A Great Reckoning

At Myrna’s home, Jacques does an internet search on Gamache and, for the first time, sees video footage of Gamache under fire during a police raid on a factory. Gamache displays heroism and great tenderness for Jean-Guy, who is seriously wounded during the attack. However, Jacques does not fully understand the context of what he is seeing.

Gélinas and Lacoste meet with Mayor Florent, the mayor of St. Alphonse. Florent is known to have had an extremely antagonistic relationship with Leduc and the academy and is, therefore, a potential suspect. Florent flatly denies any involvement in the crime, but he doesn’t hesitate to admit that he hated Leduc, and his anger is apparent. He explains that he was at home with his wife the night of the murder, but it still seems possible that he could have snuck out and potentially gotten access to the academy due to the faulty security system.

Meanwhile, Jean-Guy phones the company that manufactured the revolver used in the murder. He speaks with a woman named Elizabeth Coldbrook. She confirms that Leduc purchased the revolver; it is a rare design and mostly purchased by collectors interested in antique weapons. Elizabeth also explains that the company doesn’t manufacture silencers, as they don’t work on revolvers; she seems confused when Jean-Guy insists that this revolver had one.  Jean-Guy notes that “even down the phone line, across the miles, across the ocean, he could hear her thinking” (208). She has no other information to offer, even when Jean-Guy reveals that the weapon was used in a murder. As requested, she follows up with an email summarizing their conversation, and Jean-Guy notices that the email is signed “Elizabeth Coldbrook-Clairton,” with “Clairton” typed in a different font.

Back in Three Pines, Gamache tells Charpentier that he must not reveal to anyone that the cadets are in Three Pines; everyone in the academy thinks that they are back with their families. Charpentier wonders why Gamache was so transparent with him, and Gamache reveals that he purposefully let Charpentier hear the conversation about the map so that he would become intrigued and involved in the case.

Gamache and Charpentier meet with the cadets; Gamache explains that they are returning to the academy but will be back that night, and he expects them to have more information about the map. Jacques openly challenges Gamache, complaining about being kept in Three Pines. Gamache chastises him, telling the cadets, "I’m tired of this childish behavior. You need to stop sniping. You’re not in a schoolyard” (212). Charpentier also explains his theory that the map is an orienteering map. Orienteering was initially developed as a tactical military exercise for soldiers in the Boer War and World War I to prepare them to find their way around a battlefield. It later developed into a sport. Charpentier believes that whoever made the map was both an orienteer and a skilled map maker. The soldier seems too young to have made the map himself, so they theorize his father might have made it and given it to him to remind him of his home and symbolically guide him back.

For the next step in investigating the map, Gamache tells the cadets to look at the property records and find out who owned the bistro before it was sold and converted to a restaurant. Gamache also talks to Myrna since he has noticed that Jacques’s anger and disrespect have only increased. Myrna shares that Jacques watched the footage from the factory raid and was shocked by the horror and violence. He, unfortunately, seems to see the raid, in which several agents died despite Gamache’s efforts, as further evidence against Gamache.

Gamache, Charpentier, Jean-Guy, Gélinas, and Lacoste meet to discuss the meeting with the mayor and the investigation. Lacoste concludes that Mayor Florent remains a suspect. They also share their theory that the weapon being left at the scene likely points to an experienced killer. Several different DNA traces and fingerprints have also been found in the room; not all of it has been analyzed, but thus far, fingerprints belonging to Brébeuf and Godbut have already been found in the room. Gamache and Gélinas plan to question Brébeuf why he was in Leduc’s rooms. They also guess that some of the remaining unidentified fingerprints belong to various cadets.

Confusingly, the revolver itself has partial prints from several different people, including both Amelia and Gamache. Gamache suggests that Leduc might have shown off the weapon and let others handle it; this would explain the variety of fingerprints but not why Gamache’s seem to be included among them. Amelia’s fingerprints have been located on the revolver’s case. Jean-Guy shares what he has learned about the gun, and Gamache notices in the research that the McDermot revolver used in the killing first became popular during World War I.

Gamache recollects that the soldier shown with the map in the stained-glass window also had a revolver. For the first time, he openly shares that a copy of a map found in Three Pines (and depicted in a World War I commemorative window) was also found in Leduc’s bedside table. Gélinas is very annoyed and suspicious to only be finding out this detail now. As a desire to question Amelia grows, Gamache also admits that the four cadets are now in Three Pines. Gélinas is outraged, especially when he realizes that the others also know. He increasingly sees Gamache’s actions as evidence that Gamache was somehow involved in the murder and has been taking steps to conceal his actions not to protect the cadets.

Gamache counters that the case is becoming increasingly complex; as he points out, “Don’t you think it’s strange in the extreme that the killer knew enough to drop the weapon, but not enough to wipe it or wear gloves?” (229). Nonetheless, Gélinas persists in his theory: he asks the others if it seems plausible that Gamache would have been willing to kill Leduc if it meant finally freeing the students from Leduc’s pernicious influence. The group awkwardly concedes that this sounds like something Gamache would indeed want to do. Nonetheless, they disagree with Gélinas and fear that he is playing into the killer’s hands by getting distracted and focusing on the wrong details.

In Three Pines, Huifen and Amelia have looked up the head of the local orienteering club and gone to show her the map. She quickly confirms that it is an orienteering map and explains a bit more about how orienteering works. Participants use a compass and map to navigate to certain marked spots and figure out the fastest route between them. Meanwhile, Jacques and Nathaniel have gone to the records office to try and determine who owned the bistro in the early 1900s. After digging through boxes of physical records, they cannot find any records for anyone with the same name as the fallen soldiers.

