Michel Brébeuf.
The rot went even deeper than that and ended in catastrophe. But not the great scale of disaster it would have been had Armand Gamache not stopped it.
Brébeuf had been banished and Gamache had resigned, losing his job and almost losing his life.
And it wasn’t over yet, Gélinas knew.
The S?reté had been cleaned out, but there remained the academy. The training ground for cruelty and corruption.
The corrosion within the S?reté and subsequent events were well known to the general public. The media had covered it to the point of their own brutality.
What interested Gélinas now was what was unknown. The men’s personal lives.
He’d dug and he’d dug that afternoon. Until he struck dirt.
For all his professional venality, Michel Brébeuf’s personal life appeared conventional. He’d married. Had three children. Joined service clubs.
Brébeuf was a model husband and father and grandfather. But his home life had shattered when the degree of his professional deceit became known. His wife had left him, and there was a rift with his children that had yet to be healed.
But the dirt the RCMP officer sought and found came from a different source.
Not Brébeuf. But Gamache.
Gélinas had found it when he’d dug deep enough into Armand Gamache’s personal life and found a few lines in a long-dormant document. The words had uncurled and re-formed. And walked off the page. Into the present.
Into the waiting hands of the man charged with ensuring a fair investigation.
*
“A shrewdness of apes,” Myrna read from the reference book, smiling and shaking her head in amusement, before looking up to see Armand and the others arrive.
Reine-Marie got up to greet her husband.
“We’re playing a game,” she explained. “Naming groups of animals.”
“We started off trying to come up with a collective name for a group of S?reté cadets,” said Myrna, gesturing toward the students.
“I’m thinking it’s a gloom of cadets,” said Ruth.
Paul Gélinas rubbed his forehead and grinned. It was his first time in the bistro and he seemed a little stunned as he took in the beams and stone hearths and wide plank floors. And the old woman with the duck.
Then his eyes fell on the cadets.
Amelia Choquet was unmissable, unmistakable.
And while Gélinas stared at her, she was also staring. Past him. Her mouth open wide enough for him to see the stud through her tongue.
He turned to see who had so enthralled the Goth Girl.
It was Isabelle Lacoste. Amelia Choquet’s polar opposite.
“But then it evolved into animal groups,” Myrna was saying.
“A sleuth of bears,” said Gélinas, returning to the conversation. “That sort of thing?”
“Exactly,” said Clara. “Good for you. You’re on my team.”
“There’re teams?” asked Gabri, leaning away from Ruth.
“Who are you?” Ruth squinted at Gélinas.
Gamache introduced Deputy Commissioner Gélinas, of the RCMP.
“Bonjour,” he said, offering his hand to Ruth.
She gave him the finger, turning it sideways. “And one for the horse you rode in on, Renfrew.”
“Don’t get too close,” Gabri whispered to him. “If she bites you, you’ll go mad.”
Gélinas withdrew his hand.
“The only one I know is a murder of crows,” said Lacoste.
“You made that up,” said Beauvoir. “Why would crows be called that?”
“Funny you should ask,” said Myrna.
She flipped through the reference book and read out loud, “A murder of crows is believed to come from a folk tale, where crows will gather to decide the capital fate of another crow.”
“C’est ridicule,” said Beauvoir.
But his eyes slid across the crowded bistro to the gathering of cadets.
“A crowd of faults,” Ruth said with certainty. “That’s what they are.”
Gamache made a guttural sound, somewhere between amusement and astonishment.
CHAPTER 31
“Bonjour,” said Lacoste, when she arrived at the cadets’ table.
All four stood up. She introduced herself to those who hadn’t yet met her.
“I’m Chief Inspector Lacoste. I’m leading the investigation into the murder of Serge Leduc.”
For Amelia, it was like watching a play. A replay.
There was the head of homicide, petite, contained, in slacks and sweater and silk scarf, with three large men standing respectfully behind her.
“This is Deputy Commissioner Gélinas, of the RCMP,” said Lacoste, and Gélinas nodded to the cadets. “And you know Commander Gamache and Inspector Beauvoir.”
Four senior officers. Four cadets. Like before-and-after shots.
Olivier had dragged another table over, and they sat, the investigators fanned at one end and the cadets at the other. Regarding each other.
“What did you find out about the map?” Commander Gamache asked.
“Nothing,” said Jacques.
“That’s not true,” said Nathaniel. “We found out a lot.”
“Just none of it very useful.” This time no one contradicted him.
They described what they’d found out about the mapmaker, Antony Turcotte. As they spoke, they looked down at a copy of the map he’d made, sitting not far from the wall where it had been hidden for almost a hundred years.
It still had the red stain from the strawberry jelly. And a dusting of icing sugar. So that it looked like a drop of blood on snow.
“You’ve done well,” said Lacoste, and meant it. “You found out who made it and confirmed it was probably an early orienteering map.”
“Maybe to train his son, knowing the war was coming,” said Beauvoir, and wondered how a father could do that. How would a father feel, seeing the war on the horizon?
What would I do? Jean-Guy wondered.
And he knew what he’d do. He’d either hide his child, or prepare him.
Jean-Guy looked down at the map and realized it wasn’t a map at all. At least, not of land. It mapped a man’s love of his child.
“But there’s a problem,” said Huifen.
“There always is,” said Commander Gamache.
“There’s no record of him ever owning this place. Or any place.”
“Maybe he rented,” said Beauvoir.
“Maybe,” said Jacques. “But we couldn’t find Antony Turcotte anywhere. In any of the records.”
“There’s a mention in The Canadian Encyclopedia,” said Amelia, her voice eager for the first time since Gamache had known her. She handed the photocopied sheet to Lacoste.
“Merci,” said Lacoste, and examined it before passing it along to the others. “According to this, Monsieur Turcotte eventually moved to a village called Roof Trusses and was buried there.”
“Roof Trusses?” the other officers said together.
*
“What did they say?” demanded Ruth.
“I must’ve misheard,” said Gabri. “It sounded like Roof Trusses.”
“Oh yes, I know it,” said Ruth. “Just down the road a few kilometers.”
“Of course,” said Gabri. “Not far from Asphalt Shingles.”
“Ignore him,” said Olivier. “He just likes saying asphalt.”
“I’ve never heard of it.” Clara turned to Myrna and Reine-Marie, both of whom shook their heads.
“That’s because only old Anglos still call it Roof Trusses,” said Ruth. “The Commission de toponymie changed its name a long time ago to Notre-Dame-de-Doleur.”
“Our Lady of Pain?” asked Myrna. “Are you kidding? Who calls a village that?”
“Pain,” said Reine-Marie. “Or maybe grief.”
Our Lady of Grief.
It was not much better.
“Jesus,” said Gabri. “Can you imagine the tourist posters?”
*
“Roof Trusses?” asked Beauvoir. “Who calls a village that?”
“Apparently Antony Turcotte,” said Huifen. “His one big mistake when mapping and naming the area.”
She explained.
“Have you been there?” Gamache asked.
There was silence, none of the cadets wanting to be the one to speak.
“The toponymie man said the village died out,” said Huifen.
“Might still be worth a visit,” said Lacoste. “Just to see.”
“See what?” asked Jacques, and was treated to one of her withering looks.
“We don’t know, do we? Isn’t that the point of an investigation? To investigate.”