A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12) - Louise Penny Page 0,105

find all sorts of lost souls he put there for safekeeping. And maybe a baguette.

“Her high school marks were mixed. She barely scraped by, though she did well, but erratically, in history, languages and literature.”

“She only did what interested her,” said Lacoste. “Lazy?”

“Looks like it. Or at least, not motivated.”

“Now, why would someone like that apply to the Sûreté Academy?” asked Lacoste.

“A dare, maybe? A joke. And then when she was accepted, she decided to try it out.”

“Does she strike you as the joking kind?”

“No.” He drove in silence, thinking of the dark girl with the pale face. The contradictory girl.

“She sounds like she can take care of herself,” said Lacoste. “Doesn’t sound like the sort Leduc could take advantage of.”

Beauvoir opened his mouth to say something, taking in a breath, but then changed his mind.

“Go on. Say it,” said Isabelle.

Their headlights picked up the snowbanks on either side of the road, and the leafless, lifeless, trees.

“Imagine being nineteen or twenty and on the streets,” he said. “Prostituting yourself. Numbing yourself with drugs. And ahead all you see is more of the same. And you know, at nineteen, that life is not going to get better. What would you do?”

The two agents stared at the distorted, grotesque shadows of the bare trees, thrown onto the snow by the harsh headlights.

“Put a bullet in your brain?” he asked quietly. “OD? Or would you make one last mighty leap for the lifeboat?”

“You think the academy is her lifeboat?” asked Lacoste.

“I don’t know, I’m just guessing. But I do think Monsieur Gamache thought so, and he rowed out to get her. She’d been turned down, you know, by Leduc.”

“I’d have thought Leduc would want someone so broken.”

“No. I think he preferred to do the breaking.”

“Goddamned Leduc,” said Lacoste. “He’d know her background, and he’d know she’d have no choice but to submit and be quiet about it. You think she killed him? You think she couldn’t take it anymore and shot him with his own gun?”

“It’s possible,” said Beauvoir.

“But?”

“I think Leduc had more on his mind than sexual gratification. I think he was even more devious.”

“Go on,” said Lacoste.

“Who was the biggest threat to Serge Leduc?”

“That’s easy. Monsieur Gamache.”

“Exactly. He knew Monsieur Gamache was coming after him. He must’ve felt him getting closer and closer. And he wasn’t facing just losing his job. If that’s all it was, Gamache would’ve fired him months ago. No, once Gamache had the proof of his criminal activities, Leduc would be arrested. And this time there’d be no one there to save him. He must’ve grown more and more desperate.”

“Yes,” said Lacoste, getting a better idea of where this might be heading and not liking it at all.

“There’re two ways Leduc could stop Monsieur Gamache,” said Beauvoir. “Kill him, or completely undermine his credibility.”

Lacoste’s mind raced ahead, seeing the scenario unfold.

“The map,” she said. “Leduc didn’t take it for himself. He took it to plant in Gamache’s bedside table as proof the Commander was having an affair with one of the students. Amelia Choquet.”

“Or if not proof, then enough to raise suspicions, gossip. And we know how potent that is.”

“No one would believe her when she denied it,” said Lacoste. “Her history of prostitution would come out. A history Monsieur Gamache was aware of.”

“A student originally turned down, that Gamache accepted,” said Beauvoir. “A young woman no one thought should be in the academy. It would look suspicious.”

“It already does,” said Lacoste. “But anyone who knows Monsieur Gamache would never believe it.”

“True, but who knows him at the academy? The cadets? Their parents? The other professors? He was already distrusted because of all the changes he’d made. Rumors are hard to prove, but they’re even harder to disprove. We both know that character assassination is easy. All it takes is a suggestion. A well-placed word in someone’s ear.”

“Like a bullet to the brain,” said Lacoste quietly, imagining the whispering campaign. Murdering a man’s reputation.

“And once it got out to the media and the public…” said Jean-Guy.

“But Monsieur Gamache wouldn’t care,” said Lacoste. “He’s had worse leveled at him. He and his friends and family would know the truth.”

“That’s not the issue. All Leduc needed was to undermine his credibility,” said Beauvoir. “Accusing Leduc of criminal activity would then seem like the desperate act of a cornered man.”

“There is one other way Leduc could stop Monsieur Gamache’s investigation,” said Lacoste slowly. “Something more sure to work than blackmail or character assassination. After all, if Monsieur Gamache had proof