A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12) - Louise Penny Page 0,89
“Saint-Alphonse? Are some of the cadets local?”
Beauvoir glanced at Gamache in slight apology.
“Whose was on the gun case?” asked Gamache.
“Cadet Choquet’s.”
Gamache drew his brows together.
“And the weapon?” asked Lacoste.
“The prints on the revolver were smudged, unfortunately, but there were partials of a number of people. The coroner’s report came in too. Nothing unusual about Leduc. He was a healthy forty-six-year-old male. No evidence of recent sexual activity. He’d had a meal and some Scotch.”
“Intoxicated?” asked Gélinas.
“No. And no bruising or cuts to indicate a fight.”
“So he just stood there while someone put a gun to his temple and pulled the trigger?” asked Lacoste.
She looked around the conference table, all of them also trying to imagine how that could happen. Especially to someone like Leduc who was, by all accounts, combative at the best of times.
The RCMP officer leaned forward and shook his head. “No. It makes no sense. We’re obviously missing something. The partials on the gun. Could Leduc have handed it around? And eventually handed it to his killer?”
“Who shot him in front of a crowd?” asked Lacoste.
“So what’re you thinking?” asked Gélinas.
“I’ll tell you what I think,” said Beauvoir. “I think Leduc was proud of that revolver for some reason and wanted to show it off. So when people visited, he brought it out and handed it to them. Maybe made up some story about a long-lost relative’s heroics in the war. That’s where all the prints came from.”
“Did you read the footnote from the forensics team?” Gélinas asked.
Gamache had, as had, he could see, Beauvoir and Lacoste. Though they’d chosen not to say anything.
“It’s the extrapolation on the partial prints on the gun,” continued the RCMP officer. “Not admissible, but suggestive. Who the various prints might belong to. I see that this Cadet Choquet’s prints are there too.”
“As partials. Too smudged to clearly identify. We don’t take that seriously,” said Lacoste. “It’s more guess than science. This is complex enough. We need to stick to facts.”
“I agree,” said Gélinas, letting it drop. But not before he looked over at Gamache, who held his gaze.
The footnote gave percentage likelihood of the partials belonging to certain people. Not surprisingly, the largest percentage match was Leduc himself. More surprising was another name that showed up, besides Amelia Choquet. There was a forty percent chance that at least one of the prints belonged to Michel Brébeuf.
A number of other names showed up in the report. There was, according to the computer extrapolation, a very small chance Richard Nixon, the former American president, had handled the gun. Which was why the investigators tended not to take these results seriously. They also ignored the possibility, admittedly remote, that Julia Child was the murderer.
But there was one other name that stood out.
The analysis found a forty-five percent probability that at least one of the prints belonged to Armand Gamache.
Gélinas looked from the report to the Commander, while Lacoste and Beauvoir looked away. Only Charpentier spoke, in a sputter of sweat.
“Now, how did your prints get on the murder weapon?”
Armand Gamache gave him a tight, cold smile.
“Partials,” Beauvoir reminded Charpentier, and anyone else in the room who harbored doubt.
“Did you handle the weapon?” Lacoste asked Gamache.
“I did not.”
“Good. Then can we move on, please?”
“I spoke to the head of public affairs at the gun manufacturer,” said Beauvoir, changing the subject. “McDermot and Ryan. A woman named Elizabeth Coldbrook in,” he checked his notes, “Dartmouth, England.”
He forwarded copies of her email and the attachments.
The second page was the receipt, which they all scanned.
“I see that Madame Coldbrook-Clairton insists they didn’t make the silencer,” said Lacoste.
“I believe her,” said Beauvoir. “She had no reason to lie, and it would be easy enough to disprove. We’re trying to trace it now. She’d assumed by my email that it was a suicide. She was upset to find out it was murder.”
“You’d think she’d be used to it by now,” said Gélinas. “Why else have a handgun?”
“Did she say why he might have ordered a revolver instead of, say, an automatic weapon?” Gamache asked.
“She said collectors like them, but when I pointed out that Leduc wasn’t a collector, she had no answers.”
Lacoste nodded, then looked up as Gamache cleared his throat.
The Commander was still studying the first page, then he looked over his reading glasses to her. Taking them off he used them to point to a paragraph.
“This is interesting.”
They consulted their screens again.
“How?” asked Chief Inspector Lacoste. “It’s a boilerplate sales pitch giving the history of this model.”