauvoir.

  Gélinas nodded. “Yes. But someone finally stopped him. And now we know why. We have the missing piece. Motive. Serge Leduc was killed with a single bullet to his brain. And we know the killer is in this room. No matter how well deserved, it’s still murder.”

  Paul Gélinas at least had the decency to look saddened by the fact that they’d have to arrest a person who had dispatched a monster.

  “It could have been self-defense,” said Jean-Guy. “Or even an accident. Maybe Leduc did it to himself.”

  “Did he seem the sort to take that chance? To put the revolver to his own temple and pull the trigger, the way he made the cadets do? To play Russian roulette?”

  “No,” Beauvoir admitted.

  “No. And there was no residue on his hands. Someone did that to him. Someone who knew about the revolver and the game. Someone who wanted to end it.”

  “Commander Gamache didn’t know.”

  “Maybe he found out just that night,” said Gélinas. “And went there to confront Leduc. And killed him.”

  Gélinas got up, crossed himself, then bent down to whisper in Beauvoir’s ear.

  “Out of respect for Monsieur Gamache, I won’t arrest him here, now. We can consider this sanctuary. But we’re going back to the academy this morning. You need to be prepared. I’ll get a warrant first. Then I’ll be coming for him.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” said Beauvoir. “He didn’t kill Leduc.”

  “Does that look like a man who doesn’t have murder on his mind?”

  Gélinas gestured toward Commander Gamache, at the front of the chapel, surrounded by the cadets.

  The RCMP officer straightened up.

  “Your father-in-law likes poetry. The death of the Duke was almost poetic, don’t you think? Knowing what we now know. A bullet through his brain. Come hither, and behold your fate.”

  Jean-Guy heard the door click shut as he watched the cadets and Armand at the front of the chapel.

  There was nothing at all poetic about what had happened. Or what was about to happen.

  CHAPTER 40

  Commander Gamache stood at the back of the classroom, listening as Professor Charpentier finished his lecture.

  His students were third-year cadets, those who already had the basics and were into the next, critical level.

  Advanced tactics.

  Gamache watched as Hugo Charpentier, perspiring freely, explained that tactics wasn’t about the best position to get in to shoot someone.

  “If you have to do that, then you’ve already failed,” he said. “A successful tactician rarely gets to that stage. It’s about manipulation, about anticipation. About outmaneuvering your opponent intellectually. Seeing his moves even before he does. And limiting them. Guiding him, forcing him to do what you want, without him even realizing it. Whether that opponent is a mob boss, a banker, or a serial killer.”

  Charpentier turned to the large blackboard and wrote, “Your brain is your weapon.”

  He turned back to them.

  “Any idiot can use a gun. But it takes real skill, real patience and control to use your mind.”

  A hand went up and Charpentier pointed. “Yes, Cadet Montreaux.”

  “Was it an idiot, then, who killed the Duke?”

  “Now there’s an interesting question. What do you think?”

  “I think since the investigators haven’t yet made an arrest, the killer can’t be that stupid.”

  “Good point,” said Charpentier. “I’ve been trying to teach you about being a Sûreté officer, not a killer. Murderers, of course, need to use a weapon of some sort. But again, the most successful start off using their brains.”

  “And in your opinion, Professor, did the murderer of Serge Leduc use his brain?”

  The students turned around, surprised by the voice from the back of the room.

  Hugo Charpentier smiled.

  “Oui, Commander. In my opinion, it started with a thought, that became a plan, that ripened into an action. A good one.”

  “Good?”

  “Not, perhaps, in the legal or moral sense,” said Charpentier. “But it meets the criteria.”

  “Of what? A good tactician?” Gamache asked across the field of cadets.

  “A great tactician,” said Charpentier.

  “Based on what?”

  “On the simplicity of the crime. On the apparent simplicity of the scene.”

  “Apparent?”

  “Well, yes. Once looked at closely, the depth of evidence becomes clear. Layer after layer, carefully placed.”

  “Put there to misdirect?”

  “To direct. Like a sheepdog, nipping at your heels, Chief Inspector.”

  “Commander now,” Gamache reminded him.

  “Once a homicide investigator…” Charpentier left that hanging.

  “And once a great tactician…” replied Gamache. “We need to talk. May we?”

  Charpentier looked at the clock above the doorway.

  “Tomorrow you have a field test,” he reminded the students as he wheeled between the desks. “Back in the factory. If you need to resort to violence, it must be controlled. You use tactical thinking, with an emphasis on thinking, even as the bullets fly. As soon as it devolves into chaos, into panic, you’re doomed. You die. You control yourself, you control the situation. So far, I’m dumbfounded to report, you’ve failed every time. Been killed every time. We’ve been over the flaws in your last attempt. You have one more day to come up with a plan that will work. Now, go away.”

  “Yessir,” came the chorus, as chairs scraped loudly on the floor.

  But the cadets didn’t want to go away. They milled about as Charpentier arrived before Commander Gamache, and waited to hear what these two men were about to say to each other.

  “Go,” Charpentier demanded, and they went.

  And Armand Gamache and Hugo Charpentier were left alone.

  * * *

  “Where’s Commander Gamache?” Gélinas asked, as he entered the conference room at the academy.

  “He had some work to do,” said Isabelle Lacoste. “He’ll be back soon.”

  “Please tell me where he went.”

  Paul Gélinas stood erect, his attitude and speech formal. Behind him, on either side, were two tall young Sûreté agents. Recent academy graduates. Their smug faces, if not their youth, told her that.

  Getting up from her seat at the conference table, she walked over to the RCMP officer.

  “Is there something I can help you with?”

  ���You know why I’m here,” he said, not unkindly. “I didn’t want to humiliate Monsieur Gamache in front of his friends and family.”

  “He’s not easily humiliated,” said Lacoste, though her face had grown pale and her hands were tingling. As they always did when entering dangerous territory.

  “I waited to do this until after we’d left Three Pines,” said Gélinas. “Out of professional respect, and awareness that he did us all a favor.”

  “By killing Serge Leduc?” she asked.

  “Oui.”

  “You’re here to arrest Monsieur Gamache?”

  “Oui.” He spoke softly, so that the agents behind him wouldn’t hear what he said next. “And if you don’t tell me where he is, Chief Inspector, I will have to arrest you too.”

  Isabelle Lacoste nodded slowly and thrust out her lower lip in thought. Then she walked back to her seat, picked up her laptop, hit a few keys, and carried it to Gélinas.

  “Before going to his meeting this morning, Monsieur Gamache came by to apologize for going over my head and inviting you into the investigation.”

  “You didn’t know he’d done that?”

  “No. He went directly to Chief Superintendent Brunel. She made the arrangements. Monsieur Gamache explained that when he heard you were in Montréal, visiting the RCMP headquarters there, it seemed too good an opportunity to pass up.”

  “To have me as the independent observer.”

  “To watch, yes. But mostly to be watched.”

  “Pardon?”

  Lacoste turned the laptop around, and Gélinas’s eyes widened a little and his lips compressed, just a little. Tiny changes that did not escape Lacoste.

  He took a small step away from her and the laptop. “When Commander Gamache returns, have him come see me. I’ll be in my rooms. He has a great deal of explaining to do.”

  “As do you, sir.”

  She slowly lowered the lid of the laptop.

  * * *

  “When did you know?” Gamache asked Charpentier.

  He’d taken a seat and the two men were eye to eye.

  “Not for a long time. In fact, I don’t really know anything even now, except what I was able to deduce.”

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