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“Do you mean you could never hurt Idola?” asked Armand.

Jean-Guy turned to him in frustration. “No, well, yes, partly. Look, I admit, it’s hard to separate my feelings for Idola from what Paul Robinson might’ve been going through. And I’m not saying he didn’t do it.”

“What are you saying?” asked Armand, confused now.

Beauvoir regrouped. “I’m saying that I agree with you. Paul Robinson was exhausted. Drained. I think he saw that Maria was failing and in his confused state he did something that made sense at the time but that he immediately regretted. I think in a moment of sheer madness, he didn’t see it as killing her, but as freeing her. And her sister. Separating them, finally. No more Abby Maria. I’m saying he saw it as releasing both his daughters. One to peace, the other to a full life.”

He looked from one to the other, trying to read their expressions.

There was silence as Armand and Isabelle, both parents, imagined that moment when Paul Robinson looked into the abyss.

It wasn’t completely unknown. Not just with parents and suffering children, but with adult children and frail parents. With spouses. With friends. When there was interminable pain. Terrible suffering. When the end was inevitable but taking too long.

Plugs were pulled and respirators turned off. Hands were held, and prayers and promises and goodbyes whispered.

But what happened when the suffering continued? Or when there were no plugs to pull? Just a loved one wracked with uncontrollable pain and begging for help.

What happened when nature was taking its time to take its course? When the necessary permission for assisted suicide hadn’t been given in time?

Was a nudge necessary?

Did mercy sound like a soft footstep in the middle of the night? Did it look like a syringe? A pillow?

But was it always mercy?

If looked at from a certain angle, in a certain light, did the kind angel become wicked? Dispatching not a tormented loved one, but an inconvenience. Wasn’t that the debate they were locked in now, thanks to Abigail Robinson and her campaign for mandatory euthanasia?

The word “burden” was never used, but it hung in the fetid air. Only a fool would refuse to see it. To hear it.

Only a fool was deaf to the whispers in the halls of power, now emboldened by Professor Robinson’s success, that most of those who died in the pandemic had underlying conditions. They’d have died soon anyway.

Perhaps, they whispered, it wasn’t such a bad thing. Perhaps it was a blessing. Perhaps the pandemic had, inadvertently, done them all a favor. Freed some to peace, freed the rest to get on with their lives.

Everyone was quick to say what happened was heartbreaking. But really, privately, they considered the tragedies of the pandemic a cull. Of the weak.

Armand Gamache was no fool. He heard the whispers. And he’d witnessed the so-called mercy. Smelled it. He’d seen the handprint on the window. The streak. An arc, like some mockery of the rainbow children worldwide had drawn.

And Armand Gamache knew that the underlying condition, the infirmity everyone talked about, did not lie with those who died, but with those who had allowed it to happen.

And now it was about to move from a tragic miscalculation to calculation.

Where was mercy now, he wondered, and what did it look like? Where was courage now, and what did it look like?

“You’re saying that Paul Robinson killed his daughter out of kindness?” asked Lacoste.

Beauvoir nodded, then shook his head. “No. Well, partly. Yes. I think that was the justification he used. But really, it was exhaustion. He just couldn’t go on.”

While Beauvoir looked down at his hands, and Gamache remained silent, Lacoste worked her way through what might have happened.

“So he smothers Maria,” she said. “Then years later kills himself. A kind of execution. A self-imposed death penalty for what he’d done?”

“Oui,” said Beauvoir. “He still had Abigail to raise, so he waited until she was settled in Oxford. Away from home. Safe with Colette Roberge.”

At the sound of that name, Gamache looked up. But remained quiet. Thinking.

Finally, he lifted his hands.

“We have no idea what actually happened. Did Professor Robinson’s father kill Maria? Maybe. We can never know for sure. Let’s focus on the murder we do know about.”