Glass Houses

CHAPTER 28

Down in Myrna’s bookstore there was a sudden banging, and up the stairs to the loft came Jean-Guy, stomping and snarling and shaking snow from his boots and coat.

Isabelle Lacoste followed him, shaking her head. It was as though each November came as a surprise to him. Some investigator.

“It’s awful out there,” he said, as he and Lacoste took off their coats.

Myrna smiled and watched, knowing that while Armand had two children by birth, these two were just as equally his son and daughter. Always had been. Always would be.

“How did it go in Montréal?” asked Gamache, getting up off the sofa.

“It’s done,” said Beauvoir, clearly not wanting to talk about the visit to Katie’s sister and parents. “I’ll tell you more over dinner. There is dinner, isn’t there?”

“I asked Olivier to take over a casserole,” said Gamache. “Let me just see where that’s at.”

Beauvoir popped a slice of baguette piled with brie and ripe pear into his mouth, mumbled something that sounded like, “I’ll go,” and grabbing his coat, he disappeared.

Isabelle poured a glass of red wine and wedged herself into the sofa between Myrna and Clara.

“Long day?” asked Myrna.

“And not over yet. I’m glad you’re here,” she said to the Gamaches. “I was going to come over here anyway.”

“Really?” asked Clara. “Why?”

“I need some information from someone who knew Madame Evans and her friends. I’ve been reading over the interviews. Hard at this stage to know what’s important, but nothing leaps out. You know you’re in trouble when the only interesting thing said was from Ruth.”

“Really?” said Gamache, who’d been present at most of that interview and couldn’t remember anything at all useful.

“Well, interesting but not relevant.” She turned to Reine-Marie. “Did you know the church was used by rum runners during Prohibition?”

“It was?” said Reine-Marie.

“Really?” said Clara. “That’s news to me.”

“I knew it,” said Myrna. “Ruth told me.”

“Come on,” said Clara. “When? While you were doing her dishes?”

As far as they could tell, Ruth still didn’t know Myrna’s name or what she did, beyond a recurring suspicion that Myrna ran a lending library and was someone’s maid.

“She told me in a roundabout way,” Myrna admitted.

Since Ruth was not known for subtlety, they looked at her with disbelief.

“I prayed to be good and strong and wise,

for my daily bread and deliverance

from the sins I was told were mine from birth,

and the Guilt of an old inheritance.”

“One of Ruth’s?” asked Reine-Marie when Myrna finished reciting. “I don’t recognize it.”

“Unpublished,” said Myrna. “I found it in one of her notebooks when I was…”

Again, they stared.

“You were what?” asked Clara. “Snooping?”

“Worse,” admitted Myrna. “I go over Wednesday mornings and clean her house.”

That brought whoops of laughter, which eventually died down in the face of Myrna’s face. Which was bashful and uncomfortable.

“Wait a minute,” said Clara. “You’re telling the truth? You go over there every week—”

“Actually, every second week.”

“And clean?”

“She’s an elderly woman on her own and needs the help,” said Myrna. “That’ll be us one day.”

“Yeah, and you know what?” said Clara. “Ruth’ll still be alive. She’s indestructible. I know. I’ve tried. She’ll bury us all.”

“But it’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it?” asked Reine-Marie. “Even for one as nimble as you, ma belle. How did you get from those beautiful lines of poetry to Prohibition?”

“I asked her about the poem. What it meant to her. This was a couple of years ago—”

“You’ve been doing it for that long?” asked Clara, both astonished and annoyed that her friend hadn’t told her. Then something occurred to her. “What did you do?”

“What do you mean?”

“You must’ve done something awful in this life, or a past one, to have to put on that hair shirt.”

“No, not penance. I think I might be a saint.” She peered, dewy-eyed, into the distance, a beatific look on her face. “Saint Myrna—”

“Among the Éclairs,” said Clara.

“I’d go to that church,” said Reine-Marie.

“You were saying?” Isabelle brought the conversation back to earth. Though she agreed with Reine-Marie.

“Strangely enough, that’s what Ruth and I talked about. Church. She told me she’d sit in St. Thomas’s as a child, and pray to be normal. Pray to fit in.”

“Sometimes the magic works…” said Clara.

Armand remembered Ruth’s admission the evening before.

About the ice. The cousin.

The guilt of an old inheritance.

“The church warden sort of adopted her and told her all about the history of the place,” said Myrna.

