A Great Reckoning Read Free

updating the electricity and plumbing, they’d opened the walls and found all sorts of things. Mummified squirrels, clothing. But mostly they’d found papers. Newspapers, magazines, advertisements, catalogues used as insulation as though words could keep winter at bay.
    Enough heated words had been hurled at the Québec winter, but all had failed to stop the snow.
    In the chaos of the renovations, the papers had simply been dumped in the pine blanket box and forgotten. The box had sat in front of the hearth for years, unopened. Countless cafés au lait, and glasses of wine, and plates of regional cheese and paté and baguette, and feet, had rested on top of it, until the papers had been rediscovered a few months earlier.
    â€œI doubt there’s anything valuable,” said Olivier, returning to the Gamaches’ table after taking Ruth her breakfast of Irish coffee and bacon.
    â€œHow is that woman still alive?” asked Reine-Marie.
    â€œBile,” said Olivier. “She’s pure bile. It never dies.” He looked at Reine-Marie. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to help her?”
    â€œWell, who wouldn’t want to work with pure bile?” she said.
    â€œOnce she gets a few drinks in her, she becomes simply nasty, as you know,” said Olivier. “Please. Please. It’s taken Ruth two months to get the pile down an inch. The problem is, she doesn’t just scan, she reads everything. Yesterday she spent the whole day on one National Geographic from 1920.”
    â€œI would too, mon beau ,” said Reine-Marie. “But I tell you what. If Ruth accepts the help, I’d love to do it.”
    After breakfast, she joined Ruth on the sofa and started on the blanket box, while Armand and Henri walked home.
    â€œArmand,” shouted Olivier, and when Gamache turned he saw the owner of the bistro at the door waving something.
    It was the dossier.
    Armand jogged back to get it.
    â€œDid you read it?” he asked. His voice was just sharp enough for Olivier to hesitate.
    â€œ Non .”
    But under the steady stare, Olivier cracked.
    â€œMaybe. Okay, yes. I glanced at it. Just her picture. And her name. And a bit about her background.”
    â€œ Merci ,” said Armand, taking the file and turning away.
    As he walked home, Armand wondered why he’d snapped at Olivier. The file was marked “Confidential” but he’d shown it to Reine-Marie, and it wasn’t exactly a state secret. And who wouldn’t be tempted to look at something marked “Confidential”?
    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?
    *   *   *
    The snow returned by early afternoon, blowing in over the hills and swirling around, trapped there. Turning Three Pines into a snow globe.
    Reine-Marie called and said she was having lunch at the bistro. Clara and Myrna had joined the excavation of the blanket box, and they’d be spending the afternoon eating and reading.
    It sounded to Armand pretty much perfect and he decided to do the same himself, at home.
    He poked the birch log freshly tossed on the fire in their living room grate and watched as the bark caught and crackled and curled. Then he sat down with a sandwich, a book, and Henri curled up beside him on the sofa.
    But Armand’s eyes kept drifting back to his study, crowded with impatient young men and women, cheek by jowl, staring at him. Waiting for the old man to decide what next for them, as old men had decided the fate of youth for millennia.
    He wasn’t old, though he knew he’d look old, perhaps even ancient, to them. The young men and women would see a man in his late fifties. Just over six feet tall, he was substantial rather than heavy, or so he told himself. His hair was more gray than brown and it