A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12) - Louise Penny Page 0,80
Sunday. Sometimes I go there on weekdays, to pray for a citizen in trouble or distress. And I always pray for Serge Leduc.”
“For his soul,” said Gélinas.
“For his death.”
“You hated him that much?” Lacoste asked.
Mayor Florent leaned back in his chair and was quiet for a moment, and in the silence Isabelle Lacoste thought she heard the distant shouts and happy screams of children at play.
“You’re here because you know the story. Because Commander Gamache has told you what happened with your academy.”
Lacoste was about to say it wasn’t her academy, but decided to let it pass. She understood what he meant.
“I won’t repeat the details then, but I will tell you that this is a small community. We don’t have much. Our wealth is our children. We worked for years to raise money to build them a proper place to play. Where they could have social clubs and do sports all year round. So that they could grow up strong and healthy. And then they’d almost certainly move away. There isn’t much here anymore for young people. But we could give them their childhoods. And send them into the world sturdy and happy. Serge Leduc stole all that. Could I have killed him? Yes. Did I? No.”
But as he spoke, he throbbed. With rage suppressed.
Here was a bomb, Lacoste knew. Wrapped in flesh. Human, certainly. But that only made him more likely to explode.
“I understand Commander Gamache and you have worked out a plan where the local children can use the academy’s facilities,” said Lacoste. “Surely that helps.”
“You think?”
The mayor stared at her with shrewd eyes, and she stared back with an equally penetrating gaze.
“Where were you two nights ago, sir?”
He pulled his agenda toward him and turned back a page.
“I had a Lion’s Club dinner that night. It ended at about nine.” He looked up at them and smiled again. “We’re all getting quite old. Nine is about as late as we can manage.”
Lacoste smiled back, and hoped and prayed she wouldn’t have to arrest this man.
God, she knew, sometimes answered prayers. He had, after all, answered the mayor’s.
“I went home after that. My wife was there with her bridge club. They broke up at the end of that rubber, and we were asleep by ten.”
“How old’s your wife?” Paul Gélinas asked.
The mayor looked at him, surprised by the question but not upset.
“A year younger than me. She’s seventy-two.”
“Does she wear a hearing aid?” Gélinas asked.
“Two. And yes, she takes them out at night.” He looked from one to the other of the agents. “And yes, I suppose it might be possible for me to leave and she’d never know it. I sometimes have trouble sleeping. I go downstairs to the kitchen and do some work. As far as I know, Marie doesn’t notice. I try not to disturb her.”
He was, Chief Inspector Lacoste realized, behaving like a man with nothing to hide. Or nothing to lose.
“You design software,” said Lacoste, and the mayor nodded. “What sort?”
“Programs for insurance companies mostly. Actuarial tables. You’d be surprised how many variables need to be taken into account.”
“Do you do security software?” asked Lacoste.
“No, that’s a specialty.”
“The information you work on for insurance companies would be confidential,” said Gélinas. “Private.”
“Extremely,” agreed Mayor Florent.
“So you create it in such a way that it can’t be stolen?”
“No, I just do the programming. Someone else worries about security. Why? Wait. Let me guess.” He studied the two officers in front of him, no longer amused. “You’re wondering about the academy’s security system and if I could break in. Perhaps, but I doubt it. I’m sure their system is very sophisticated. You’re welcome to take my computer and see what I’ve been up to. Any porn you find is my wife’s.”
Even Deputy Commissioner Gélinas smiled at that.
“You must be quite good at what you do,” said Chief Inspector Lacoste.
The mayor looked around. “Does this look like the office of a successful man? If I was that good, don’t you think I’d be in Montréal or Toronto?”
“I think this looks like the office of a very successful man,” said Lacoste.
Mayor Florent held her gaze. “Merci.”
The investigators got up and shook hands with the mayor, who told them they were always welcome back. As they walked down the scuffed hall toward the door and the bright March morning, Lacoste said to Gélinas, “Actuarial tables. They try to predict—”
“When a person will die.”
* * *
Classes were back in session at the academy. Jean-Guy Beauvoir saw to that on