He looked over to the stained-glass boys.
“Have you noticed their names? Not Robert, but Rob. Not Albert, but Bert. There’s even a fellow named Giddy. Their real names, the ones their parents shouted when it was dinnertime. The names their friends screamed while playing hockey. Some would’ve been lost. Missing. They’d have gone over the top and disappeared. Forever. And their parents would never have known what happened to them. They’d have waited, forever.”
He took another deep breath.
“Losing Maman and Papa was devastating, but I’ve been sitting here thinking how lucky I am that I at least knew what happened, and I could stop waiting. But some of these parents never did.”
Reine-Marie dropped her eyes to his large hand and gathered her courage to ask the question.
“Armand?”
“Oui?”
“Who’s the cadet? Who’s Amelia? There’s something special about her, isn’t there?”
Reine-Marie’s heart began to pound. But having gone this far, there was no going back. She knew she had to move forward.
Armand looked at her with such sadness that she wished she hadn’t asked. Not for his sake now, but for her own.
Armand would never … Amelia couldn’t possibly be—
“Patron?”
She felt like a woman saved from the gallows, but not grateful. Having finally found the courage to get there, who knew if she’d find it again?
Reine-Marie felt a flash of rage that was incandescent.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” said Olivier.
He could see the backs of their heads, but neither turned to him, and he hesitated in the aisle.
Reine-Marie dropped her eyes from her husband’s face and counted.
Un, deux, trois …
Until she felt she could look at Olivier without screaming at him to go away.
… quatre, cinq …
Olivier stopped a few pews away. Uncertain what to do. Neither of them had turned. Neither had acknowledged him.
“Are you all right?” he asked, leaning forward. They were so still, like wax figures.
“Yes, we’re fine,” said Reine-Marie, and for the first time truly understood that the title of Ruth’s poetry book, I’m FINE, wasn’t purely a joke.
“Are you sure?” he asked, edging forward.
Armand turned around and smiled. “We were just talking about the soldiers.”
Olivier glanced at the window, then took a seat across the aisle.
“I wasn’t sure if I should follow you, but, well, that was strange. In the bistro. How the RCMP officer treated you. What he said.”
Armand raised his brow and smiled. “I’ve been treated worse. It’s nothing. Just part of the cop culture.”
“It’s more than that,” said Olivier. “And I think you know it. You’re a suspect. He said it himself.”
“It’s his job to suspect everyone, but I’m not worried.”
“You should be,” said Olivier. “He means to prove you killed that man. I could see it in his face.”
Gamache shook his head. “Whether he thinks it or not, there’s no proof. And besides, I didn’t do it.”
“So innocent people are never arrested?” demanded Olivier. “Never tried and convicted? For a crime they didn’t commit? That never happens, right?” He glared at Gamache. “You should be afraid, monsieur. Only a fool wouldn’t be.”
“Armand?” asked Reine-Marie. “Could that happen? Could Gélinas arrest you?”
“I doubt it.”
“Doubt?” asked Reine-Marie. “Doubt? Then there is a possibility? He can’t seriously believe you murdered a man.”
“He does,” said Olivier. “I’ve seen that look before. On your husband’s face, just before the arrest.”
“We have to do something,” said Reine-Marie, looking around as though proof of her husband’s innocence could be found in the chapel.
“Here you are,” came the familiar voice of Jean-Guy from the door. “We’ve interviewed the cadets—”
“Do you think Armand killed that professor?” Reine-Marie stood, turned and faced her son-in-law, who stopped in his tracks.
“No, of course not.”
Lacoste had entered behind him, and Reine-Marie saw her look away, unwilling to meet Reine-Marie’s eyes.
“Isabelle, do you?”
Reine-Marie was in full flight now. Pounding at the gates. Demanding the truth. Demanding to know who were allies and who were enemies.
This was another world war. Her world. Her war.
“I don’t think Monsieur Gamache killed Serge Leduc,” said Isabelle.
“Reine-Marie,” said Armand, getting up and putting an arm around his wife’s waist.
She stepped away.
“But you’re not sure, are you, Isabelle?”
The two women stared at each other.
“You need to know something, madame. I held your husband’s hand as he lay dying. On that factory floor. I’ve never told you this. You didn’t need to know. He knew he was dying. I knew it. He could barely breathe, but he managed to say one last thing.”
“Isabelle—” said Gamache.
“I had to lean over to hear it,” said Lacoste. “He whispered, ‘Reine-Marie.’ And I knew he wanted me to tell you how much he loves you. Forever. Eternally. I never had to tell you that. Until now. Armand Gamache would never murder anyone, for all sorts of reasons. One of them is that he would never, ever do anything to hurt you, Reine-Marie.”
Reine-Marie brought her hand to her mouth, and screwed her eyes shut. She stood there for a second, a minute. Years.
And then she dropped the hand and reached for the harbor of her husband, even as she noticed the look that passed between Lacoste and Beauvoir.
Armand kissed her, and whispered in her ear. Something that made her smile. Then he motioned to the pew at the front of the chapel, and while the investigators took seats there, Olivier and Reine-Marie sat at the very back.
“Did anything come out of your interviews?” asked Gamache.
“Not much,” said Lacoste. “But Cadet Choquet didn’t seem surprised when I told her her prints were on the murder weapon.”
“It was an extrapolation,” Gamache reminded her.
“I didn’t tell her that.”
“Did she explain it?”
“No. She did say that Leduc threatened to expel her if she didn’t have sex with him.”
“And did she?” asked Gamache.
“She says not, but she’s used to trading sex for what she wants.”
Gamache gave a curt nod.
“I haven’t had a chance to tell you,” said Lacoste, “but I called the UK and spoke to the woman at the gun manufacturer that Jean-Guy interviewed.”
“Madame Coldbrook-Clairton?” asked Gamache.
Lacoste laughed. “I had this conversation with Jean-Guy on the drive down. There’s no Clairton, just Coldbrook.”
“Then why—” Gamache began.
“Did she sign her name with Clairton?” asked Lacoste. “Good question. She says it was a mistake.”
“Odd,” said Gamache, frowning. “But she confirmed the revolver that killed Leduc and the one in the window are both McDermot .45s?”
“Did he say Clairton?” asked Olivier, sitting in the back with Reine-Marie. “There’s a town in Pennsylvania called that.”
“Now how would you know that, mon beau?” asked Reine-Marie.
“I don’t know how I know about Clairton,” said Olivier, drawing his brows together in concentration. “I just do.”
“Maybe you were born with the knowledge,” suggested Reine-Marie with a smile.
“That would be a shame. So many more useful things I could innately know. Like how to convert Fahrenheit into Celsius, or the meaning of life, or how much to charge for a croissant.”