Huifen, after all, had dishes to do. Amelia grudgingly got up to help her. Then Nathaniel joined in. And finally Jacques came into the kitchen. Grabbing the dish towel from Nathaniel, he snapped it at him before picking up a wet dish.
Nathaniel laughed, knowing it was done in jest. And yet, there had been something vicious about that snap, and the sting it left behind.
CHAPTER 26
“He could have done it,” said Isabelle Lacoste.
They’d gathered in the conference room at the S?reté Academy. Gamache, Professor Charpentier, Beauvoir, and Gélinas listened as Lacoste reported on their early morning meeting with the mayor.
Light poured in through the picture window, and outside the snow was melting in the brilliant sunshine.
“He had the motive and the opportunity. Even, perhaps, the expertise to override the security system here.”
“Though we don’t know if it was done intentionally, or the system just failed on its own,” said Beauvoir.
“What did you make of Mayor Florent?” Gamache asked.
“I liked him. An interesting man. He put up a sort of mist of bonhomie. Of good cheer. But he readily, almost cheerfully, admitted he could’ve left his home, driven over here, killed Leduc and got back home without anyone knowing he was gone.”
“But when you asked if he killed Leduc, he said no,” Gélinas pointed out. “So I guess he didn’t do it.”
“You tried that again?” asked Gamache.
“Still hasn’t worked, eh?” said Beauvoir.
She shook her head and smiled. “One day it will and we can all go home early.”
“But the mayor did admit he despised the man,” said Gélinas, watching with interest and some envy the easy familiarity of these people. He had to remind himself that his job was to judge them, not join them. “That was the word he used. ‘Despised.’ And that he prayed him dead.”
“If everyone we prayed dead died, the streets would be littered with corpses,” said Beauvoir.
“Non,” said Gélinas. “We might wish someone dead, but for a religious man to sit in a church, before God, and pray that someone dies? Not a loved one who’s sick and in pain, whose suffering we want to see ended, but a vigorous man who could live, should live, another forty years? To pray that man dead is something else entirely. It’s a hatred that overwhelms his morals and ethics and beliefs. It’s a hatred that’s hooked in the soul.”
Gamache listened to Gélinas and wondered if he was himself a religious man.
“So you think Mayor Florent is a religious fanatic and God was his accomplice?” asked Beauvoir.
“Now you just make it sound silly,” said Gélinas with a rueful smile, then he shook his head. “He might be a religious man, but I think if he killed Leduc, it was driven by hatred of the man and not love of God. I’ve learned never to underestimate hatred. There’s a madness that goes with it.”
“We have the forensics report,” said Beauvoir, tapping the screen of his tablet.
It was a relief to be investigating a murder in a place with high-speed Internet. The report flashed up on all their screens.
It was also a relief to now be dealing with facts rather than speculation.
“The bullet we dug out of the wall was the one that killed him. And it came from the gun we found. The McDermot .45. No surprise there.”
“There is one surprise,” said Gélinas. “I’m not a homicide investigator, but I’d have thought most murderers take the weapon with them. To dispose of it. Less for the investigators to work with, if there’s no weapon.”
“Amateurs,” said Charpentier. He’d been bone-dry and silent so far, but as he spoke, sweat began pouring from his pores.
“Professionals know that as soon as murder is committed, the weapon stops being a gun or a knife or a club and becomes a noose,” he said. “It attaches itself to the killer. He might think he’s being clever, taking the weapon, but murder weapons are harder to get rid of than people think. The longer he holds on to it, the tighter the rope gets, the bigger the drop.”
Charpentier mimicked a length of rope, and then jerked it with such sudden violence, and such relish, it gave those watching pause. A kind of ecstasy had come over the quiet man as he glistened in the morning sun and talked of execution.
Gamache leaned forward slightly, toward Charpentier, his thoughtful eyes sharpening. And he knew then what his former pupil reminded him of. His thin, tense body was that rope, and his outsized head the noose.
If Gamache was an explorer and Beauvoir a hunter, Charpentier seemed a born executioner.
And Gélinas? Gamache shifted his gaze to the senior RCMP officer. What was he?
“Amateurs panic and take it with them,” confirmed Beauvoir. “Leduc was killed by someone who knew what he was doing, or at the very least had thought it through.”
“But why a revolver?” asked Gélinas. “Why did Leduc have one, and why did the murderer use it instead of an automatic?”
“Well, the revolver had the advantage of already being there,” said Gamache. “And couldn’t be traced back to the murderer. And it has another advantage.”
“What’s that?” asked Lacoste.
But now Beauvoir smiled and leaned forward. “That we’re talking about it. And spending time wondering about it and investigating it. The revolver’s an oddity. And oddities eat up time and energy in an investigation.”
“You’re thinking the revolver is both the murder weapon and a red herring,” said Lacoste.
“Not a red herring, a red whale,” said Beauvoir. “Something so obviously strange we have no option but to focus on it, and maybe miss something else.”
“It bears considering,” said Gamache.
“Too much speculation,” said Lacoste. “Let’s move on. I see there’s a preliminary report on the DNA at the crime scene.”
“A lot of different DNA was found,” said Beauvoir, returning to his screen. “It’ll take a while to process.”
“Quite a few fingerprints too.” Gélinas scanned ahead. “And not just in the living room.”
“True,” said Beauvoir, and tapped the tablet again.
A schematic of Leduc’s rooms came up on everyone’s screen. It was a floor plan showing the layout of furniture and the body. Then another tap, and the image was overlaid with dots. So many they obliterated almost everything else.
“The red dots are Leduc’s own prints,” said Beauvoir, and hit a key. They disappeared, leaving black dots. There were far fewer of those.
“As you can see, the other prints are mostly in the living room, but some were found in the bathroom and a few in the bedroom.”
“Have you identified them?” asked Lacoste.
“Not all, but most. The majority belong to one person. Michel Brébeuf.”
“Huh,” said Gamache, and leaned closer to his screen, bringing his hand up to his face. “Can you show us just his prints?”
Beauvoir tapped again, and again the screen changed. The dots were in the living room, in the bathroom. In the bedroom.
Gamache studied them.
Gélinas hit an icon on his own screen and the forensics report replaced the floor plan. He found computer imaging of limited use. It helped to visualize, but it could also confuse. It was both too much information and too narrow.
Instead, he preferred to read the report.
“There’re other professors’ fingerprints, I see, besides Brébeuf’s,” he said. “Professor Godbut, for example. It looks like the three of them, Leduc, Godbut, and Brébeuf, spent some time together.”
“It does,” said Beauvoir. “But of course we can’t tell if the prints were made at the same time or separately.”
“How often were the rooms cleaned?” the RCMP officer asked.
“Once a week,” said Beauvoir. “Leduc’s was cleaned three days before the murder.”
“But it wouldn’t be thorough enough to wipe out all the prints,” said Gamache. “Some of these might be quite old.”
“I can see Leduc and Godbut getting together,” said Gélinas. “But how does Michel Brébeuf fit in? I honestly can’t imagine him having a few beers with Leduc and watching the game.”