A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #12)

by Louise Penny

“Oh God,” said Olivier, coming over to check on them and looking out the window. “I don’t think I’m ready.” “Neither are we,” admitted Reine-Marie, following his gaze to the snowy village green, now white. “You think you are, but it always comes as an unpleasant surprise.” “And arrives earlier and earlier,” said Armand. “Exactly. And seems more and more bitter,” said Olivier. “Still, there’s beauty,” said Armand, and received a stern look from Olivier. “Beauty? You’re kidding, right?” he said. “No, it’s there. Of course, it can stick around far too long,” said Armand. “You’re telling me,” said Olivier. “It gets old,” said Reine-Marie. “Gets old?” asked Olivier. “But having the right tires helps,” she said. Olivier put the empty croissant basket back down on the table. “What’re you talking about?” “Winter, of course,” said Reine-Marie. “The first snow.” “What’re you talking about?” asked Armand. “Ruth,” said Olivier, pointing out the window at the elderly woman with a cane, and a duck, approaching the bistro. Old, cold and bitter.

If they knew anything about Olivier, it was that he had no immunity to temptation.

Gamache also wondered why he’d left it behind. Had he really forgotten it? Was it a mistake, or was it on purpose?

And in the silence Leduc realized what Gamache exuded. It wasn’t force. It was power.

“Damnatio memoriae means ‘banished from memory,’” she said. “Not simply forgotten, but banished.” The four of them looked down at the first, and last, map to show their little community, before it vanished, before it was banished.

she knew what the Latin translated into, but not what they meant.

But what she really should have been afraid of was words, ideas.

It was like seeing a mighty ship in a storm. Steady, strong, calm. It would survive not because it was anchored in place, but because it wasn’t. It could adjust. In that calm there was immense self-control. And with that, she realized, came power.

Don’t believe everything you think.

What Cadet Amelia Choquet didn’t know, couldn’t know, what no one in that room knew, was that before the snow melted one of them would be dead. And one of them would have done it. “Interesting” didn’t begin to describe what was about to happen.

The back, turned on evil, was symbolic. But nothing more.

Victorians had revered the Great Man model. A single extraordinary individual for whom the normal rules didn’t apply. Great Men should rule and others should revere them.

You can get an eighteen-year-old to believe almost anything. To do almost anything.” “The same could be said for street gangs and terrorist organizations,” said Lacoste. “Get them young.” The thought set her back. The words had come out casually, but their meaning took a moment to sink in. Serge Leduc had essentially turned the Sûreté Academy into a terrorist training ground.

“True to his profit and his pride,” said Isabelle Lacoste, standing beside Gamache. “He made them weep before he died.”

Come hither, all ye empty things,/Ye bubbles raised by breath of kings;/Who float upon the tide of state,/Come hither, and behold your fate.”

“Let pride be taught by this rebuke,” said Gamache quietly. “How very mean a thing’s a Duke.”

He looked at Lacoste the way an uncle looked at a pretty young niece.

If people were mostly water, then this young man was more human than most.

“Even the word is interesting. Map. It comes from mappa mundi. Mappa is Latin for napkin. Mundi is world, of course. Isn’t that wonderful? A napkin, with their world on it. The mundane and the magnificent. Map.”

She could see the shore ahead.

The mayor interlocked his fingers. His jovial eyes grew sharp. “I despised Serge Leduc. If I was ever going to commit murder, it would be him. If anyone deserved to be killed, it was him. I go to church every Sunday. Sometimes I go there on weekdays, to pray for a citizen in trouble or distress. And I always pray for Serge Leduc.” “For his soul,” said Gélinas. “For his death.”

It’s like living with a wolverine.

A number of other names showed up in the report. There was, according to the computer extrapolation, a very small chance Richard Nixon, the former American president, had handled the gun. Which was why the investigators tended not to take these results seriously. They also ignored the possibility, admittedly remote, that Julia Child was the murderer.

Amelia wondered if she knew what “cool” meant.

Amelia wondered if she knew what “fun” meant.

She seemed to have a good grasp on “crazy,” thought Amelia.

Hormones, he thought. Damned pregnancy.

So huge as to be almost invisible,

Ruth believed in precycling. An evolution on recycling. She made use of things before people threw them out.

They stomped their feet, brushed wet snow off their coats, and slapped their hats against their legs. It was a singular Québec jig learned in the womb.

Pardon my English.”

Being lost is so much worse than being on the wrong road.

This was the worst ghost story yet. The phantom life that might have been.

“There is always a road back. If we have the courage to look for it, and take it. I’m sorry. I was wrong. I don’t know.” He paused again. “I need help. Those are the signposts. The cardinal directions.”