“Which is how she knew about Prohibition,” said Isabelle. “I actually assumed she was one of the rum runners.”

Myrna laughed.

“I’d love to find out more,” said Reine-Marie. “For the archives. Not exactly the first church along the border used for that. Churches were a favorite among the bootleggers.”

“A safe place, I guess,” said Clara. “Who’d raid God’s house?”

“We think of those days with a sort of charm,” said Reine-Marie. “Speakeasies and Keystone Kops. But they were brutal. Fortunes were made. But only by the most vicious. Prohibition might not have created the Mob, but it led to their rise and their power.”

Gamache listened and knew she was right. The drug smuggling today had, as its godparents, the bootleggers nearly a hundred years ago. The syndicates, the systems, the psyches were created back then.

“You’ve researched St. Thomas’s,” he said. “But you’ve found nothing to support what Ruth says?”

“I doubt the church kept records of crates of booze in and out of the basement,” said Reine-Marie.

“True.” He lapsed into silence.

Thinking about bottles. And bats. In and out of the basement.

Beauvoir walked over to the shining wooden bar and, taking a seat, he caught Olivier’s attention.

“Any chance of that casserole the chief ordered?”

“I’ll check in the kitchen. Anton’s in charge of that.”

“The dishwasher?”

“That’s the one.”

This did not bode well, but Jean-Guy was so hungry, he didn’t care if the casserole was made of old dishrags and the gunk in the sink drain.

“Can I get a hot chocolate while I wait?”

“Bien sûr,” said Olivier, and went into the kitchen.

Beauvoir surveyed the bistro. It was packed and, of course, all the conversation was about one subject. The discovery of Katie Evans’s body just hours earlier.

He scanned the room for the dead woman’s husband and friends, but they’d obviously taken refuge in the B&B.

Jean-Guy found an armchair in a quiet corner and settled in.

A couple minutes later the hot chocolate, with freshly whipped cream piled on top, and a bright pink maraschino cherry on top of that, was placed on the wooden table in front of him.

“I thought I was bringing this for a child,” said the voice that accompanied the hand, and Beauvoir looked up.

Anton stood there, in a blue apron with thin white stripes.

“The casserole’s just coming out of the oven. I can take it over in about five minutes.”

“I’ll be here.” Beauvoir took the cherry off the whipped cream. “With my cocktail. Let me know when it’s ready and I can help carry.”

“Thanks.” Anton hesitated. Then looked at the hot chocolate. “Nothing stronger?”

“Non,” said Beauvoir, popping the cherry in his mouth.

Anton hung there, but when Beauvoir didn’t offer more conversation, he left.

A few minutes later, the two men were walking carefully across the village green, their feet crunching through the layer of snow and freezing rain. Trying not to slip and drop the dinner. Beauvoir in particular was moving slowly, the precious cargo fragrant and warm in his gloved hands.

“So.” Isabelle turned to Myrna, who towered over her even in the seated position. “Let’s leave Prohibition behind. I came here to ask you about Madame Evans’s friends. Your friends. I’ve been over the interviews, but I wanted to speak to someone who knows them well.”

“I’ve known them for a while, especially Lea,” said Myrna. “But can’t say I know them well. I only see them once a year. Like everyone else.”

Myrna felt slightly guilty saying that, as though she was denying them, distancing herself from them. But it was the truth. She didn’t know them well. And there was a chance at least one of them she didn’t know at all.

“But you’ve known Lea Roux since she was four.”

“Yes. And now you think she might be a murderer?”

“I don’t think they’re blaming you,” said Clara.

“Even killers were children once,” said Isabelle.

“Even Eichmann,” said Clara.

“Eichmann?” asked Isabelle.

“The Nazi war criminal,” said Clara.

Isabelle stared at her for a moment, far from sure why Clara would mention a Nazi war criminal.

“Yes. Even Eichmann was a child,” agreed Isabelle, baffled but vowing not to be taken off piste again. She turned back to Myrna. “Let me start off with an easy question. They normally come in the summer. Any idea why the date for the reunion was changed?”

“I asked Lea and she said that it’s tough to fit everyone’s schedules. These were the only dates that worked this year.”

“Was it a last-minute decision?” she asked.

Myrna thought and shook her head. “No. Lea wrote me back in May that they’d be coming around Halloween.”

Isabelle nodded. “Did she ever talk about Katie?”

