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“Toxicology?” Chernin asked.

“Well, she was loaded. Cocaine, heroin. Amphetamines. Looks like she’d have snorted the living room sofa, given a chance. It’s possible she’d have died of an overdose anyway, had the murderer waited or known. The good thing, I suppose, is that given her state she probably didn’t see it coming, or feel anything.”

“But death was the catastrophic blow to her head?” Chernin asked.

“Yes.”

That at least was definite, though it seemed her life was also catastrophic.

“She was dead when she went into the water?” Chernin confirmed, reviewing the report while Gamache looked down at Clotilde’s body. At her face. At her worried expression.

He thought maybe Dr. Mignon was wrong and that, at the last moment of life, she had seen death coming.

“Yes, but this is where it gets interesting,” said the coroner. “As you know, I’m no specialist, so I didn’t put it into the report. I could never swear to this, but I don’t think she was ever completely submerged.”

Gamache turned around. “What do you mean?”

“I think, by the texture and mottling of her skin, and by the damage done by fish and birds, that she spent at least two days only partly submerged.”

He showed them the marks.

“We need her body sent to the coroner in Montréal,” said the Chief Inspector.

Dr. Mignon stripped off his gloves. “I’ll share my report with your coroner. The children?”

“They’re being cared for” was all Gamache could say.

Mignon shook his head and glanced back at the body. “I hope she was a better mother than she appears. Poor one. I can’t imagine she wanted her life to turn out as it did.”

Gamache and Chernin took the report, thanked him, then returned to the Arsenault home for a closer look around in daylight.

After the sleet of the day before, this one had dawned bright and fresh and clear. The ground was wet, of course, but the air smelled fresh, with a bite of cold. Such was the month of November. Unpredictable. Changeable. It could not be trusted.

The sunshine didn’t make the bungalow look more cheerful. In fact, if possible, it looked even worse. Though it didn’t help that they now knew what had gone on inside.

The scent of lemon cleaner still hung in the air. What had seemed fresh now smelled stale, cloying, chemical. Gamache and Chernin walked from room to room. Sometimes picking up items with gloved hands and placing them in evidence bags. Gamache noticed the exercise books with homework done by both Fiona and Sam. He bagged them, along with other small items.

He also picked up a stuffed dog from Fiona’s bed and a model plane Sam had made. Not as evidence. These would, he hoped, offer some small comfort in their new and unfamiliar surroundings.

He paused to look at what Sam had drawn on the walls. It was just meandering lines in crayon. Without, it seemed, purpose or destination. Like ley lines on a map, leading nowhere.

He took a photo.

They did not yet have the murder weapon. There was a pretty good chance it had been tossed into the lake. If so, it had sunk into the mud, to be lost forever.

Still, Gamache had ordered a diving team to look.

It could also have been thrown out a car window to be swallowed up by the thick forest. Leaving the house, and the smell of disinfectant, he walked into the backyard and looked at the mess.

He knew his people had been thorough. If the murder weapon, or any other evidence, was there, they’d have found it. Still, he spent half an hour lifting bedsprings, and tires, and broken garden furniture.

He did not return to the root cellar. He’d seen all he needed, and anything of value to their investigation had been taken away.

Going back to the house, he found Chernin once again in Clotilde’s room.

“Find anything?”

Linda Chernin held up an evidence bag. “I found this in her bedside drawer. And another just like it in Fiona’s room.” She shook her head. “She couldn’t even let her daughter have these without soiling them.”