A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12) - Louise Penny Page 0,137

“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.”

“And by that you mean guess?” said Gamache, and saw the sweaty younger man smile.

“Your actions, sir, made no sense,” Charpentier said. “Especially your actions toward Deputy Commissioner Gélinas. Until I factored in one possibility. And that became a probability. And that eventually became a certainty. It explained everything.”

“Go on,” said Gamache.

“Serge Leduc was rotten, corrupt. He was more than that, obviously, but let’s just focus on what you knew when you first arrived.”

Gamache nodded.

“Leduc had stolen millions in the building of the academy. Taking kickbacks and bribes from contractors,” said Charpentier. “Perhaps even allowing substandard construction.”

“We’re having the buildings inspected, yes,” said Gamache.

“A very good idea. But you had a problem. While there was a ton of suggestive material, there was no smoking gun, so to speak. You had to find hard evidence. You had to find the money.”

“It would help.”

“It would nail him. And he knew it. He might have initially thought you’d taken the job as commander to get control of the academy—”

“And to be fair, that was the main reason.”

“Oui, but it went hand in hand with gathering enough evidence on Leduc to arrest him. To get him out of circulation. It didn’t take Leduc long to realize that was on your agenda.”

“I told him as much.”

“And so began a game of cat and mouse,” said Charpentier. “But while intelligent, Leduc wasn’t very bright. He was no match for you, and he knew it. He must’ve felt your breath on his neck. He became desperate. And so he did something he should never have done.”

“He contacted his partner,” said Gamache, watching Charpentier closely. “His very silent partner. The one who’d really planned most of this. The one who knew how and where to hide the money.”

Now it was Charpentier’s turn to watch Gamache closely.

“So I asked myself,” Gamache went on, “where was this partner? Where had he been all this time? In the academy? Not likely. In the Sûreté? Again, possible but not likely. That rot had been removed. So where was he? And there was only one answer. Far away. Beyond suspicion.”

“Oui.” Charpentier smiled and moved his wheelchair back and forth, by inches. Agitated. Or excited.

“But when Leduc broke the cardinal rule and contacted him a few months ago, Leduc himself became the target,” said Gamache. “And needed to be taken care of. The partner returned, accepting a job that surprised everyone.”

Charpentier stopped rocking his chair and went very still.

* * *

“Where’s Jacques?” asked Huifen.

“I don’t know,” said Nathaniel, and looked at Amelia, who frowned and shrugged.

“Wasn’t he in class with you?” she said.

The four cadets had been driven back to the academy that morning, after their conversation in the chapel with Gamache.

“Commander Gamache showed up to speak to Charpentier, and we were dismissed early. I was supposed to meet Jacques here. He hasn’t been in?”

Huifen looked around the study hall. A few cadets were sitting