Chapters (43)
- A Fatal Grace
- ALSO BY LOUISE PENNY
- A Fatal Grace
- CONTENTS
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Here we go, thought Beauvoir. ‘Not doing badly isn’t good enough,’ he said. ‘That’s a pretty low bar you’re setting, sir. This is homicide. The elite division in the Sûreté.’ He could see Gamache bristle as he always did when that was said. For some reason unfathomable to Beauvoir, Gamache resisted this statement of the obvious. Even the top bosses admitted as much. The best of the best made it into homicide. The smartest, the bravest, the people who got up each morning from the comfort of their homes, kissed their children and went into the world to deliberately hunt people who deliberately killed. There was no place for the weak. And trainees, by their very nature, were weak. And weakness led to mistakes and mistakes led to something going horribly wrong. The murderer could escape to kill again, maybe even a Sûreté agent. Maybe even you, maybe – the door crept open slightly and a ghoul escaped the well hidden room – maybe Armand Gamache. One day his need to help young agents will kill him. Beauvoir slammed the door shut, but not before feeling a bristling of rage against the man standing before him.
‘We’ve been through this before, sir,’ his voice now hard and angry. ‘This is a team. Your team, and we’ll always do as you ask. But please, please stop asking this of us.’
‘I can’t, Jean Guy. I found you at the Trois-Rivières detachment, remember?’
Beauvoir rolled his eyes.
‘You were sitting among the reeds in a basket.’
‘Weed, sir. How many times must I tell you, it was weed. Dope. I was sitting with stacks of dope we’d confiscated. And it wasn’t a basket, it was a bucket. From Kentucky Fried Chicken. And I wasn’t in it.’
‘Now I feel badly. I told Superintendent Brébeuf I found you in a basket. Oh dear. You do remember, though? There you were buried alive under stacks of evidence, and why? Because you’d so annoyed everyone they’d assigned you permanently to the evidence room.’
Beauvoir remembered that day every day. He’d never forget being saved. By this large man in front of him, with the trim graying hair, the impeccable clothes and the eyes of deepest brown.