A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12) - Louise Penny Page 0,2

their living room, discussing “what next.”

Armand had listened politely, often offering them lunch or dinner or a place to stay if it was late. But never tipping his hand.

Reine-Marie herself had found her dream job, after leaving her post at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec as one of the head librarians. She’d volunteered to sort years of donations to the regional historical society.

It was a post her former colleagues no doubt viewed as a significant step down. But Reine-Marie wasn’t interested in steps. She’d arrived at where she wanted to be. No more steps. She’d stopped. Reine-Marie had found a home in Three Pines. She’d found a home in Armand. And now she’d found her intellectual home, investigating the rich and disorganized collection of documents and furniture and clothing and oddities left to the region in wills.

For Reine-Marie Gamache, each day felt like Christmas, as she sorted through the boxes and boxes. And boxes.

And then, after much discussion between them, Armand had decided on his next step.

For weeks after, while she pored over piles of letters and old documents, he pored over his files, studying confidential reports, schematics, curricula vitae. Across from each other in their comfortable living room, they’d gone through their separate boxes, while the fire mumbled and the coffee perked and late autumn turned into an early winter.

But while she was opening up the world, he was in many ways doing the opposite. Armand was whittling down, honing, shaving, taking out the dead wood, the unnecessary, the unwanted. The rot. Until what he had in his hands was something very sharp. A spear of his own creation. And he’d need it. There could be no doubt who was in charge, and who held the power. Or that he was willing to use it.

He was almost there, she knew. But there seemed one thin obstacle.

They looked down at it now, sitting innocently on the table among the croissant flakes.

Armand opened his mouth to speak, then closed it and exhaled sharply, in irritation.

“There’s something that’s bothering me about this file and I don’t know what it is.”

Reine-Marie picked it up and read. It didn’t take long. After a few minutes she closed the cover, laying a hand softly on top as a mother might on the chest of a sick child. Making sure of the heartbeat.

“She’s an odd one, I’ll give her that.” She looked at the red dot in the corner. “You’re rejecting her, I see.”

Armand lifted his hands in a noncommittal gesture.

“You’re considering accepting her?” she asked. “Even if it’s true that she reads ancient Greek and Latin, that’s not much use in the job. They’re dead languages. And she might very well be lying.”

“True,” he admitted. “But if you’re going to lie, why do it about that? Seems an odd sort of fabrication.”

“She’s not qualified,” said Reine-Marie. “Her high school marks are abysmal. I know it’s difficult to choose, but surely there are other applicants who deserve the spot more.”

Their breakfast came, and Armand placed the file on the pine floor beside Henri.

“I can’t tell you how often I’ve changed that dot,” he said with a smile. “Red, green. Green, red.”

Reine-Marie took a forkful of the moist scrambled eggs. A long thin string of Brie clung to the plate and she lifted her fork above her head for amusement, to see how long the string could stretch before it broke.

Longer than her arm, it seemed.

Armand, smiling and shaking his head, pulled it apart with his fingers.

“There, madame, I set you free.”

“From the bondage of cheese,” she said. “Oh, thank you, kind sir. But I’m afraid the attachment goes deeper than that.”

He laughed.

“Do you think it’s her name?” asked Reine-Marie. Her husband was rarely so indecisive, though she knew he also took his decisions seriously. They would affect people for the rest of their lives.

“Amelia?” he asked. And frowned. “I wondered the same thing. But it seems a huge overreaction on my part, don’t you think? My mother’s been gone for almost fifty years. I’ve met other Amelias—”

“Not many.”

“Non, c’est vrai. But some. And while the name will always remind me of my mother, the fact is I didn’t think of her as Amelia. She was Maman.”

He was right, of course. And he didn’t seem at all embarrassed to be a grown man talking about “mommy.” She knew he was simply referring to the last time he saw his mother and father. When he was nine. When they weren’t Amelia and Honoré but Mommy and