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“That’s a lie,” Sam shouted. His small face crumpled and his eyes filled with tears. He looked at Beauvoir. “It’s a lie.” His voice was high now, barely more than a squeak.

Agent Beauvoir was so surprised by what Chief Inspector Gamache had just said, had just implied, that he sat there, openmouthed.

“It isn’t,” said Gamache. “We gave your exercise books with your homework to our expert. There’s no doubt.”

They were staring, eyes wide. But he pressed on.

“We found your mother’s blood in the trunk of her car. The man who bought it said you”—he turned to Fiona—“threatened to expose him if he told anyone who sold it to him. He tried to burn it, but we still found enough DNA.”

“No!” Fiona looked terrified. “It never happened. He’s lying. He killed her and stole it.”

Gamache’s heart ached, but still he had to do this.

“I think you killed your mother, Fiona. I think you did it in self-defense, after years of abuse. I’m not sure you meant to, or that you even really knew what you were doing. And I think Sam helped you.”

There it was.

Armand stood in the darkest cavern in the deepest cave with these two children, surrounded by dripping nightmarish stalactites. Sharp, slimy spikes of undeniable facts that had snagged and caught these children.

At that moment Armand Gamache hated his job.

Sam had thrown himself into Jean-Guy’s arms, burying his head in his chest. Clinging to the young Sûreté agent and sobbing that he didn’t do it. That it was a lie.

Then he looked up and whispered something.

Jean-Guy bent down, and Sam, slobbering and shuddering, repeated it.

No one else heard, but when Beauvoir looked over at Fiona, they could guess what Sam had just confided. And Beauvoir confirmed it.

Sam had told him that it had been his sister’s idea. She’d killed their mother, then forced him to help. He was afraid of her. She’d tried to kill him too. In the alley.

Fiona’s eyes widened. But she did not deny it.

Jean-Guy missed the look in Sam’s eyes as he turned to the Chief Inspector. But Gamache did not.

He saw satisfaction. Almost amusement. He saw a challenge.

CHAPTER 12

The Reverend Robert Mongeau stared at Armand.

“Are you saying that that young woman is a murderer? She killed her mother?”

“She was found guilty, yes.”

They were sitting in one of the pews in the tiny St. Thomas’s church in Three Pines. It was early on Sunday afternoon, the day after the graduation and the party.

While the Gamaches rarely attended services, they had asked the minister and his wife to their home afterward for Sunday lunch. Then Armand had walked back up to the church with Robert, leaving Sylvie and Reine-Marie to have a lemonade in the sun-trap of their back garden.

Fiona had joined them for the meal, then helped clean up the dishes before going across to the bistro to see her brother.

As they’d arrived at the church, Armand noticed the new caretaker touching up the white paint that had chipped off in the winter.

“He’s quite a find,” said Armand. “Obviously cares for the place.”

“Claude never misses a repair or a weed or a spot of dirt. Or a service, for that matter,” said Robert, watching the older man carefully scraping off the chipping paint. “I often find him sitting in the church alone.”

“I thought Gabri looked after the church and grounds.”