A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12) - Louise Penny Page 0,8

themselves. And if they want to sue, I have the proof.” He looked not at all concerned. But neither was he triumphant. This was the tail end of a tragedy. And there was a sting in it.

“I doubt they’ll sue,” she said, replacing the last file on the pile. “But neither will they go without a fight. It simply won’t be in public, or in the courts.”

“We’ll see,” he said, sitting back. His face grim and determined.

Armand watched as she turned to the final stack of dossiers. These were the files on the men and women he planned to invite to teach at the academy. To replace the men and women he was about to fire.

Showing the list to Thérèse was a courtesy on his part. Chief Superintendent Brunel had no authority over the academy. The academy and the Sûreté were two separate entities, connected theoretically by a common belief in the need for “Service, Integrity, Justice.” The motto of the force.

But the previous head of the school had commanded in name only. The reality was, he bowed to, then bent and finally broke under the demands of the former head of the Sûreté, who ran the school as his personal training ground.

But Chief Superintendent Francoeur was no longer the head of the Sûreté. No longer with the force. No longer on this earth. Gamache had seen to that.

And now Gamache was cleaning up the merde the man left behind.

The first step was to establish autonomy, but also a courteous collaboration with his counterpart at the Sûreté.

Commander Gamache watched as Chief Superintendent Brunel made her way down the pile of proposed professors, occasionally making notes or small comments, mumbling to herself. Until she reached the final dossier. She stared at it, then, without even opening it, she looked up at Gamache and held his eyes.

“Is this a joke?”

“No.”

She looked back down but didn’t touch the manila file. It was enough to see the name.

Michel Brébeuf.

When she looked up again, there was anger, bordering on rage, on her face.

“This is madness, Armand.”

CHAPTER 3

Serge Leduc waited.

He was prepared. All morning his iPhone had buzzed with text messages from colleagues, other professors at the academy, to say that the new commander was going to visit them.

At eight in the morning they’d assumed it was a courtesy call. Armand Gamache was making the rounds to introduce himself and perhaps ask their opinions and advice.

By nine o’clock a slight pall of doubt had descended, and the texts became more guarded.

By eleven, the stream of information had become a trickle as fewer and fewer messages appeared in Professor Leduc’s inbox. And those that did were curt.

Have you heard from Roland?

Anyone know anything?

I can hear him coming down the corridor.

And finally, by noon, Leduc’s iPhone had fallen silent.

He sat in his large office and looked at the books lining his walls. On weapons. On federal and provincial regulations. On common law and the Napoleonic Code. There were case histories and training manuals. The wall space not taken up with textbooks was allocated to his citations and an old etching of the parts of a musket.

A small man in his mid-forties, but still powerfully built, Leduc had been moved to the academy after he’d been caught with drugs stolen from the Sûreté evidence locker.

Leduc had nursed a slight suspicion that Chief Superintendent Francoeur had engineered the whole thing. Not that he wasn’t guilty. Leduc had been skimming from the mountain of seized drugs for years, selling them on to crime syndicates. What struck him as suspicious was that he’d suddenly been caught just as an opening for the number two position at the academy had come up.

Francoeur had presented Inspector Leduc with a choice. Become second-in-command at the academy or be fired.

Serge Leduc had navigated the realpolitik of the Sûreté by being a pragmatist. If this was what the Chief Superintendent wanted, then so be it. It was unhelpful and unhealthy to nurse a grudge or to fight the inevitable. Especially against Sylvain Francoeur. Leduc himself had been an enforcer long enough to know what being fired by Francoeur might mean.

That had been almost a decade ago, and with his transfer a new era had dawned. Though not, perhaps, an Age of Enlightenment.

On Francoeur’s orders, Serge Leduc had reshaped the academy. Picking and choosing the recruits. Changing the curriculum. Guiding, nurturing, and whipping the young men and women into shape. And the shape they took was that of Serge Leduc.

Any recruit who resisted or even appeared about to