Myrna shifted a little. No one was comfortable giving out details of conversations that were understood to be private. But she knew this wasn’t gossip, this was a murder investigation.

“She talked about all of them, but not Katie in particular.”

“Did she like Katie?”

“Ahh, well, not at first. No one did. Like we heard last night, I think they were protective of the one who died. Edouard.”

“Did they blame Katie for what happened to him?” asked Isabelle.

“A bit, at first, I think. Katie dumped Edouard for Patrick and shortly after that he took his life. They all want to think it was an accident. He lost his balance and fell off the roof, but Lea says none of them really believe it. They think he jumped. While stoned.” She shook her head. “I doubt he really meant to kill himself. Probably momentarily overwhelmed. And the drugs took away any brakes he had. Fucking drugs.”

Off to the side, by the fire, Gamache took a breath so deep Reine-Marie looked at him. It was the sort of inhale someone takes before plunging headfirst into cold water.

“The one they really blamed was the pusher, but no one could find him after Edouard died,” said Myrna. “He took off.”

“Lea told us last night that the family did try,” said Clara. “Even hired a private investigator, but the guy had disappeared.”

Lacoste turned to Gamache. “Doesn’t that strike you as strange?”

“Which part?”

“Well, it always sounds so easy. To disappear,” she said. “But we both know it isn’t. And a good investigator should’ve been able to track him down.”

Gamache was nodding. She was right.

“Maybe he wasn’t such a good investigator,” Myrna suggested.

“And maybe,” said Reine-Marie, “it wasn’t drugs and it wasn’t an accident.” She turned to Armand. “Maybe he was pushed. You wondered that last night, didn’t you?”

“I always wonder that,” he said with a smile. But it didn’t fool her.

It was still on his mind.

Yes, it was tragically easy to imagine a distraught and fragile young man getting high and jumping in the middle of a roof party.

But it was equally easy to imagine someone, in the middle of the dancing and laughing and chaos of a rave, giving him a little push.

“We need to contact this young man’s family,” said Lacoste. “What was his name? Edouard what?”

“Valcourt,” said Gamache. “And I think that’s a good idea.”

“But that doesn’t explain the murder of Katie Evans,” said Reine-Marie.

“Non,” agreed Isabelle. She turned once again to Myrna. “Did any of them ever say anything about Katie? Something she might’ve done that could explain—”

“Her murder?” asked Myrna.

“And the cobrador. If it really was here for her, then there must be a reason. Even one from long ago.”

“Maybe he wasn’t here for her. Have you thought about that?” asked Clara. “The only reason we think that is because she was killed.”

“A pretty good indication,” said Myrna.

She looked at Armand, but he wasn’t agreeing. Or disagreeing.

He couldn’t get away from the feeling that this was far simpler than it appeared, and all this other stuff was just muddying the waters.

Something happened, perhaps long ago, to create a motive. To propel someone into killing Katie Evans.

An old inheritance.

“Back up, you brute,” said Jean-Guy, trying to get past the threshold of the Gamache home while tiny Gracie tried to stop him.

“What is that?” asked Anton in a whisper, so as not to offend the creature. “I’ve seen Monsieur and Madame Gamache walking the two of them.” He looked over at Henri, who was standing back and wagging his tail so furiously his entire body was swaying. “He’s a shepherd, I know that.” But even so, Anton stared at Henri for a moment. Judging by the ears, he seemed to have some satellite dish in him. Then Anton turned back to Gracie and lowered his voice even more. “Is it a piglet?”

“We have no idea what she is. Pup, pug, pig. Wolverine. Though we’re pretty sure she’s a she,” said Jean-Guy, as they took the food into the kitchen.

“Well, progress not perfection,” said Anton, and Jean-Guy paused while turning on the oven.

Anton glanced around as he unpacked the dinner, noticing the worn butcher block countertops, the open shelving with dishes and glasses.

At the far end of the kitchen, by the windows that looked onto the village green, two armchairs sat on either side of a woodstove. Books and newspapers and magazines were stacked on side tables. Not messy, but neither was it overly neat.

The room was restful and inviting. As was the living room they’d walked through.

After tossing a small piece of wood into the woodstove to get the embers going again, Beauvoir joined Anton.

“You used a phrase just now,” said Beauvoir, putting out the napkins and trying not to step on Gracie, still underfoot.

“Did I?” Anton followed him around the pine table, folding the napkins nicely.

