He hadn’t added “just,” but he knew it to be the case.
Now the only worry was the head wound.
And so they’d waited, in their own world of the third floor of Hôtel-Dieu. An antiseptic world of hushed conversations, of soft fleet feet and stern faces.
Outside, the news flew around the continent, around the world.
A plot to blow up the La Grande dam.
It had been a decade in the planning. The progress so slow as to be invisible. The tools so primitive as to be dismissed.
Canadian and American government spokesmen refused to say how the plan was stopped, citing national security, but they did admit under close questioning that the shootout and deaths of four Sûreté officers had been part of it.
Chief Superintendent Francoeur was given, and took, credit for preventing a catastrophe.
Émile knew, as did anyone who’d had a glimpse inside the workings of major police departments, that what was being said was just a fraction of the truth.
And so, as the world chewed over these sensational findings, on the third floor of Hôtel-Dieu they waited. Jean-Guy Beauvoir came out of surgery and after a rocky day or so, began the long, slow climb back.
And after twelve hours Armand Gamache struggled awake. When he finally opened his eyes he saw Reine-Marie by his side, holding his hand.
“La Grande?” he rasped.
“Safe.”
“Jean-Guy?”
“He’ll be fine.”
When she returned to the waiting room where Émile, Annie, her husband David and Daniel sat, she was beaming.
“He’s resting. Not dancing yet, but he will.”
“Is he all right?” Annie asked, afraid yet to believe it, to let go of the dread too soon in case it was a trick, some jest of a sad God. She would never recover from the shock of being in her car, listening to Radio-Canada and hearing the bulletin. Her father . . .
“He will be,” said her mother. “He has some slight numbness down his right side.”
“Numbness?” asked Daniel.
“The doctors are happy,” she assured them. “They say it’s minor, and he’ll make a full recovery.”
She didn’t care. He could limp for the rest of his days. He was alive.
But within two days he was up and walking, haltingly. Two days after that he could make it down the corridor. Stopping at the rooms, to sit by the beds of men and women he’d trained and chosen and led into that factory.
Up and down the corridor he limped. Up and down. Up and down.
“What are you doing, Armand?” Reine-Marie had asked quietly as they walked, hand in hand. It had been five days since the shooting and his limp had all but disappeared, except when he first got up, or pushed too hard.
Without pausing he told her. “The funerals are next Sunday. I plan to be there.”
They took another few paces before she spoke. “You intend to be at the cathedral?”
“No. I intend to walk with the cortege.”
She watched him in profile. His face determined, his lips tight, his right hand squeezed into a fist against the only sign he’d had a stroke. A slight tremble, when he was tired or stressed.
“Tell me what I can do to help.”
“You can keep me company.”
“Always, mon coeur.”
He stopped and smiled at her. His face bruised, a bandage over his left brow.
But she didn’t care. He was alive.
The day of the funerals was clear and cold. It was mid-December and a wind rattled down from the Arctic and didn’t stop until it slammed into the men, women and children who lined the cortege route.
Four coffins, draped in the blue and white fleur-de-lys flag of Québec, sat on wagons pulled by solemn black horses. And behind them a long line of police officers from every community in Québec, from across Canada, from the United States and Britain, from Japan and France and Germany. From all over Europe.
And at the head, walking at slow march in dress uniform, were the Sûreté. And leading that column were Chief Superintendent Francoeur and all the other top-ranking officers. And behind them, alone, was Chief Inspector Gamache, at the head of his homicide division. Walking the two kilometers, only limping toward the very end. Face forward, eyes determined. Until the salute, and the guns.
He’d closed his eyes tight then and raised his face to the sky in a grimace, a moment of private sorrow he could no longer contain. His right hand clamped tight.
It became the image of grief. The image on every front page and every news program and every magazine cover.
Ruth reached out and clicked the video closed. They sat in silence for a moment.
