“I missed that class.”
Gamache smiled and, walking forward, he stopped in front of Jean-Guy and looked from the man to the box on the floor, then back to the man.
“Merci.”
“I shouldn’t have even considered looking,” said Jean-Guy. “I’m sorry.”
“Non, not at all. It’s human to be curious. It was superhuman to put it back down. Thank you for respecting my privacy.”
Then Armand Gamache walked past Jean-Guy, picked up the old box, and handed it to his son-in-law.
Without a word, he returned upstairs, while Jean-Guy returned to the armchair and opened the box.
CHAPTER 39
Armand Gamache looked at the cadets, one at a time.
First Nathaniel, then Huifen, then Jacques, and finally his eyes rested on Amelia.
“I know,” he said quietly.
Jacques turned his head slightly, eyes narrowing. “Know what?”
“I know what happened in Leduc’s rooms.”
There was silence then. The cadets looked at each other, and then all, naturally, turned to Huifen.
“What?” she asked. There was defiance in her voice.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir was sitting a few benches back. He and Armand had brought the young people up to the chapel first thing in the morning. They needed to speak to them, and they needed someplace private. And neutral. And peaceful.
“I’ve long known that Serge Leduc was corrupt,” said Gamache. “I came out of retirement to clean up the academy. And not just of corruption. It was clear by the quality of new agents entering the S?reté that something was very wrong at the school. They were competent in the techniques, but they were also cruel. Not all, of course, but enough. More than enough. There was something wrong either with the recruitment process, or with the training. Or both.”
As he spoke, Commander Gamache watched them. And they watched him.
If Gamache and Beauvoir thought the four would break down and tell them everything, they were wrong. The conspiracy of silence was so ingrained as to be almost unbreakable.
“The first thing I did was fire most of your professors, and I brought in my own. Officers with real-life experience of investigations. Men and women with integrity. But who also know that with power comes temptation. Those are the real threats to S?reté agents. The self-inflicted wounds.”
Jean-Guy could hear their breathing now. At least one, perhaps more, of the cadets was on the verge of hyperventilating.
And still they were still. And silent.
“But I kept Serge Leduc, the Duke, on.”
“Why?” asked Nathaniel.
Looking at the pale young man, Gamache tried to catch his own breath. He looked down at his hands, clasped together. Holding on tight.
Serge Leduc might have done great damage. But so had he.
If he expected the students to tell him the truth, he had to be willing to do the same.
“I didn’t know,” he said, looking back up and into the young man’s cold eyes. “I thought he was a brute, a sadist. I thought he was corrupt. I thought I could gather enough evidence against him to put him in prison, so he couldn’t do the same damage someplace else. I thought I could control him so that while I was there, his abuses would stop.”
“Don’t believe everything you think,” mumbled Amelia.
Gamache nodded. “They did not stop. It never occurred to me he could be that sick.”
“When did you find out?” asked Huifen.
“Last night, while watching the movie.”
“Mary Poppins?” she asked. She must’ve missed that scene.
“The Deer Hunter. The one Olivier was watching.” He leaned toward them. “I’m going to get you help.”
“We don’t need your help,” snapped Jacques. “There’s nothing wrong with us.”
Gamache thought before he spoke again. “Do you know where this comes from?”
He smoothed his fingers over the deep scar by his temple. Three of the cadets shook their heads, but Jacques just glared.
“There was a raid I led, on a factory. A young agent, not much older than you, was being held hostage and time was running out. We gathered as much intelligence as possible on the terrain and the hostage takers. Their number, their weapons, where they were likely to be positioned. And then we went in. Inspector Beauvoir here was critically injured, shot in the abdomen.”
The cadets turned in their seats to look back at Inspector Beauvoir.
“Three agents lost their lives,” Gamache continued. “I went to their funerals. Walked behind the caskets. Spent time with their mothers and fathers and husbands and wives and children. And then I went into therapy. Because I was broken. I still see a counselor when I feel overwhelmed. It’s human. It’s our humanity that allows us to find criminals. But it also means we care, and get hurt in places that don’t bleed. Every day, when I see this scar in the mirror,” this time he didn’t touch it, “it reminds me of the pain. Mine. But mostly theirs. But it also reminds me, every day, of the healing. Of the kindness that exists. We are introduced to Goodness every day. Even in drawing-rooms among a crowd of faults. It’s so easy to get mired in the all too obvious cruelty of the world. It’s natural. But to really heal, we need to recognize the goodness too.”
“It wasn’t our fault,” said Jacques.
“That’s not what I mean. I think you know that.”
“Why should we trust you?” demanded Jacques. “Three agents lost their lives because of you. I saw the recording. I saw what happened. And I also saw that somehow you came out of it a hero.”
Gamache’s jaw clamped shut, the muscles working.
Beauvoir stirred but said nothing.
“It’s a trick,” said Jacques, turning to the others. “He’s just trying to get us to say things that will look bad. We have to stick together. Don’t tell him anything.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” agreed Gamache. “Only if you want to.”
He paused, to let them think, before going on.
“When did it start?”
He asked Jacques and Huifen. Who said nothing.
Then he turned to the other two.
Nathaniel opened his mouth, but a sound from Huifen made him close it. It was Amelia who finally spoke.
“When I refused to have sex with him, he decided to fuck with me in every other way,” she said, hurrying on before she changed her mind. “I had to do it, he said, or be expelled. He said you never wanted me there, and he was the one fighting to keep me. But if I refused, he’d let you throw me out.”
Gamache listened and nodded.
“You believed him, of course. Why wouldn’t you?”
“I didn’t believe him,” said Amelia. “I knew he was a shit. And you seemed so,” she searched for the word, “kind.”
They looked at each other, in a moment of intimacy that was almost painful. Jean-Guy felt he should look away, but did not.
He knew what was in that box. And he knew what was in Gamache’s stare. And he also knew that Amelia Choquet almost certainly had no idea who she was.
And who Armand Gamache was.
“But I didn’t think you could stand up to him,” she admitted. “I couldn’t take that chance. You’d let him stay, after all.”
It wasn’t meant as a mortal blow, just as an explanation. But Jean-Guy could see the internal bleeding those words produced. Gamache was reduced to silence.
“We trusted you, sir,” said Huifen. “We thought when you arrived it would end, but it only got worse.”
Jean-Guy thought he could hear Gamache’s heart pounding in his chest, and expected it to explode at any moment.
“I made a terrible mistake,” he said. “And you all paid for it. I’ll do all I can to make it up to you.”
And then there was another sound. Completely unexpected.
Laughter.
“The Duke was right,” said Jacques. “You are weak.”
His laughter was replaced by a sneer.