“Progress not perfection. It’s one I recognize.” He stopped and looked at Anton. “Are you a Friend of Bill?”

“I wondered about you too,” said Anton with a smile. “Hot chocolate in a bistro? When everyone else is drinking wine or scotch. Six years’ sobriety. You?”

“Two years and three months.”

“Well done. Booze?”

“And drugs,” said Beauvoir. “Painkillers.”

It wasn’t something he ever talked about, except to other members, and people who knew. Like Annie, of course, and the Gamaches.

Friend of Bill was code. For a member of AA. Of which this Anton was clearly one. It was like finding a member of his tribe, unexpectedly.

The two men stood in the warm kitchen, the sleet hitting the windows, and realized that while they knew nothing about each other, they actually knew each other better than almost anyone else on earth.

“Drugs were my problem too,” said Anton. “Pharmaceuticals. Almost killed me. I had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, as they say. Ended up in treatment, and finally kicked the drugs, but took up drinking. Seemed a sensible decision.”

Jean-Guy laughed. It was, absolutely, the logic of an addict.

“Finally kicked that too,” said Anton, putting the casserole in the oven to stay warm.

“You have a moment?” Beauvoir asked, indicating the chairs by the woodstove.

One of the problems with investigations was being away from his sponsor and meetings. It was helpful to talk to another member. Someone who knew the terrain.

“When did you start?” asked Beauvoir, taking a seat. Lifting Gracie onto his lap, he wrapped her in his sweater to keep her warm.

“Using? A bit in high school but it really got out of control at university. I’m not sure I was ever cut out for higher education, but the drugs sure hurried along the inevitable.”

“Flunked out?”

“Left just before that happened.” Anton shook his head. “You know, some kids could handle it, but some, like me, it was like putting nitro in my system.”

“Did you ever deal?” asked Beauvoir.

Anton brought his hand up to his mouth and regarded Beauvoir as he gnawed on his nails.

“I won’t arrest you,” smiled Jean-Guy. “Besides, it must’ve been years ago.”

“Not that long,” Anton protested, then smiled. “Yeah, I dealt, but not as much as some. I ended up using most of it myself. Big mistake. What a shit storm.” Anton shook his head at the memory. “Flunking out became the least of my worries. You know what a supplier does to a dealer who becomes a junkie?”

“I’ve seen.”

“So have I. That’s really why I left. I ran away and hid. Put shit up my nose and my head up my own ass. And hoped no one would find me.”

“So how’d you get straight?”

“Family sent me to treatment. They’d had enough.”

He glanced into the fire and put his stocking feet up on the hassock, taking a small book off it first.

Opening the book, he flipped through it, then stopped and gave a single harrumph and looked up at Beauvoir.

“Have you read this?”

Jean-Guy sighed. “I have.”

“Not a fan?”

“Between us?” He leaned toward Anton. “I am. But don’t tell anyone.”

Anton went back to the book and read out loud,

“From the public school to the private hell

of the family masquerade,

where could a boy on a bicycle go

when the straight road splayed?”

Beauvoir smiled. He recognized those lines, and he recognized how a straight road could splay.

“Ruth Zardo,” he said, cradling Gracie as though she were Honoré.

It was a comfort, feeling the little body, the little heart, next to his.

“Oui. Madame Zardo,” said Anton, closing the book and looking at the back cover, where the author’s photo looked like something he’d seen when his head was up his ass. “Who’d have thought an eighty-year-old madwoman would know the heart of a little boy.”

“Pain is universal,” said Beauvoir.

Anton nodded. “That she knows.”

“That she causes,” said Jean-Guy, and Anton laughed, one burst of genuine amusement.

“So your family put you into treatment?” asked Beauvoir.

Anton tossed the book back onto the hassock. “Yeah. I hated them for it for a long time, but whatever their motives, they did me a huge favor. I finally got clean and sober, but something else happened. After treatment I went into a halfway house. We had to take turns doing chores. When it came my time to cook, I discovered I love it. Never knew it before. All I ate at university was Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. It was amazing, to discover that passion. And legal too.”

He grinned.

The kitchen was filling with proof of Anton’s passion. The subtle scents of the casserole he’d made for them—garlic, onions, herbs, slight musky mushrooms and beef—mixed with the fragrance of the maple logs on the fire.

If the Gamaches and Isabelle didn’t return soon, thought Beauvoir, he’d start without them.

