A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12) - Louise Penny Page 0,82
hear her shrug. Not out of disinterest, but because she didn’t have the answer any more than he did.
Beauvoir decided to take another tack.
“Why would he order from you, all the way from England, and not get a Colt, if they were so similar?”
“History. And quality. Gun people know our make.”
“But a Colt or a Smith and Wesson are still good and would be cheaper, non? They’re made right in the States.”
“Yes, they would be less expensive.”
“But maybe they don’t make silencers,” said Beauvoir.
“We don’t either.”
“You must. The revolver had one. I mentioned that in the email.”
“I thought that was a typo, or a mistake on your part.”
“You thought I didn’t know what a silencer was?” he asked.
“Well, it didn’t make sense to me,” she said. “Revolvers don’t have silencers. They don’t work.”
“This one did.”
It seemed one had attached itself to Madame Coldbrook. The quiet became uncomfortable.
“Who made the silencer?” Beauvoir finally asked.
“I don’t know.”
“If not McDermot, then who?” he pushed. “If someone asks for one, where do you send them?”
“To the automatic weapons department. Revolvers do not have silencers.” The imperious voice had surfaced yet again. Like Jaws. And then the voice softened. “It’s tragic when someone commits suicide, and this company takes it very much to heart. I take it to heart.”
And for some reason, he believed her. How many calls in a month, a week, a day did this woman receive from police around the world, a body behind the conversation?
“It wasn’t a suicide,” said Beauvoir. He didn’t know if that made it better or worse.
“You said accuracy wasn’t an issue. I assumed…” There was a pause. “It was murder?”
“Yes. A single shot to the temple,” he repeated.
And now the pause elongated. Stretched. On and on. But it wasn’t empty. Even down the phone line, across the miles, across the ocean, he could hear her thinking. Considering.
“What’s going through your mind, Madame Coldbrook?”
“I was thinking about the specific design of the gun and its uses. And why someone would want one. Especially someone who didn’t collect guns. Why a revolver?”
She seemed to be telling, rather than asking.
“Why do you think?” he asked. In the background, he heard a knock and a voice.
“How should I know?” she demanded. “We simply make them. As your National Rifle Association is fond of saying, guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”
“I’m Québécois, madame. Canadian. The NRA has nothing to do with me.”
“And McDermot and Ryan had nothing to do with this death. I’m sorry it has happened. Very sorry. A single shot to the temple using a revolver. Poor man. But I’m sure you’ll figure it out. I’ll send you the email with all the information I have, and attach the sales slip.”
He was about to thank her, but the line was already dead.
Elizabeth Coldbrook’s email arrived a few minutes later with a brief boilerplate description of the .45 McDermot MR VI, and then specifics about Leduc’s order.
At the bottom of her covering letter was her name. Elizabeth Coldbrook-Clairton. Something seemed slightly off, and when he studied it more closely he noticed that “Clairton” was typed in a different font. Not far off—she might not have noticed. But he did.
Then there was a ding. The forensics report had just arrived in his inbox.
* * *
“You’re welcome to stay in the village, if you’d like,” said Gamache as he put his winter coat on. “You don’t have to come back to the academy with me.”
“You’d like me to stay?” asked Charpentier, as he pulled on his boots. “Or you want me to stay? You’re not trying to get rid of me, are you?”
It was said with a smile, but there was an edge to the question.
“Moi?” asked Gamache, also with a smile. But then his voice changed and grew serious. “It’s your choice, Hugo. And if I want something, you’ll know it.”
“Who else knows they’re here, patron?”
“The cadets? Now that’s a difficult question.”
The two men said good-bye to Madame Gamache and walked slowly through the snow and mud over to the bed and breakfast, where the Commander had told the cadets to meet them.
Charpentier was swinging his canes ahead of him and hauling his weak legs after them in a kind of lurch he’d perfected.
“Their classmates needed to know they were gone, as did their professors,” said Gamache. “I told them they’d gone home.”
“Without specifying whose home.”
Gamache stopped at the steps up to the B and B and turned. “No one must know those cadets are here, do you understand?”