A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12) - Louise Penny Page 0,130

was wrong.

“Young lives wasted,” he said. “The Hell where youth and laughter go.”

“Armand?” she asked, having rarely seen him so upset.

“Désolé. I was just thinking about what they were made to do.”

She thought he was talking about the boys in the box. She was wrong.

“Did you find the young Turcottes?” she asked.

He took a deep breath and brought himself out of it. “Non. Those telegrams might’ve been lost. It’s surprising so many were kept.”

He looked at her and forced a smile. “Did you enjoy the movie?”

“I must’ve seen it a hundred times, and I still love it.”

She hummed “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” while handing him warm, wet dishes.

“Coming?” she asked, when the kitchen was clean and in order.

“No, I think I’ll stay up for a bit.”

She kissed him. “You okay?” When he nodded, she said, “Don’t be late.”

Reine-Marie climbed the stairs to bed while he sat by the fireplace in the living room, Henri’s head on his lap.

Their home creaked and then was quiet again, except for the sleet scratching the windows. He just needed a few quiet minutes to himself. To think.

Then Armand got up and began turning off lights. As he approached the front door to lock up, the handle began to turn. It was midnight. Everyone had gone home. Everyone else was in bed.

Gamache gestured Henri to his side, then the two moved swiftly to stand behind the slowly opening door. Henri’s ears were pointed forward, his hackles up, a snarl coming from him.

But he stood slightly behind Gamache. In case.

Armand motioned with his hand, and Henri’s growling stopped. But he remained alert. Ready to run away at any moment.

Gamache watched the door push open. And his racing mind remembered the car at the top of the hill, looking down into the village. And then withdrawing. Backing up. Waiting, perhaps, for a better time.

And this, he thought, was it.

The intruder was almost certainly armed, and Gamache was not. But he had the great advantage of surprise. And surprised he was, when he saw who appeared.

“What’re you doing here?”

“Holy shit, Armand, you scared me to death.”

Henri gave a little yelp of pleasure, and relief. His tail wagging furiously, he looked from Jean-Guy Beauvoir to the bowl of treats by the door, then back again. A dog with an agenda. A big one, with only one entry.

As Jean-Guy gave Henri a biscuit, Armand hung up his coat and reflected that it was the first time, ever, that Jean-Guy had called him Armand. He’d asked his son-in-law many times, since the marriage, to do that in private, but the younger man had never quite managed it. Settling on patron as a compromise.

But the shock had jarred loose an “Armand.”

“Why are you here? Annie’s all right, isn’t she?”

“If she wasn’t, I’d call,” Jean-Guy pointed out. “Not drive all this way through a fucking awful night. Pardon my English.”

He took off his boots and put on the slippers he kept by the door.

“Then what is it? Not that I’m unhappy to see you.”

“Annie told me to come.”

“Why?”

“Because I told her about Gélinas’s suspicions and she’s worried.”

Armand was on the verge of asking why Beauvoir would do such a thing when he remembered that he told Reine-Marie everything. Or nearly everything.

And now Jean-Guy had found a confidante in his own wife. Gamache could hardly protest, though he wanted to.

Looking at the familiar face, at a man he trusted with his life, Armand felt a surge of relief, and was grateful to Annie for sending him down.

“Where’s Gélinas now?” asked Beauvoir.

“In bed, asleep. Come with me,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” said Jean-Guy.

In the kitchen, Beauvoir went over to the cage in the corner. “How’s Gracie settling in?”

He bent down, then straightened up and stepped back on seeing what was sleeping in there.

“Are dragons a real thing?” he asked.

“Puppy,” said Gamache with conviction, putting a heaping helping of shepherd’s pie in the microwave.

“Monkey?” asked Jean-Guy.

Armand refused to reply. The microwave beeped, the dinner was put out, a Coke was poured, and the two men sat at the pine table.

Jean-Guy took a long sip of his drink and a huge forkful of shepherd’s pie, and looked at his father-in-law.

“Something’s happened, patron. What is it?”

“I think I’ve found the motive for the murder, Jean-Guy.”

Beauvoir lowered his fork.

“What is it?”

“First I need you to call the woman at McDermot and Ryan, and ask her about her name.”

“Coldbrook?”

“Clairton. Find out why she really used that name in her correspondence with you. Why it was in a slightly