“That’s how you became a chef?” he asked Anton.

“Oui. Couldn’t get a job in a restaurant, but did find one with that family.”

“They didn’t care about your history?” asked Beauvoir.

“I didn’t tell ’em,” said Anton. “If you provide a good enough service, and work for cash, people don’t ask.”

“What was it like, working for the Ruizes?”

“It was okay. He was a little weird. Very guarded, like he was dealing with state secrets.”

“Was he?”

Anton guffawed dismissively. “Please. His job was looking after plants that make cheap toys. Knockoffs, probably.”

He stopped and looked at Beauvoir. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. I signed a confidentiality agreement.”

“Toys and cooking? You can’t talk about that? You met Jacqueline there, right?”

“Yes.”

“Became friends?”

“Well, kinda had to. There was no one else.”

“More than friends?” asked Jean-Guy.

Anton laughed. “Why does everyone think that? No, she’s more like a sister than anything. Great baker. Have you tried her brownies? My God.”

Poor Jacqueline, thought Beauvoir. And wondered if she realized he only loved her brownies. Though that love did seem profound.

“It was nice when Monsieur Ruiz was gone. More relaxed.”

“Did he travel a lot?” asked Beauvoir.

“Fortunately, yes. His territory was all of North America and into Central America. I think he got the job because he could speak Spanish. Couldn’t have been his winning personality.”

“He was Spanish, wasn’t he?”

“That’s right.”

Beauvoir contemplated his companion. The fire crackled, and the cast-iron stove threw gentle heat, enveloping the two men in a sense of well-being. Of safety. Their own little world.

Beauvoir cradled Gracie, who was snoring in the crook of his arm. As he waited for his companion to speak, he tapped his fingers, counting to himself. Two, three.

Seven, eight. Then decided Anton needed help. A prod.

“You knew what it was, didn’t you?” he said. “On the village green. From your time with that family. You knew it was a cobrador.”

Anton compressed his lips. “I promised Jacqueline I wouldn’t say anything. She wanted to be the one to tell you. But we’re both afraid.” He lowered his voice in a way that would have been laughable, had his eyes not looked so desperate. “You have no idea what that man was like.”

“Ruiz? You’re afraid of him? But he’s back in Spain, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, well…”

“Who is he?”

Anton looked around.

“He isn’t here,” Beauvoir assured him.

“I wasn’t looking for him. I was looking for a computer. Monsieur Gamache must have one.”

“He does. In the study.”

He placed Gracie carefully in the hollow of Henri’s belly, as he lay curled and sleeping in front of the fire.

“Follow me.”

The two men walked through the kitchen to the living room, and into the study.

Jean-Guy woke up the computer, making sure there was nothing private or sensitive on it, while Anton stood at the door.

Only when he’d brought up a fresh search engine did he motion Anton forward.

Anton sat, hit a few keys, clicked on a few links. Waited. Waited.

Eventually he pushed his chair back so Beauvoir could get a better look.

There on the screen was a report from a Spanish news program. A man was being scrummed on the steps of what looked like a courthouse.

“Is that Antonio Ruiz?” Beauvoir asked.

“No, that’s his lawyer. Señor Ruiz is in the background. There.”

He pointed to an elegant man in a well-tailored suit. In his late forties, maybe early fifties. Looking pleased and confident.

“What’re they saying?”

“I don’t know, but I can guess. Señor Ruiz was arrested for money laundering. The entire company was under investigation, but exonerated.”

“They got off?”

“The verdict came with a public apology.” He stared at the screen. “Someone got to someone.”

Beauvoir pursed his lips. Where there was dirty money, there was organized crime. And where there was the syndicate, there were drugs. Lots of them.

He wondered if Anton knew that too.

The news story continued. The lawyer answering questions and finally, waving reporters aside, he took Ruiz’s arm and guided him through the melee.

And then the report was over.

“Did you see it?” Anton asked.

“What?”

Anton replayed the video. And hit pause.

Just as the image started to dissolve, as the black seeped over the screen, it appeared.

From the top of the courthouse steps.

“A cobrador,” said Beauvoir.

And not the top hat and tails, Fred Astaire type.

This was the carrier of the conscience.

“How did you find this?” Beauvoir asked.

“Someone from Spain came for dinner,” said Anton. “A colleague of Señor Ruiz. I was serving, and the man used the word cobrador, before Ruiz shut him up. The man turned so pale, I decided to look it up. That’s what I found.”

