“I stayed in case he wanted something else,” said Brébeuf.
And now, before her eyes, Michel Brébeuf evolved into something else. Not a man disgraced, but a once beloved old mutt, waiting for attention from his master. A smile, a pat. Even a kick.
Anything.
In a very subtle way, Brébeuf seemed to be positioning himself as a loyal servant, and Gamache as a brute. It didn’t work on her. She knew the truth. But she suspected some might be taken in.
“And that?” She pointed to the tray and toast and broken glass.
“A cadet found the body,” said Beauvoir, stepping forward to answer the question. “He dropped the tray. We left it there.”
“I’ll take samples,” said one of the forensics team, and he did, while another looked for prints and DNA on the door handle, and still another took photographs. And Lacoste wondered at this transformation in Michel Brébeuf.
A leopard might not change its spots, but the former superintendent of the S?reté had never been a leopard. He was then, and always would be, a chameleon.
When the technician gave the all-clear, she stepped across the threshold, relieved to be away from him. A dead body was preferable to a living Brébeuf.
Though prepared for what she’d see, violent, deliberate death still surprised Isabelle Lacoste. And it had clearly surprised Serge Leduc.
CHAPTER 12
“The academy doctor confirmed the death,” said Gamache, standing to one side as the Scene of Crime team got to work.
“I’m assuming the cause is obvious,” said Lacoste.
She stood next to her former chief, with Beauvoir on the other side of him. It still felt natural to be on either side of Armand Gamache. It felt safe. Though there was now a sense of nostalgia. Like going back to a childhood home.
Gamache simply nodded.
“We’ll have to wait for the coroner to give us the official cause of death, but yes,” said Beauvoir, looking down at Serge Leduc. “It would be hard to miss.”
“When was he last seen alive?” asked Chief Inspector Lacoste.
“He was at dinner in the dining hall,” said Commander Gamache. “That’s the last I saw of him.”
“Me too,” said Beauvoir. “That would be about eight o’clock.”
They looked around. There was no evidence that Leduc had entertained anyone in his rooms the evening before.
Neither Gamache nor Beauvoir had ever been in these rooms, the private territory of the Duke.
The apartment was the same layout as the Commander’s, only the mirror image. A living room led to a bedroom, with an en suite bath. But while Gamache’s was furnished in a modern style that suited the building and managed to make it inviting, this room felt stuffed, stifling.
The furniture was heavy, Victorian. Dark wooden sideboard, massive horsehair sofa upholstered in a deep purple crushed velvet. It felt oppressive, but also vaguely effeminate. A contrast to the stark, linear world beyond his front door.
It was like stepping into a boudoir, or a stage set.
And yet Gamache had the feeling this was not staged. It was a reflection of who this man really was. Or at least an element of him. Much of the furniture, Gamache suspected, had been inherited, passed down within the family, perhaps for generations.
Serge Leduc had wrapped himself in tradition. Even as he broke rule after rule.
But then, the Victorians had revered the Great Man model. A single extraordinary individual for whom the normal rules didn’t apply. Great Men should rule and others should revere them. Leduc lived as though he believed it.
“What sort of a man was he?” asked Lacoste.
“What sort would you guess?” asked Gamache. “Judging by what you see.”
“Fussy,” she said immediately. “Rigid. Probably pedantic and officious.”
She looked down at the dead man, still in his street clothes. A jacket and tie. Neat. So at odds with what lay above the collar.
“Am I close?”
“Inspector Beauvoir, how would you describe Serge Leduc?”
“A brute and a bully,” said Beauvoir. “Cunning and stupid. A weasel and a rat.”
“Both the hunter and the hunted. An uncomfortable position,” said Gamache, looking around.
“I would’ve thought he’d have lots of leather chairs,” said Beauvoir. “And antlers on the walls. Not this.”
“I wonder if he was happy, when he stepped in here,” said Gamache. “He was clearly not happy outside these rooms.”
“Well, not since you arrived, anyway,” said Beauvoir.
Isabelle Lacoste took that in with interest.
“It wasn’t suicide,” she said. “He was shot in the right temple, but the gun’s on the left side of the body. Now why would that be? Is that his weapon?”
“I don’t know,” said Gamache. “I ordered that there be no firearms within the academy, except those locked in the armory.”
“Does he have a key?”
“He did, when he was second-in-command. But I took it from him and changed the locks. I have a key and the weapons instructor has one. It takes both to open the armory.”
“Any ideas who could have done this?”
“He was a divisive figure,” said Gamache, after considering for a moment. “Admired by some. Most of the professors who admired him are gone. A lot of the senior class looked up to him. But that, I think, was more fear than respect. This room might look like it belonged to a Victorian gentleman, but the Duke was really from the Dark Ages. He believed in swift and brutal punishment and that you could shape young people by battering away at them, as though they were horseshoes.”
Isabelle Lacoste turned her full attention to Gamache. A man who was the antithesis of what he’d just described.
“You didn’t like him?”
“No, I did not. You’re not thinking…” He waved toward the body.
“I’m just asking. The thinking will come later.”
He smiled at that. “I neither liked nor trusted him.”
“Then why—”
“Did I keep him on? You’re far from the first to ask.”
“And the answer?”
“To keep an eye on him. You’re aware of the rumors of bribery and price fixing and even money laundering associated with the awarding of the contracts for this building?”
“Yes, but not in detail.”
“That’s because there are no details. Just a whole lot of suspicions. Circumstantial, but no hard evidence.”
“You were trying to gather it?” she asked. “Did he know?”
“Yes, I made sure he knew. When I met with him before term started, I showed him what I had.”
“Why?” both Lacoste and Beauvoir asked, astonished.
“To shock him.”
“Well, it just shocked me,” said Beauvoir to Lacoste.
“While looking for corruption in the S?reté, I kept coming across references to strange dealings at the academy,” said Gamache, his voice low so that no one else could hear. “But even more disconcerting than suggestions of corruption in the academy was the behavior of the recent graduates. You must have noticed.”
Both Lacoste and Beauvoir nodded.
“There’s a brutality about them,” she said. “I won’t have any in my department.”
“Reconsider that, please, Isabelle,” said Gamache. “They need decent role models.”
“Indecent,” she said. “That’s the word for them. And I’ll consider it. That’s why you came here?”
He nodded. “As goes the academy, so goes the S?reté. I wanted to find out why it was graduating so many cadets steeped in cruelty. And to stop it.”
“And have you?”
He sighed. “Non. Not yet. But I knew Serge Leduc was at the center of whatever was happening.”
“You called him the Duke,” said Lacoste. “Why?”
“A nickname the cadets gave him,” said Beauvoir. “From his name, obviously. He seemed to like it.”
“Not surprised,” said Lacoste. “So you showed the Duke what you had on him?”
“Yes. I needed to shake him up. Show him how close I was. Make him do something stupid.”
“And did he?”
“I think he did,” said Gamache, glancing down at the body. “And so did someone else.”