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Not yet, she typed and hit send.

She turned back to Abigail, but was interrupted by a call.

“Yes, what is it?” she demanded. “I’m in the mid—”

“Read the damned letter,” he hissed, and hung up.

Gamache looked at Beauvoir and raised his brows.

Jean-Guy smiled tightly. “All’s well.”

“That bad?” said Colette.

Gamache turned back to the Chancellor and her husband. “You said the other one was upset by Paul Robinson’s letter. Who was that?”

Jean-Paul had gone back to the tissues, but Colette answered. “Debbie Schneider.”

“She was with you when you showed Abigail the suicide note?”

“Yes.”

“When was this?”

“Shortly after Paul’s funeral. It’s my understanding Abby and Debbie had had a falling-out, but they reconnected at the service. Abby returned to Oxford, and Debbie went with her for support. They stayed with us for a weekend, and I decided if I was ever going to show Abby the letter, it would be then, when she had a friend with her.”

“What was the reaction?” Beauvoir asked.

“What you’d expect. Abby was shocked, she didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe that her father would do that to Maria. As you read, he explained in his letter that it was to free them both. Maria from her misery and Abigail from her obligation, her burden. She was freed to live her life.”

The letter had been deeply disturbing and painful, even for a stranger to read. A father trying to justify killing his daughter. But what had struck Jean-Guy, and he suspected Armand too, was that last bit.

Even if it was true, why lay some of the motive, and therefore indirectly the blame, for the murder on the other child? How could she not, then, spend the rest of her life feeling guilty? Her sister had been sacrificed so she could have a better life.

Did that explain Abigail Robinson’s headlong pursuit of terminating pregnancies of children who’d be born less than perfect? So no other parent need make that choice?

“Debbie’s reaction to the letter was even stronger than Abigail’s?” asked Gamache.

“Yes, well, she seemed to show emotions that Abigail felt. They had a strange, almost symbiotic relationship. One was reason, one was intuition. Head and heart.”

“Was it an unhealthy relationship, would you say?” Gamache asked.

“You mean sexual?”

“No, I don’t consider that at all unhealthy. I mean codependent. So that it’s impossible for them to distinguish where one life ends and another begins.”

Colette thought about it. “I’m not sure. What I do know is that there was a deep love there. Certainly on Debbie’s part. She was devoted to Abby. You could see that.”

“You were with Paul Robinson that week. That day. The man in that picture doesn’t look like he was about to kill his child.”

“I agree, but if we could tell by looking at someone that they were about to commit murder, we wouldn’t need you, would we, Chief Inspector?”

“That’s a good point,” said Gamache. And it was.

Even after a murder was committed, he could be sitting right in front of the killer and not know it.

Isabelle Lacoste lowered her phone. She’d stepped across the room, away from Abigail, to read the letter Jean-Guy had sent.

Abigail was staring into the fire, still. Like a waxwork. No longer fully human, no longer fully functioning.