A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12) - Louise Penny Page 0,46

him?” asked Sharon Harris, having difficulty following. But she, more than most, knew that emotions were far from linear. They were circles and waves and dots and triangles. But they were rarely a straight line.

Every day she dissected the end result of some untamed emotion.

Gamache knelt beside the body, staring at the wound on Leduc’s temple. And the much larger exit wound. Then he followed the remains of Serge Leduc, which were fanned across the room, to where agents were combing for the bullet.

“Found it.”

But the voice didn’t come from one of the Sûreté agents Gamache was watching. And the find was not the bullet.

They turned and saw an agent standing at the door to the bedroom.

“In the bottom drawer, under some dress shirts,” she said as she led Chief Inspector Lacoste and the others into the bedroom.

There, under the neatly folded and laundered shirts, was a leather box. The agent had opened it, and inside was red velvet covering a precise mold. Of a revolver. There was another space for the silencer, and empty slots for six bullets.

“So it was his,” said Lacoste, and straightened up.

They looked from the empty case through the door into the living room, each trying to figure out how the revolver got from one place to the other. Had it been taken there by Leduc, or his killer?

“Excusez-moi,” said an agent, looking into the room. “You called the Saint-Alphonse police chief, I understand, sir.”

The agent was speaking to Gamache, who nodded. “And the mayor.”

“They’re both here,” said the agent. “We’ve put them in your office.”

“Merci. I’ll join them in a few minutes.”

“Fucking Leduc,” muttered Beauvoir. “Keeping a loaded gun in his rooms. Unlocked. In a school. Stupid, stupid man.”

“Either Leduc brought the gun out, or the murderer did,” said Lacoste. “In which case, the murderer must have known Leduc well enough to know there was a gun and where it was kept.”

“There’s something I need to show you,” said Commander Gamache.

* * *

Amelia Choquet sat at the long table, empty chairs between herself and the cadets on either side.

They’d been moved into the dining hall so that a search of their rooms could be conducted. Around her conversation buzzed, and far from dying down after the first flush of news, it had grown as speculation spread.

Rumor was loose in the air,

hunting for some neck to land on.

The cadets were shocked. And excited. Some were frightened and trying to hide it inside bravado.

Every now and then, there was a glance in her direction. She could tell what they were thinking. If there had to be a killer, let it be the weird one.

The easiest target. The one no one would defend.

Amelia shoved the sleeves of her uniform up to her elbows. Showing them the images and words etched into her skin, like a birthmark.

Their pink and perfect faces frowned in disapproval.

She was sticking her neck out, she knew.

Professor Leduc was dead. Murdered.

And she wondered how long it would be before they came for her.

“Can I sit down?”

She looked up, and there was Nathaniel, a soft white hand on the back of the chair next to her.

A fuck off caught in her throat, but instead she nodded.

“No one wants to sit with me,” he said. “Once I told them everything I knew. I think they think I did it and sitting close to me would make them look guilty too.”

“They’re afraid,” said Amelia.

“I’m afraid,” said Nathaniel. “Aren’t you? Look at what happened. How it happened—”

“Be quiet,” she warned, and deeply regretted letting him join her.

“Commander Gamache was asking about the map,” he whispered, leaning close to her. “He wanted me to find mine.”

He brought out a piece of paper and smoothed it on the table, but she swept it off.

“Get away from me.”

But it was too late.

With him joining her, the hunt for a neck to land on was over. She could tell. Not by the way the other students looked at her, but the way they looked away.

* * *

Gamache reached out and, using a pen, he pulled open the drawer of the bedside table.

“This was almost certainly already seen by your agents,” he said, replacing the pen in his breast pocket and putting his hands behind his back. “But the Scene of Crime team couldn’t know its significance.”

“And what is its significance?” asked Lacoste.

“I’ve seen it before,” said Beauvoir, bending closer. “It’s a map.”

Like Gamache, he held his hands behind his back.

For years, he’d assumed it was a mannerism of the older man, but