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“. . . deux, un! Bonne année!!”

He’d turned to her and asked above the cheers and laughter, “May I?”

When she’d nodded, he’d leaned in and kissed her, lightly, briefly. On the lips.

He’d felt her hand on his arm. Not to stop him, but to keep him there. And he’d kissed her again. Kissed her longer.

Now he paused, leaning on the shovel. Reliving that moment, so long longed for. Then a glow caught his eye as the bonfire leaped to life.

Another gust had revived it, he thought, as he thrust the shovel into a drift.

A few minutes later, just as he was about to go back inside, Billy noticed a commotion. He looked off to his right, into the darkness. One of the teens had stumbled out of the woods and was calling to his friends.

They’d be sixteen, seventeen years old, Billy guessed. He knew them all. Seen them grow up. Not yet of drinking age, he knew, but that didn’t stop them. Just as it hadn’t stopped him when he’d been their age. He still couldn’t smell cider without feeling sick.

Smiling, he threw one last load of snow onto the fire and heard the dying embers hiss at him. Now there were more shouts. Something in the tone made Billy pause. He stepped further into the darkness.

Then, out of the woods, first one, then another and another stumbled. Their eyes, caught in the light from the living room windows, were wide, wild.

Billy Williams dropped the shovel and moved forward.

Tired and happy, Armand and Reine-Marie were just about to head down the hallway to their coats when Armand stopped.

Turned.

And looked back.

Chapter 20

Armand slid to a halt and dropped to his knees beside the body facedown in the snow.

He was about to grab the coat and turn them over, when he drew back.

Jean-Guy fell to his knees on the other side of the body and also reached out.

“Don’t.”

With his bare hand Gamache carefully burrowed under the person’s scarf, to feel for a pulse he knew he wouldn’t find. Then he looked up, and across the body, at Beauvoir.

When the alarm had gone up, Armand’s heart had recoiled. Hearing the terror in the cries, he’d immediately thought some teenager had been found passed out drunk and frozen to death in some snowdrift.

He’d rushed out so quickly he’d left his coat and boots behind. Others had also started for the doors, but Jean-Guy had headed them off with a curt “We’ll let you know.”

The temperature had plummeted, and the wind was picking up, moaning through the trees, lifting the top layer of snow and swirling it about.

Armand tapped Jean-Guy’s arm and pointed. “Be careful.”

Beauvoir looked at the ground beside him and saw dark marks in the white snow, by the dead woman’s head.

It was a woman. And she was dead. That much was obvious. As was one more thing.

The dark marks were blood. Her head had been bludgeoned. This was no case of hypothermia. No sad accident.

Bringing out his phone, Beauvoir switched on the light and the video, recording, capturing the scene. It went beyond standard procedure. The weather was closing in. Even now, fingers of snow were drifting across the body, as though some great hand had reached up out of the earth and was trying to drag her down.

With every passing moment evidence was being lost. Even now, the bloodstains were being buried.

“Go back inside,” Gamache shouted, having to raise his voice over the now howling wind. “Parents will be worried. Just say there’s been an accident, and we’re tending to it. They need to stay in the Auberge. No one leaves.”