There were a few other questions, about procedure, and classes, and what they could say to family and friends.
“Tell them the truth,” said Gamache. “Some of you will be questioned by Chief Inspector Lacoste and her homicide team. Mostly those of you who were students of Professor Leduc or who met with—”
“Liar.”
Gamache raised his hand to his forehead, to better see who had spoken. But the person remained hidden in the crowd.
“If you have something to say, stand and face me,” said Gamache, his voice deep and calm, carrying to the very back of the room.
The cadets turned in their seats and looked around the auditorium.
At the front of the room, Gamache waited. When no one stood up, he continued as though there’d been no interruption.
“You’ll be allowed back in your rooms within the hour. If you know anything that could be helpful, however trivial you think it is, keep it to yourself until you can speak to one of the investigators. Unfortunately, you now have a chance to see a homicide investigation from the inside. It is not attractive. It is not exciting. A lot will be revealed that people had hoped to keep hidden. And not simply the contents of your rooms.”
Nervous laughter met that comment. And when it died down, the Commander continued.
“Make no mistake, it will all come to light. Far easier if you volunteer than that it be dragged out into the open.”
“Hypocrite,” the same voice yelled.
Now there was an audible murmur in the room as students reacted. Some with shock. Some with nervous amusement.
Commander Gamache stared into the gathering of cadets and slowly they grew silent. The room waited for his response, bracing for the explosion.
After a few very long moments, Commander Gamache did what none of them expected.
He smiled. Very, very slightly. And then the smile faded and he spoke. Softly, but the words penetrated each and every person in the room.
“Be careful. This is a time of menace. There’s a murderer among us. Almost certainly in this room.” He paused, and then he looked at them with such caring that a few sighed, breathing out lifelong tension. “It’s too easy to feed the anger. Too cowardly to stoke the hate. You must look inside yourself and decide who you are and who you want to be. Character is not created in times like these. It’s revealed. This is a trying time. A testing time. Be careful.”
Then Armand Gamache walked off the stage.
“Coward,” the voice pursued him.
The word hit, then glided off Commander Gamache’s back. He didn’t pause, didn’t hesitate, his stride unbroken.
Amelia sat forward, leaning toward the stage. Even after the Commander had disappeared. She stared at the empty space once occupied by him.
Commander Gamache had spoken those words to each and every cadet, including herself. But his eyes had lingered on one young man. And that was when his expression had changed. And that look of almost aching caring had settled there.
He knew exactly who had shouted those words, shot those words, at him. And Gamache had spoken directly to the young man. Be careful.
“Huh,” she murmured.
“What?” said the cadet beside her.
“Screw off,” she said, though her heart wasn’t in it. She was thinking.
Chief Inspector Isabelle Lacoste, standing at the back of the room with Jean-Guy Beauvoir, inhaled sharply.
“Don’t they know?” she whispered.
“Who he is?” asked Beauvoir. “They either don’t know or don’t care. Serge Leduc successfully poisoned the well before Gamache arrived, and added shit for the past couple of months.”
“And he couldn’t fight it?” asked Lacoste.
Around them the room had erupted in speculation. About the murderer, and about the words hurled at the Commander.
“He chose not to,” said Beauvoir. “He said it was a deliberate distraction and there was too much to do to waste time waging war on the Duke.”
“They’re fools.”
“Not all of them.”
While it looked, quite understandably to Lacoste, as if Gamache might have lost control of the academy, Jean-Guy Beauvoir saw something else in that room.
Like her, he’d heard the open insults to Gamache. But Beauvoir now saw pockets of quiet as some of the cadets contemplated what had just happened. And began to evolve their thinking.
“You’re a fool,” hissed Huifen.
“What? Everyone was thinking it,” said Jacques.
“Not everyone. Not anymore anyway.”
Her keen eyes took in the activity around them. And in some cases, the inactivity. The quiet that had come over more than a few of her fellow cadets.
Then she studied him. So handsome. Fine, intelligent features. Muscular. From rock climbing and rowing and hockey. His body contained a strapping energy she found almost irresistible. She dreamed of running her hands over those taut muscles, even as she was doing it. She dreamed of wrapping her arms and legs around him, even as she was doing it.
But now, and not for the first time, she wondered what else was contained in that fine body. In that mind. And what would happen if those straps ever broke.
When Huifen got back to her room, she found a woman waiting for her and an agent searching her belongings.
“Cadet Cloutier?”
“Oui.”
“I’m Chief Inspector Lacoste, of homicide. Have a seat, please.”
Huifen sat on the edge of her bed and watched the agent go through the dresser drawers.
Lacoste took the desk chair and crossed her legs, comfortably.
“Where were you last night, between ten and two in the morning?”
“Here. In bed.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Did you get up at all, to go to the bathroom? Get a drink?”
“No, I was asleep. Between classes and all the activities and sports, it’s pretty exhausting.”
Lacoste smiled. “I remember. What was your relationship with Professor Leduc?”
“I was one of his students. And I suppose you could call him a mentor.”
“Did he choose you, or did you choose him?”
Huifen regarded the Chief Inspector. It was an insightful and uncomfortable question.
“He chose me. When I was a freshman, he invited me to bring him his morning coffee. Then, after a while, he began inviting me to his rooms in the evening.”
“What for?”
“Talks. We weren’t alone,” Huifen hurried to reassure her, “if that’s what you think. It wasn’t like that. He just spoke to us, about policing, about the Sûreté. He took an interest in certain cadets.”
“His death must be a shock.”
And yet it was clear to Lacoste that this young woman wasn’t at all shocked. And certainly not saddened. But she was nervous.
“It is,” said Huifen.
“You’re just a few months away from graduating and becoming an agent in the Sûreté. You know how this works. Any idea who did this?”
“I think you should ask the Commander.”
“Really? Why?”
“They hated each other. It was obvious.”
“How so?”
“By what they said about each other.”
“What did Professor Leduc say about Commander Gamache?”
“That he was weak, and was weakening the academy and the Sûreté. That he was a coward.”
Lacoste pressed her lips together for a moment before she could speak again.
“And what did Commander Gamache say about Professor Leduc?”
Huifen opened her mouth, then slowly shut it again as she racked her brain. What had she heard him say about the Duke?
She looked at Chief Inspector Lacoste, who was nodding.
“Nothing, right?”
Huifen nodded.
“You won’t make a very good agent if you take gossip as fact, Cadet Cloutier.”