“Did you tell Jacqueline?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to Ruiz? Did the family really return to Spain?”

“That’s what they told us, but I don’t really know, and I don’t really care.” He sighed. “I’ll tell you, when that cobrador showed up here, I thought I’d piss my pants. Scared the crap out of me.”

“You thought it’d come for you?”

Anton opened his mouth, then shut it and shook his head. “I thought Ruiz had sent it, to scare us. Or worse.”

“But why would he want to scare you? Do you know something about him?”

“No.”

“About the murder of Katie Evans? If you do know something, Anton, you have to tell me.”

“I don’t. I promise.”

“But there is something, isn’t there,” said Jean-Guy. “You have to tell me.”

“Just between us?”

“Depends what it is, you know that. Is it to do with Antonio Ruiz?”

“Promise you won’t tell anyone.”

“I can’t. Come on, Anton. Tell me. I know you want to.”

Myrna was shaking her head.

“I wish I knew Katie better and could help. But what I do know is that those friends really do like each other. They’re not pretending. I just can’t see one of them plotting to kill her. Katie was bright and kind. The mother hen of the group. Not the wild child she once was. We all grow up.”

Not all, thought Gamache. Some, like Edouard, fall down. And never get up. Never grow up.

His mind left the warm loft and the murmur of conversation, and traveled across the cold village green, through the snow and ice, to his home. And the book in his desk. And the notes written there, in black ink. Like charcoal.

His plague diary.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

“And the cobrador?” Clara’s voice cut through Gamache’s wandering mind and brought him back to the loft. “Who the hell was he? How does he fit in?”

“Well, he obviously wasn’t one of them,” said Isabelle. “Or even someone from the village. No one was missing.”

“Then who was he?” asked Reine-Marie.

“There’re a couple of other possibilities,” said Lacoste. “He could’ve followed Madame Evans here, playing out some old grudge. Or he was hired by someone here. Someone who knew that Matheo Bissonette had written about the cobrador phenomenon and would recognize it.”

“There is, of course, a simpler answer,” said Reine-Marie.

“Matheo Bissonette himself hired the cobrador,” said Isabelle. “And then told everyone, including Madame Evans, what it was. Yes, we thought of that. For it to work, she had to know what the thing was. Though it doesn’t answer why he, or anyone, would do it.”

They looked at Myrna.

“I don’t know why. Lea didn’t come to me to say Matheo was planning to kill Katie. Not that I remember, anyway.”

“Maybe he wasn’t,” said Armand. “Maybe the cobrador was just there to shame her. Murder was never part of the plan. But someone saw an opportunity, and took it. And you’re right,” he said to Clara. “It’s possible the cobrador’s target was someone else completely. Would you excuse me?”

He stood up and turned to Reine-Marie, who was also getting to her feet, a look of some surprise on her face at his abrupt need to leave.

“Would you ask Jean-Guy to meet us in the Incident Room, please? Isabelle, can you join me?”

They said their goodbyes to Myrna and Clara.

“Jeez,” said Clara, watching them out the window. “It’s like someone kicked him in the pants. Did we finally say something useful?”

“If we did, I can’t imagine what it was.”

“Maybe we’re out of cheese.” Clara turned around to look, but there was still plenty left.

Then the two women watched from the warmth of the loft as Armand, Reine-Marie and Isabelle paused on the village green, at about the spot the cobrador had stood vigil.

The evening was dire, with snow and ice pellets and freezing rain. A full English of crap.

Then Isabelle headed to the B&B. Armand put his head down and walked straight into the driving snow while Reine-Marie went home, which by now was just a faint glow through the flurries.

“I’m heading back to my studio,” said Clara.

“To finish your painting?” asked Myrna.

“It is finished. I’m going to start a new one.”

“Clara,” Myrna began. “Your show’s coming up. I just…”

She opened and closed her mouth.

“You’re a good friend,” said Clara. “And I know you mean well. But you’re just getting me upset. Making me doubt myself. Please,” she took Myrna’s large hands, “don’t say anything more. Trust me. I know when something’s finished. And when it’s not.”

Myrna walked her to the stairs, and heard the tiny bell tinkle as Clara left.

She wondered if Clara was right. Some things might appear done, complete. But were actually unfinished.

At the steps up to the church, Chief Superintendent Gamache paused.

