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“How did you come to have the ledger?” Gamache asked.
“I told her to give it to me, that I’d hide it.”
“Why would you do that?” asked Lacoste. “She’d just confessed to a murder. Why didn’t you turn her in?”
“Have you met her? She’s young and bright. The sort of daughter I’d have loved to have had. She even said I reminded her of her own mother. What happened in that cemetery was clearly a moment of insanity. I knew her mother was sick and she needed the money for private care.” Aimée Lagacé heaved a sigh. “She took me to the grave, and I could see he was dead. There was nothing we could do for him. To turn her in would have ruined her life and condemned her mother to a lonely death. So, I searched my conscience and decided to stay silent.” She looked around the table. “I know what I did was wrong. I just wanted to protect her. When the body was found and you called me down, I was terrified. I thought for sure you knew. I brought the ledger with me, to turn it over. But then when I realized you didn’t know about Jeanette, I decided to bury it with the plant. To get it out of my possession.”
“Do you know where Jeanette Bouchard is now?” asked Gamache.
“No. I haven’t heard from her in weeks. I’m afraid she might have hurt herself.”
Gamache nodded to Beauvoir, who approached and whispered in his ear.
“The lab tests have come back on the ledger,” said the Chief Inspector, when Beauvoir stepped away. “The soil samples match the grave. Your fingerprints and DNA are on it.”
“They would be, of course. I’ve admitted I handled it.”
“What isn’t on the book or the covering are Jeanette Bouchard’s DNA or prints.”
“She wore gloves, I guess.” Then Lagacé’s eyes narrowed. “How do you have her DNA and fingerprints?”
Armand waved Beauvoir over and whispered to him. Jean-Guy hesitated for just a moment, then nodded. “Oui, patron.”
He walked back to his desk and placed a call. To the police in the UK.
Chief Inspector Gamache stood up.
“Aimée Lagacé, I’m arresting you for the murder of Brian Fillmore and conspiracy to murder Jeanette Bouchard.”
CHAPTER 62
As many times as Chief Inspector Armand Gamache had sat there in the Crown Prosecutor’s office, he could never quite get comfortable.
It wasn’t the seating, though in truth the hard chair might have been part of it. It was the fact he was about to do something that would change a life forever. He knew he was not the judge, he was just doing his job. But he was also aware that many atrocities and injustices had hidden behind that phrase.
Sometimes there was a nagging sense of remorse. He wished he could just collect the evidence and not have to face the person, not have to actually make the arrest. But that would be cowardice. Though he was not above wishing it was so.
He found that in the course of some investigations, he grew to like the suspect, even as the evidence against them mounted. He could in rare instances sympathize with, even understand the motivation, if not, of course, approve of the crime.
More than once, he’d had to arrest someone for killing the person who’d kidnapped and murdered their child.
For doing what he feared he himself might do.
In those cases, Armand tried to soften the blow, pleading with the prosecutor to lessen the charge. This had led to Chief Inspector Gamache not always being the favorite person in the Crown’s office.
But most of the time, when walking the prosecutor through the evidence, he felt relief, even, dare he admit it, elation at getting a very bad person off the streets.
He spoke, acted, and fought for the dead and those they left behind. And that gave him resolve.
Though part of him was always a little afraid that something would go wrong and a person he knew to be guilty would walk free. To maybe take another life. That he’d made a mistake. Had broken faith with the dead.
That had happened in his long career, and those cases continued to haunt him.
While on good, collegial terms with most in the Crown Prosecutor’s office, Armand had drawn the short straw this time. Years ago, on an earlier case, he and the man whose office he now sat in, Maître Lebel, had immediately developed a mutual dislike. Armand thought Lebel was a lazy, condescending snob. A coward who only moved forward with easy cases, where he didn’t have to work hard to convict.
But Lebel probably thinks I’m overconfident, egotistical, arrogant. Essentially F.I.N.E. The thought made Gamache smile.
The truth was that their dislike had little to do with reason. It was instinct. Like the times he’d walked into a beautiful, bright home and wanted to flee. Or entered a dark, dilapidated place and felt at home.
