A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12) - Louise Penny Page 0,38

was crumpled on the floor.

It was all too obvious what had happened. By the body, and the blood. He’d been shot in the head. The gun still lay by his side.

And while it was also clear, by the glaring eyes and open mouth, and the pallor, never mind the wound, that he was dead, Gamache still bent down and felt for a pulse, his hand coming away with a bit of blood, which he wiped off with a handkerchief.

Jean-Guy’s practiced eye swept the scene, then he looked toward the bedroom.

Gamache gave a brief nod and Beauvoir covered the ground swiftly.

“Nothing,” said Jean-Guy a moment later.

“That’s enough,” said Gamache from the bedroom door, when Beauvoir opened a drawer in the nightstand. “I doubt the murderer’s in the drawer. Let’s leave it for Lacoste and the Scene of Crime team.”

Beauvoir closed the drawer, but not before Gamache saw something Jean-Guy had not.

What was inside that drawer. Even from a distance, it was unmistakable.

“As tempting as it is to start the investigation, we need to wait. Call Isabelle back, Jean-Guy, and report in more detail. She should be here soon with the homicide team. Can you please go to the main door and show her up here?”

“Now?”

“Is there a better time?”

“Don’t you want me to help here?”

“There’s nothing we can do to help. I just need the doctor to confirm he’s dead. You know the drill. Then I’ll lock the door and wait for you to return with Chief Inspector Lacoste.”

Beauvoir looked down at the body.

“Suicide?”

“Maybe,” said Gamache. “Does something strike you as strange?”

Beauvoir examined the scene more closely.

“Oui. The gun. It’s on the wrong side. If he’d killed himself, it’d be on the same side as the entrance wound.”

Gamache nodded, lost in thought.

Beauvoir left, stopping at his own rooms to throw on some clothes.

When he walked back down the corridor, the door to Leduc’s rooms was closed and Gamache was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

Armand stood over the body of Serge Leduc, careful to avoid contaminating evidence more than he already had.

His eye took in the placement of furniture, the curtains and books. The ashes in the hearth.

But his eye kept returning to the body, and the weapon. As Jean-Guy had said, on the wrong side of the body, for suicide.

Yes, it was odd that the weapon was there. But what was odder still was that the murderer must have placed it there.

For this was murder, Gamache knew. And there was a murderer. And instead of trying to make it look like suicide, as any reasonable killer would, this one had made sure there was no doubt.

Serge Leduc’s death was deliberate.

That’s what struck the former head of homicide as strange. Very strange. Not the body. Not even the fact Serge Leduc had been killed. But the behavior of his killer.

Gamache stood staring. But not at the body. Now his attention had turned to the bedroom. Knowing he shouldn’t, but doing it anyway, Gamache walked swiftly into the bedroom and opened the bedside drawer.

As he looked down, his face grew as grim as when he’d gazed at the body.

* * *

There was an electronic whirring, then a clunk, and the door to the academy opened. Chief Inspector Lacoste stepped inside quickly. Not because there was so much urgency to the case, but because it was so damned cold.

A damp wind was sweeping across the flatlands, carrying moisture from melting snow and ice, for hundreds of miles, and depositing it in their bones.

The initial message from Inspector Beauvoir had been brief. Simply that there’d been a death at the academy. Not who. Not how. Not even if it was murder, though the fact the call had been made to her, the head of homicide, was in itself a fairly significant clue.

She also knew the victim had not been Commander Gamache. Beauvoir would have told her, in words, but also in his tone.

Once in the car, an agent at the wheel and the Scene of Crime van behind, Isabelle Lacoste received another call from Beauvoir.

“Tell me what you know,” she’d said.

On the other end, Jean-Guy gave a brief smile. He wondered if Isabelle realized that was exactly how Chief Inspector Gamache had begun each and every homicide investigation.

Tell me what you know.

He told her what he knew, and as she listened she took notes on her tablet. But then she stopped and just listened.

“The killer?” she asked, when he finished his report.

“No sign of him,” said Beauvoir. “The cadets and staff are in the