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“We need to look at the early documents,” said Beauvoir, resigned to his fate.

“When he was an apprentice asshole,” said Myrna.

“A baby saint,” said Reine-Marie. She was curious to see what they’d find there. Had he started his medical career as a saint, or as the other? Had something happened that changed him?

Twenty minutes later Myrna said, “Look at this. Before starting medical school here at McGill, Vincent applied for, and got, a grant.”

“Really?” Reine-Marie leaned over and read the application.

Gilbert’s father had died, and his mother took in boarders and did laundry.

“But it’s pretty small,” said Myrna. “Did he also get a scholarship?”

Beauvoir found it. “Yes. But it’s not very much.”

Together, grant and scholarship would not be nearly enough to cover medical school at McGill.

“So how did he do it?” Beauvoir asked.

“He must’ve gotten a part-time job,” said Dr. Hague-Yearl. “Lots do, at the student pub, or the cafeteria. In the library shelving books. That sort of thing. Let’s keep looking.”

They didn’t realize it yet, but they’d just come across the first hint of the creature, unseen, that was waiting patiently in a tunnel of documents. To be found.

Twelve minutes later, it was.

“He did get a job,” said Myrna, holding up a slip of paper. “He earned extra money looking after the lab animals.”

“Yech,” said Reine-Marie. “Terrible.”

She assumed the look of revulsion on Myrna’s face was because she too hated the use of animals in experiments. Which she did.

But it wasn’t that.

Dr. Hague-Yearl took the slip, read it, and looked stricken. “Not that. Not again.”

“What?” asked Jean-Guy.

She handed him the piece of paper. It was a receipt for delivery of lab animals to the Allan Memorial Institute of McGill.

She placed a finger on a name at the top.

“Who’s Ewen Cameron?” he asked. The name was familiar. Then he remembered that Gamache and Gilbert had talked about him.

“Wait a minute.” Reine-Marie took the paper and studied it. “Vincent worked with Ewen Cameron?”

“We don’t know that,” said Myrna. “Just that he looked after the animals that Cameron used.”

“Who is he?” repeated Beauvoir, growing more agitated.

Dr. Hague-Yearl had disappeared, as though the name itself was enough to incinerate the librarian.

Jean-Guy was beginning to think his instincts about those huge closed doors were right.

They were partly to keep intruders out, but also to keep something in.

Something, or someone.

A legal aid lawyer Gamache knew well showed up within the hour.