Instead of hurrying inside, he made his way around the corner of the building.

Once at the back, where no one could see, he turned on the flashlight mode of his phone and examined the ground.

The snow in the beam was pristine. No tracks at all. But then, there wouldn’t be. The freshly falling snow would obliterate any tracks made the night before. And Lacoste’s team would have already looked.

But they wouldn’t have found what he was looking for.

Playing the light over the back wall of the church illuminated the weathered white clapboard.

He stepped closer, then back, closing one eye as the snow slapped the side of his face, then he turned to peer into the dark woods.

The guests at the B&B were just sitting down to dinner when Isabelle Lacoste arrived.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, but it did not look like she was interrupting much.

The shepherd’s pie, which smelled wonderful, sat on each of their plates, practically untouched.

“Would you like to join us?” Matheo asked. “There’s plenty.”

Isabelle recognized it for what it was. A vastly insincere invitation. She wondered what would happen if she accepted.

This had been a horrible day for them. Or, at least, for most of them.

They stared at her and, as Chief Inspector Lacoste looked at them, she suspected she was seeing a killer. She just didn’t know which of them it was.

“Merci. But I have a small question. Something we need to pursue to put to rest.” She turned to Patrick. “I understand that you kept in touch with the family of Edouard Valcourt. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to speak with them, and need their address or phone number or whatever you have.”

“But why?” asked Lea.

Lacoste turned to her and smiled. “I’d forgotten that you sponsored a bill in his name, didn’t you? You must’ve been in touch with the family too. Do you have a way to contact them?”

“I do, absolutely,” said Lea. “Not on me, of course, but I can contact my assistant at the National Assembly and ask him to get it for you. I have your email, I believe.”

Lacoste had given them each her card at the end of their interviews.

“Merci. I’d like to try to contact them tonight.” She turned back to Patrick. “Do you have their information in your contacts list?”

“I think I probably deleted it, when I upgraded devices,” he said.

“Why would you want to speak with the Valcourts?” asked Lea again. “You don’t think they’re somehow involved in Katie’s death?”

“No,” she assured her. “I don’t think they were, but we do have to wonder about Madame Evans’s past, and one unresolved issue seems to be the death of your friend Edouard.”

“There’s nothing unresolved,” said Matheo. “He was stoned and fell off the roof. Katie had nothing to do with it. She wasn’t even there. Neither was Patrick.” He turned to him. But Patrick just stared.

Matheo suppressed the overwhelming desire to slap the back of his head and knock that pathetic puppy-dog look off his face.

“I have no problem at all giving you their phone number and address,” said Lea. “But it’ll have to wait until morning. Is that all right?”

“If you can’t get it sooner, yes.”

And Lacoste left them to their dinner and headed out into the snowy evening once again.

She came away without the Valcourts’ coordinates, but with something else. The certainty that whatever had happened, Lea Roux was at the center of it. She was in charge.

And Lacoste remembered the advice given to Mossad agents. Advice Lacoste had found abhorrent, wrong on every level. Until it had been explained.

The instruction given the Israeli agents, if they met resistance during an assault, was kill the women first.

Because if a woman was ever driven so far as to pick up a weapon, she would be the most committed, the least likely to ever give up.

Kill the women first.

Lacoste still hated the advice. The simplicity of it. The baldness. But she also hated that the philosophy behind it was almost certainly true.

Gamache took a few steps through the snow, into the woods. Not far.

Then he turned around to face the back wall of the church and as he did, lights went on, illuminating the ground around him. The snowflakes, like crystals caught in the light, gleamed.

He stood for a moment, taking in the sight, so bright, then he turned and looked into the gloomy woods.

With a last puzzled glance at the back wall, Gamache retraced his steps, climbed the stairs, and entered the warm church, where Jean-Guy was whacking his gloves against his coat.

“Madame Gamache said you wanted to see me here.” His stomach growled and he covered it with his hand while giving Gamache an accusing look. They could be eating by now instead of standing in the chilly church. “Why were you outside? What’re you looking for?”

“Rum runners.”

“They went thataway.” He pointed toward the cemetery.

Gamache turned in that direction, his brow furrowed, thinking. Snow trickled along his scalp and down his face and the back of his neck, as though the effort of thinking was melting it. The rivulet found its way past his collar and dribbled straight down his spine, making him roll his shoulders in discomfort as he led the way downstairs to the Incident Room.