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Now brother and sister waited for Reine-Marie to say something constructive.

Armand had allowed his feet to choose the path, this freed his mind to also choose its own way forward.

He was in the woods now, his boots sinking into the soft snow of the trail. It was quiet in there. Peaceful.

Abby Maria. Ave Maria. Hail Maria, full of grace.

Be well, Maria.

He allowed his thoughts to roam free, untethered by logic.

Ça va bien aller. All shall be well. Maria.

Gamache stopped, looked up, and saw where his feet, where the thread, had taken him. Up ahead was the hermit’s cabin. The home of the Asshole Saint.

A thick layer of snow lay on its roof. There was no smoke from the chimney. No light at the windows.

No sign of life. And yet it didn’t feel abandoned, or empty. It felt as though it was waiting for Vincent Gilbert to return. Home.

Gamache had visited Gilbert there a few times.

They’d sat on the porch in the summer sipping lemonade. They’d harvested vegetables in autumn, from the garden out back by the stream. He’d skied to the log cabin in winter. They’d drunk tea and eaten bread and honey Armand had brought from the village, while Vincent fed wood into the stove.

They’d talked about all sorts of things. Family. Paris. Emerson. Auden and Keller.

They’d talked about choice and chance and fate.

One of Gilbert’s favorite quotes was from Henry David Thoreau. The question is not what you look at, but what you see.

And Armand had told Vincent one of his favorite Thoreau stories.

When Thoreau was arrested for protesting an injustice, Ralph Waldo Emerson had visited him in prison and said, “Henry, what are you doing in there?” And Thoreau had replied, “Ralph, what are you doing out there?”

Vincent had laughed. As had Armand. But both appreciated what Thoreau was saying.

Came a time when people of conscience had to take a stand.

Had that time come for Vincent Gilbert? Had a crisis of conscience moved him from looking to seeing to acting?

Would he have to arrest the Asshole Saint for that act? And when he did, would Vincent Gilbert ask him what he was doing “out there”?

But Armand knew the answer to that. He was bringing a murderer to justice.

He heard footsteps behind him. Had heard them almost from the moment he’d veered off the road, onto the path through the woods.

Now they were close. Almost upon him.

“You don’t really believe what you said, do you?” said Armand. “About Paul Robinson. That he killed his daughter.”

The footsteps stopped. And there was silence for a moment. “Yes. I do.”

Armand turned and faced Jean-Guy. He smiled. He’d known from that first footfall who it was. He recognized the gait. And, more than that, he knew that Jean-Guy would, if he could, always be there. Close by.

Isabelle Lacoste barely noticed the gloom in the Incident Room anymore. She was preoccupied with her thoughts. With her questions.

She picked up the phone.

“Barry? It’s Isabelle. You know that photograph that was in Debbie Schneider’s desk? Can you see if anything’s written on the back? A date or something?”