“There might be commonalities, as you put it, but I had nothing in common with him,” said Brébeuf. “He was just that. Common. A lump of coal that thought it was a diamond. He was a moron with a big office.”
“Then what were you doing in his living room? His bathroom? His bedroom?” asked Gélinas, his voice no longer quite so cordial. He shoved a hard copy of the forensics report across the desk. “What were you doing handling the murder weapon?”
Beside him, Gamache stirred again, and then subsided.
Brébeuf picked up the paper and scanned it with the practiced eye of a seasoned investigator. Going straight to the pertinent information.
His face, at first grim, relaxed a fraction. Gélinas realized, in that moment, why Gamache had reacted, albeit subtly, when the report was given to Brébeuf.
Yes, it showed that Michel Brébeuf might have held the murder weapon. But it also showed it was even more likely that Gamache had.
“You know as well as I do,” said Brébeuf, sliding the page back to Gélinas, “that this is supposition. Inadmissible.”
“Then you deny it?”
“Of course I do. I had no idea he had a gun, though I should’ve guessed. Only a fool would keep one in his rooms at a school. Though I’d never have expected this type of gun. A revolver? Does this make sense to you?”
He’d asked the question of Gamache.
“I would’ve expected a missile launcher,” said Gamache, and Brébeuf laughed.
And in a flash, in that easy laugh, Gélinas saw something else.
How these two could have once been friends. They’d have made a formidable team, too, had one not stepped back and the other stepped up.
The mood in the room seemed to have changed, with that moment between the two men.
Michel Brébeuf grew quiet, contemplative.
“Do you want to know why we sometimes had dinner and drinks together?” Brébeuf asked. His voice deepening, softening.
Paul Gélinas nodded and glanced over at Gamache, who hadn’t moved. He was still watching Brébeuf with keen, attentive eyes.
“I went there because I was lonely,” said Brébeuf. “I was surrounded by people here, but no one wanted anything to do with me. I don’t blame them. I did this to myself, and I came here to try to make amends. I knew it would be difficult to talk to the senior cadets, every day, about corruption and my own temptation. About all the things that can go wrong, when you’re given authority and a gun and no boundary but your own. It’s one thing to be told that power corrupts,” he turned to Gamache, “but you were right. It’s far more effective to see an example. I told them about what I’d done, how it started small, insignificant even. And grew. I told them about the dangers of falling in with the wrong people. I taught an entire class on the theme of one bad apple. And admitted that had been me. And on the very first day of class, I wrote Matthew 10:36 across the top of the blackboard, and left it there. It was humiliating, but necessary.”
He’d spoken quietly, and directly to Armand.
“I thought the worst would be the classroom, but it wasn’t. The worst was the evenings, when I could hear laughter and music. When I knew you were just down the corridor, talking to your cadets. And I sat there, alone, waiting for someone to perhaps show up.”
Paul Gélinas felt he had vanished, been overwhelmed, buried. A climber caught up in the avalanche that was the relationship between these two men.
“I visited Serge Leduc every now and then because he was the only one who smiled when he saw me.”
“Did you kill him, Michel?” asked Armand quietly.
“Would you put a bullet in your life raft?” asked Brébeuf. “No, I didn’t kill him. I didn’t like or respect him. But then, I don’t like or respect myself. But I didn’t shoot the man.”
“Do you have any idea who did?” asked Gélinas, clawing his way back into the interview.
“I wish I could tell you I think it was a professor and not a student, but I can’t,” said Brébeuf. “The cadets these days aren’t like we were. They’re rough, coarse. Look at that freshman, the one with all the tattoos and piercings. And the language I’ve heard out of her. To professors. Shocking. What’s she doing here? One of Leduc’s recruits, no doubt.”
“Actually, she’s one of mine,” said Gamache. “Amelia Choquet is top of her class. She reads Ancient Greek and Latin. And she swears like the criminals she’ll one day arrest. While you, Michel, are gentility itself. And have broken most of the laws you promised to uphold.”
Brébeuf took a deep breath, either steadying himself, or readying the attack. The thin ice they’d been on had given way. Gamache himself had shattered it.
There was a moment when the world seemed to stop entirely.
And then Michel Brébeuf smiled. “I was the more senior officer, Armand, but you were always the better man, weren’t you? How comforting for you to know that. And to always remind me.” He leaned his lean body across the desk. “Well, fuck you.”
It was said with a strange mixture of humor and anger. Was he joking, Gélinas wondered, or was the insult real?
He looked over at Gamache, who’d raised his brows but was also smiling. And Gélinas understood then how well these two men knew each other. And while there was malice, there was also a closeness. An intimacy.
It was a bond that could only have been formed over many years. But hate bonds as surely, and closely, as love.
Paul Gélinas made a mental note to look into their pasts. He knew them professionally, but now it was time to dig into their personal lives.
“The murder of Serge Leduc didn’t happen out of the blue,” said Brébeuf. “If it had, you’d have caught the person by now. No. It was considered. He enjoyed tormenting people. Especially people who couldn’t fight back. But he obviously chose the wrong target.”
“You think Leduc hurt and humiliated someone so badly that they got their revenge?” asked Gamache.
“I do, and I can see you do too. And you, Deputy Commissioner?”
“I reserve judgment. You’re both more experienced in murder than I am.”
“Do you think he means murder, or investigating murder, Armand?” asked Michel as they got to their feet.
“I think Monsieur Gélinas says exactly what he means,” said Gamache.
“Then I think you’re in a bit of trouble,” said Brébeuf. He laughed. With genuine pleasure.
Paul Gélinas felt nauseous as he walked down the hall. Made seasick by Brébeuf’s wildly corkscrewing emotions.
Neither man looked behind him, but they could feel Brébeuf’s eyes on their backs. And then they heard the office door quietly click shut.
“You two were friends?” asked Gélinas.
“Best friends,” said Gamache. “He was a good man, once.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think he still is?” Gélinas asked when they reached the stairs.
Gamache paused at the top step. The stairwell was flooded with light from the three-story window that framed the vast thawing prairie.
The echo of cadets calling to each other to hurry bounced off the walls, and urgent steps were heard on the marble stairs below.
And Armand remembered how he and Michel would race up an old, scuffed mahogany staircase, taking them two at a time. Late for class. Again. Because of some sudden discovery the young men had made. A trap door. The way into the attic. A bone that might be human. Or from a chicken.
The poor pathology professor. Dr. Nadeau. Armand smiled slightly at the memory of the harried man, bothered yet again by the two cadets and another bone, or a piece of hair, that might be human. Or mouse.
And each time the verdict. Not human.
But Michel and Armand developed a pet theory. Their finds were in fact some poor victim, and Dr. Nadeau the killer. Covering up. They didn’t believe it, of course, but it became a running joke. As was their search for more and more ludicrous things to take to the poor man for analysis.
“Gamache?” said the RCMP officer. “Do you think Brébeuf is still a good man, underneath?”
“I wouldn’t have brought him here if I didn’t think there was good still in him,” said Gamache, the distant laughter echoing off the glass and concrete.