He replaced the lid and sat there, his hand resting on top of the box. He looked over at Olivier and the mute television.
In the background, the Banks children were being warned by Bert, the chimney sweep, that what Uncle Albert suffered from was serious and contagious.
Uncle Albert was giggling, then, unable to contain it any longer, he burst out laughing.
“I love to laugh,” Uncle Albert sang, long and loud and clear.
While on Olivier’s screen, Robert De Niro, filthy and emaciated, spun the barrel of the revolver, then held the gun to his head. His eyes crazed, his mouth open in what must have been a scream, but all Armand heard was Uncle Albert’s laughter, bubbling in from the other room.
De Niro pulled the trigger.
Armand fell back in his chair, his eyes wide, his mouth open, his breathing shallow.
Staring at the gun in Robert De Niro’s hand.
A revolver. A revolver.
Gripping the chair for support, Armand slowly rose. And looked from Olivier’s movie through the door and into the living room. At Jacques, and Huifen, and Nathaniel. And Amelia. Laughing along with Uncle Albert.
And he knew.
CHAPTER 38
When the movies ended, their guests left. Gélinas stayed up for a final drink by the fireplace, then went to bed while Reine-Marie and Armand cleaned up.
“It was pretty bad?” she asked. Thinking his pallor must have come from the shoe box, still sitting on the kitchen table. She was wrong.
“Young lives wasted,” he said. “The Hell where youth and laughter go.”
“Armand?” she asked, having rarely seen him so upset.
“Désolé. I was just thinking about what they were made to do.”
She thought he was talking about the boys in the box. She was wrong.
“Did you find the young Turcottes?” she asked.
He took a deep breath and brought himself out of it. “Non. Those telegrams might’ve been lost. It’s surprising so many were kept.”
He looked at her and forced a smile. “Did you enjoy the movie?”
“I must’ve seen it a hundred times, and I still love it.”
She hummed “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” while handing him warm, wet dishes.
“Coming?” she asked, when the kitchen was clean and in order.
“No, I think I’ll stay up for a bit.”
She kissed him. “You okay?” When he nodded, she said, “Don’t be late.”
Reine-Marie climbed the stairs to bed while he sat by the fireplace in the living room, Henri’s head on his lap.
Their home creaked and then was quiet again, except for the sleet scratching the windows. He just needed a few quiet minutes to himself. To think.
Then Armand got up and began turning off lights. As he approached the front door to lock up, the handle began to turn. It was midnight. Everyone had gone home. Everyone else was in bed.
Gamache gestured Henri to his side, then the two moved swiftly to stand behind the slowly opening door. Henri’s ears were pointed forward, his hackles up, a snarl coming from him.
But he stood slightly behind Gamache. In case.
Armand motioned with his hand, and Henri’s growling stopped. But he remained alert. Ready to run away at any moment.
Gamache watched the door push open. And his racing mind remembered the car at the top of the hill, looking down into the village. And then withdrawing. Backing up. Waiting, perhaps, for a better time.
And this, he thought, was it.
The intruder was almost certainly armed, and Gamache was not. But he had the great advantage of surprise. And surprised he was, when he saw who appeared.
“What’re you doing here?”
“Holy shit, Armand, you scared me to death.”
Henri gave a little yelp of pleasure, and relief. His tail wagging furiously, he looked from Jean-Guy Beauvoir to the bowl of treats by the door, then back again. A dog with an agenda. A big one, with only one entry.
As Jean-Guy gave Henri a biscuit, Armand hung up his coat and reflected that it was the first time, ever, that Jean-Guy had called him Armand. He’d asked his son-in-law many times, since the marriage, to do that in private, but the younger man had never quite managed it. Settling on patron as a compromise.
But the shock had jarred loose an “Armand.”
“Why are you here? Annie’s all right, isn’t she?”
“If she wasn’t, I’d call,” Jean-Guy pointed out. “Not drive all this way through a fucking awful night. Pardon my English.”
He took off his boots and put on the slippers he kept by the door.
“Then what is it? Not that I’m unhappy to see you.”
“Annie told me to come.”
“Why?”
“Because I told her about Gélinas’s suspicions and she’s worried.”
Armand was on the verge of asking why Beauvoir would do such a thing when he remembered that he told Reine-Marie everything. Or nearly everything.
And now Jean-Guy had found a confidante in his own wife. Gamache could hardly protest, though he wanted to.
Looking at the familiar face, at a man he trusted with his life, Armand felt a surge of relief, and was grateful to Annie for sending him down.
“Where’s Gélinas now?” asked Beauvoir.
“In bed, asleep. Come with me,” he said. “Are you hungry?”
“Starving,” said Jean-Guy.
In the kitchen, Beauvoir went over to the cage in the corner. “How’s Gracie settling in?”
He bent down, then straightened up and stepped back on seeing what was sleeping in there.
“Are dragons a real thing?” he asked.
“Puppy,” said Gamache with conviction, putting a heaping helping of shepherd’s pie in the microwave.
“Monkey?” asked Jean-Guy.
Armand refused to reply. The microwave beeped, the dinner was put out, a Coke was poured, and the two men sat at the pine table.
Jean-Guy took a long sip of his drink and a huge forkful of shepherd’s pie, and looked at his father-in-law.
“Something’s happened, patron. What is it?”
“I think I’ve found the motive for the murder, Jean-Guy.”
Beauvoir lowered his fork.
“What is it?”
“First I need you to call the woman at McDermot and Ryan, and ask her about her name.”
“Coldbrook?”
“Clairton. Find out why she really used that name in her correspondence with you. Why it was in a slightly different font. Push her, Jean-Guy. And if she won’t tell you, say, Deer Hunter.”
“Come on. You have to give me more.”
“I can’t. She has to come up with it on her own. I don’t want you to lead her more than that. And even that you need to keep in your pocket unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“D’accord.” Beauvoir looked at his watch. “Five in the morning in the UK. Too early to call.”
He looked at his father-in-law. At the drawn expression.
“But I’ll call and leave a message asking her to get back to me as soon as she gets in.”
Armand Gamache nodded. “Merci.”
Beauvoir finished off his dinner while Gamache cut him a huge slice of Gabri’s chocolate cake.
But didn’t give it to him. Instead Gamache took the cake to the table and placed it in front of himself.
“Your turn.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have something too, don’t you?”
Beauvoir had been staring at the cake, and now he raised his eyes.
“Are you holding that hostage?”
“I am.”
“You’re a mean, mean man.”
“And you have information I want.”
“It’s not so much information as a thought. You said the key to the crime lies in the fingerprints. You also said the prints on the gun are yours, but that you never touched it. That leaves two possibilities. You’re lying. Or you’re telling the truth, in which case someone else placed your prints there. Not many could do that. And do it so subtly. Not place a great goddamned print on the gun, but to blur it just enough. So that it’s identifiable, but not obvious. I don’t have the skill to do that, I doubt you do.”
His father-in-law shook his head.
“But one man does,” Jean-Guy continued. “A former S?reté officer you yourself recruited, and then invited to the academy as a visiting professor. To teach tactics. A man who uses Machiavelli as a textbook. Manipulation. Hugo Charpentier.”
“Yes,” said Gamache, sliding the cake across the old pine table. “Hugo Charpentier could certainly do it.”
“But why would he kill Leduc?”