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Lacoste pulled her chair up so that she was sitting close to Abigail. Then she began to read out loud, off her phone. Three words in, Abigail sprang to life. Standing up so suddenly her laptop crashed to the floor.

“Where did you get that?”

“I see you recognize the letter,” said Lacoste. “You lied to me.”

After a moment’s struggle to bring herself under control, Abigail sat. “Wouldn’t you? If your father had done such a thing? Why drag that up? My God, what’re you people doing? What’re you doing?”

Abigail Robinson stared at Isabelle Lacoste, partly in rage but mostly in bewilderment.

“Why would you do this?” she said. “Drag up what happened to Maria? To my father. Why? This has nothing to do with Debbie’s death. How can it?”

“When people lie, we need to know why.”

“Do you? How can it matter?”

“I’ll tell you what the Chief thinks,” said Lacoste. “He thinks Debbie killed your sister and in clearing out your father’s things you came across evidence of that and took your revenge.”

Abigail stared at her. “You think Debbie killed Maria? And then I killed her, forty years later? But that’s insane. Why would Debbie hurt Maria? And if she did, why would my father confess to something he didn’t do? And what possible evidence could there be among his things? None of this makes sense.”

The problem Isabelle had was that it didn’t make sense to her either. She had no answers, so she just sat back and tried to look knowing.

Abigail’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t believe it either, do you. You said this was the Chief Inspector’s theory, not yours.” Professor Robinson leaned forward. “What do you really think happened to Debbie?”

“Jean-Paul and I have been patient with you, Armand, as you turn our home upside down,” said Colette. “But don’t you think you owe us an explanation?”

“Perhaps we should talk in private.” Armand looked at Jean-Paul, who was organizing the tissues in neat rows on the coffee table.

Colette hesitated, then said to her husband, “You know, it would be really helpful if you could finish the puzzle. That way we’ll be able to see the whole picture.”

She walked with him back to the table, got him settled, whispered a few things in his ear, then straightened up.

“Let’s go into the next room. He’ll be fine for a while.”

When they arrived in the living room, Gamache indicated a seat, but she refused, preferring to stand facing him. Staring at him. Waiting.

“All sorts of people have a motive for killing Abigail,” he said. “And one theory we have, the leading theory, is that Debbie Schneider was mistaken for her.”

“Yes, I know.”

“So if Abigail was the target, who had motive and opportunity?”

As he looked at her, she began to smile. “Me?”

“You invited her to Québec, set up the talk, had her stay at your place, and then took her to the party. Without you, none of this would have happened.”

“Setting aside the question of why I’d want Abigail dead, aren’t you forgetting something? I’m the only one who knew for sure it wasn’t Abigail in the woods. What’re you hoping to find with all this?” Her arm swept the room, taking in the Sûreté agents continuing the search.

“Evidence.”

“Of what? That in a fit of madness I mistook Debbie for Abby and killed her? Search away. I had no reason to want either of them dead, and certainly not Debbie Schneider. I barely knew the woman. Certainly not enough to hate her.”

“No, I don’t think hate was the motive. I think love might’ve been.”

“Now you have lost me.”

Armand gestured toward the book. “Paul Robinson asked you to watch over his daughter. He gave you his eternal gratitude. You couldn’t kill her, but you had to stop Abigail’s campaign of mandatory euthanasia. It was bad enough when you saw how much support she was getting, but then you realized at the party that she had something to hold over Vincent Gilbert.”

“His work with Ewen Cameron,” said Beauvoir. “You knew about it, but no one else did. Except now Professor Robinson had found out.”