“It runs in the family,” said Gamache. “Her mother did too.”
He examined the young agent. Cohen had washed out of the academy and taken a job as a prison guard. But he’d come to Gamache’s aid during a terrible time, when everyone else was deserting the Chief, and Gamache had not forgotten. He’d managed to get Cohen back into the academy, tutoring him until he’d graduated.
Gamache had asked Lacoste, as one of her first acts and his final one, to take on Adam Cohen as a trainee and protégé. To take care of him.
“What are you doing here?” Gamache asked.
“Chief Inspector Lacoste asked me to look into Antoinette Lemaitre’s family. I tried to send what I found, but the Internet connection here is so weak I decided to bring it down myself to make sure it arrived.”
“He gnawed through his chain,” said Beauvoir, leading everyone over to the conference table.
Gamache sat down and looked from one to the other to the other, finally settling on Isabelle.
“What have you found?”
She leaned forward. “The home Antoinette Lemaitre was living in was in her name, but before that it belonged to her uncle.”
Gamache nodded. He knew that. Brian had told them.
Armand noticed that in front of Agent Cohen there was a page, facedown.
Cohen, Gamache realized, had more than a little bit of the dramatist about him. He must have studied under Jean-Guy Beauvoir.
“Guillaume Couture’s family was from the area,” Agent Cohen reported. “He built the house on some of the land they owned. There were no other relatives. He retired in the early 1990s.” Cohen’s fingers moved to the edge of the paper. “He died in 2005. Cancer. But before he retired he held a fascinating job.”
“He was an engineer,” said Gamache. “Antoinette said he built overpasses. Not dull, but not what I’d describe as fascinating.”
Adam Cohen turned the page over.
It was a grainy black-and-white photograph blown up from a smaller image. It showed a group of men standing in what looked like a tube.
Gamache put on his glasses and leaned closer.
“That,” Adam Cohen pointed, “is Guillaume Couture.”
The nondescript man grinned, almost maniacally, into the camera. His hair was lank and he wore glasses with thick black frames and an ill-fitting suit and tie. Two men stood on either side of him. The one in a cap was caught looking down and away from the camera, while the other appeared disinterested, even disdainful. Impatient.
Gamache felt his cheeks grow cold. He looked up from the photograph into the glowing eyes of Agent Cohen.
Then Armand took off his glasses and looked from Beauvoir to Lacoste.
They were staring at him in triumph. And for good reason.
“Voilà,” said Lacoste, putting her finger right onto the churlish face of the third man in the picture. “The connection.”
It was Gerald Bull.
Gamache took a deep breath, trying to take it in. “Guillaume Couture knew Gerald Bull.”
“More than knew him, sir,” said Agent Cohen. “The picture’s from Dr. Couture’s obit. Not the one in the newspaper, but the one in the McGill Alumni News.”
“Guillaume Couture went to McGill?” asked Gamache.
“No. He graduated from the Université de Montréal,” said Cohen. “But he worked at McGill.”
“In what department?” Gamache asked.
“Dr. Couture was a mechanical engineer,” said Chief Inspector Lacoste. “But he was seconded to the physics department, to work on the High Altitude Research Project.”
“HARP,” said Adam Cohen, leaning back, then deciding that was far too casual, he sat forward again. “The forerunner of Project Babylon.”
“Antoinette’s uncle worked with Gerald Bull,” said Gamache.
CHAPTER 26
Dinner was served, starting with parsnip and apple soup, with a drizzle of walnut-infused oil on top.
“Olivier gave me the recipe,” said Reine-Marie, turning down the light in the kitchen.
Candles were lit, not so much to create a romantic atmosphere for herself and Armand, and Isabelle and Jean-Guy and young Mr. Cohen. It was for the calm that came with twilight, and tea lights, and the small flickering flames. If the topic of conversation was harsh, at least the atmosphere could be gentle.
They’d returned to the Gamache home for dinner, and to continue what they’d started in the Incident Room.
“Was there any evidence in Antoinette’s house of her uncle’s association with Gerald Bull?” Armand asked.
“Nothing,” said Jean-Guy. “In fact, there was no evidence of her uncle at all. Nada. Not a photograph, not a card. No private papers. If we didn’t know Guillaume Couture was Antoinette’s uncle and had once lived in the place, we’d never have discovered it in that house.”
Gamache took a couple of spoonfuls of soup. It was smooth and earthy and just a touch sweet.
“Delicious,” he said to Reine-Marie, but his mind was elsewhere.
“Some people aren’t nostalgic,” Lacoste said. “My father’s like that. He doesn’t keep papers or letters.”
“Maybe Antoinette just wanted to make the house her own,” said Jean-Guy. “Heaven knows she was self-involved enough. Her uncle’s things might not have been welcome in the seigneurial home.”
“But not even a photograph?” said Reine-Marie. “They were close enough for him to leave her his home and she didn’t keep anything belonging to him? Seems like a purge.”
Armand agreed with Reine-Marie. It suggested a cleansing far deeper than simply making a place her own.
“Maybe that’s what the killer was doing,” said Isabelle. “Maybe he wanted to erase all evidence of Dr. Couture and his connection to Gerald Bull.”
Gamache remembered his conversation with Mary Fraser earlier in the day. And the file the CSIS file clerk was trying to conceal. But why hide a file on Gerald Bull? Everyone expected her to have one of those.
She was trying to hide the name on the file because it was unexpected. And Gamache thought he knew what it said. He’d been wrong. It wasn’t Gerald Bull in that dossier, it was Guillaume Couture.
“More likely the killer was looking for something he thought Dr. Couture would have in his home,” said Beauvoir.
“The plans for Project Babylon,” said Lacoste. “Is that why Antoinette was killed? For something she never even knew she had?”
“But why would Guillaume Couture have had the plans?” Beauvoir asked. “I can’t imagine Gerald Bull would trust anyone with them.”
“Maybe Dr. Couture stole them from Bull,” Lacoste suggested.
“Okay, let’s say he stole them, then what?” said Beauvoir. “Couture just hides them in his home. Why not sell them if they were that valuable?”
“Maybe he wanted to make sure no other gun was ever built,” said Cohen.
“Then why not destroy the plans?” asked Beauvoir. “Why keep them?”
“We don’t know that he did keep them,” Lacoste pointed out. “We’re pretty sure he didn’t sell them because no other gun was ever built, but he might’ve destroyed them. We don’t know, and the killer wouldn’t know either.”
“But that would mean the murderer knew about the connection between Antoinette’s uncle and Gerald Bull,” said Reine-Marie. “Why didn’t he look for the plans sooner? Why now?”
“Because the gun was found now,” said Lacoste. “That’s the catalyst. Until then the plans were worthless. But once a working model was found—”
“The plans become priceless,” said Reine-Marie. “I get it.”
“There is another possibility,” said Gamache. “That Gerald Bull never had the plans.”
They stared at him. They’d moved from the soup to fettuccine with grilled salmon, tossed with fennel and apple.