Huifen and Amelia move on to the Commission de Toponymie, the government office responsible for mapping and naming the local region. A man named Bergeron immediately identifies the map as the work of the cartographer Antony Turcotte. Turcotte is an extremely important figure in Quebecois cartography and had a deep love for the Eastern Townships region (where Three Pines is located); he mapped most of the region himself. Bergeron thinks the map is a hybrid between a real map and an orienteering map, personal and whimsical touches. Amelia and Huifen explain their theory that the soldier in the window might have been Turcotte’s son; however, they are puzzled when they see a large map in the office, also created by Turcotte, which does not depict Three Pines. If Turcotte knew Three Pines well enough to create the detailed orienteering map, why would he have left it off all other maps?

Little is known about Turcotte’s biography; there are no records of whether he had children. He died in 1919 in a village called Roof Trusses (the name was an error when Turcotte mistook the sign of a business for the village's name), but that village has died out and vanished. Huifen and Amelia have Jacques and Nathaniel check the records for anything under the name of Antony Turcotte, but they find nothing. The cadets feel increasingly frustrated since it appears that “everything to do with Antony Turcotte [was] disappearing” (245).

Gélinas and Gamache meet with Brébeuf to question him. Brébeuf states that he and Leduc were acquaintances before Brébeuf came to the school and that the two of them spent some time together after Brébeuf began his employment. Brébeuf openly admits that he went to Leduc’s rooms several times and that Leduc alluded to having been involved in illegal activities. He does deny that he ever saw or handled the gun, and since partial prints are so inconclusive, there’s no way to know for sure. Brébeuf insists he had nothing to do with Leduc’s death and that he thinks one of the cadets did it, hinting that Amelia seems capable of such an act. Gamache immediately defends Amelia, arguing that “Amelia Choquet is top of her class. And she swears like the criminals she’ll one day arrest” (251).

After leaving Brébeuf, Gélinas and Gamache talk, and Gélinas admits that he wondered if Gamache and Brébeuf could have conspired to kill Leduc. Gélinas no longer thinks this is the case; he believes Brébeuf’s claim that he wouldn’t have killed Leduc because Leduc was the only person willing to interact with him.

Lacoste phones the McDermot Revolver Company to speak with Elizabeth; no one there seems to know her as Elizabeth Clairton, only Elizabeth Coldbrook. Lacoste shares a photo of the stained-glass window, and Elizabeth quickly confirms both the revolver in the window image was a McDermot but that it was not the same one that Leduc owned (Leduc’s weapon was purchased new). Lacoste asks Elizabeth whether her surname is Clairton, Coldbrook, or both and receives a vague reply.

Later, Lacoste speaks with Jean-Guy about this odd detail. They also speculate about why Leduc would keep the copy of the map in his bedside table and whether that might mean that he and Amelia were sleeping together; it’s possible Leduc kept the map as “a kind of prize, a talisman. Proof of his conquest” (262). As they reflect on Amelia’s turbulent history, they consider different options. She might have killed Leduc to protect her history from becoming widely known, or Leduc might have stolen Amelia’s copy of the map in hopes of planting it in Gamache’s rooms and insinuating that Amelia and Gamache were having an affair (Leduc would have had a motive to want Gamache discredited). They also wonder whether, if Leduc had threatened a member of Gamache’s family, he might have killed him.

Jean-Guy, Lacoste, Gamache, and Gélinas arrive back in Three Pines at the same time. Gélinas has investigated the history and friendship between Brébeuf and Gamache; the two men have known each other since childhood and studied together at the academy. Both quickly achieved success within the Sûreté, with Brébeuf surpassing Gamache and becoming his boss. However, when Gamache began to pursue allegations of corruption, he realized that Brébeuf was deeply implicated. Brébeuf had been professionally disgraced and became estranged from his wife and children. Gélinas has also uncovered something about Gamache’s history: “A few lines in a long-dormant document” (276) that gives Gélinas new information he can use in the investigation.

The four officers (Gamache, Lacoste, Jean-Guy, and Gélinas) meet with the cadets and the villagers in the bistro. Amelia is overwhelmed to meet Lacoste. The cadets quickly share that they have discovered that the map is an orienteering map made by Turcotte; however, there’s no record of Turcotte ever owning or renting the bistro. Also, none of the soldiers listed on the memorial window were named Turcotte, which undermines the theory that Turcotte created the map for his son. When the mention of Roof Trusses comes up, Ruth immediately points out that the town’s name was changed to Notre-Dame-de-Doleur (Our Lady of Grief).

Gélinas wants to question all the cadets individually, beginning with Amelia. However, Gamache refuses to let Gélinas question Amelia alone and claims to be acting as a parental surrogate for her. Amelia is annoyed by this, and Gélinas begins to accuse Gamache of acting overly protective because of his own experiences: Gamache’s parents were killed in a car accident with a drunk driver when he was eight years old. Jean-Guy and others are annoyed with this personal information being shared, but Gélinas persists, explaining that he wants Gamache to step back from the investigation, especially because he is a suspect. Gamache reluctantly concedes, and both Jean-Guy and Reine-Marie notice how he seems intensely protective of Amelia. Although Jean-Guy tries to resist, he realizes that “he had an idea. An unwanted one. An unworthy one” (285).