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Dussault clapped him on the arm. “Have you ever been tempted, mon vieux? To take a job with a private security firm, for instance? They’d pay a fortune for someone like you.”

“No. You?”

Dussault laughed. “Don’t tell anyone, but there’s only one thing I do well, and this’s it.”

He looked at his team, with fondness.

“That’s not true,” said Armand. “I seem to remember you took a sabbatical a couple of years ago to play saxophone in that polka band.”

Claude lowered his voice. “Shhhh. Everyone thinks I was studying international money laundering.”

“I think they might be onto you. Your mistake was telling them you’d joined the Interpol Anti-Terrorist Glee Club.”

“Yeah, they did find that hard to believe. Comforting, really, that I’m not surrounded by idiots. I seem to be the only one.”

Armand laughed.

The truth, and Armand was one of the few who knew it, was that Claude had suffered PTSD after a spectacularly brutal year of terrorist attacks. Culminating in the hit-and-run death of his mentor, the former Prefect.

Music, particularly his beloved saxophone, had helped heal the man.

“All right,” said Dussault. “Beauvoir stays, but in the background. And I deal with you, not him.”

“Agreed,” said Gamache.

“Will you excuse me? I see the Procureur wandering around.”

Jean-Guy was walking through the rest of the apartment, examining each room.

Irena Fontaine had gone back to supervising the team from the brigade criminelle.

Claude Dussault was standing by the window, conferring with the Procureur de la République, who was needed to officially launch any murder investigation.

The conference did not take long. Two bullets in the back was a pretty convincing argument.

No stranger to homicide investigations, Armand stood in the middle of the familiar room. Lost.

This space, this place, had always been safe for him. Almost sacred.

But no longer.

His eyes moved to the picture hooks on the walls and the paintings strewn on the floor.

The Gauguins and Monets, the Rothkos and the huge Cy Twombly ripped down from over the fireplace. The sublime Kenojuak Ashevak lying faceup.

And among them, easily overlooked, a little frame, like a single mullion in an old window. The watercolor was unspectacular in every way, except for the comfort it had offered a grieving child. The tiny window into the possible.

Smoke still rose from the cottages. Perpetual. Predictable. A river still wound through the village in the valley. There were thick forests filled, young Armand had been sure, with marvelous creatures. And in the very center of the painting of the village, there was a cluster of trees.

Armand looked across the crime scene, at the small frame on the floor, and had a nearly overwhelming desire to turn around and go home. Back to Québec.

To sit in the bistro with Reine-Marie. Henri, Gracie, and Fred curled together in front of the log fire.

Gabri would bring them café au lait, or something stronger. Olivier would grill maple-smoked salmon for their meal, while Clara and Myrna joined them to talk about books and art, food and what the Asshole Saint’s horse had done now.

Mad Ruth and her possessed duck Rosa would toss out insults, and sublime poetry.

I just sit where I’m put, composed