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Against one wall there was a desk, a reading lamp. A chair. It was the sort of room a cloistered monk from the Middle Ages would have found sparse.

These were Armand’s archives. The notes, interviews, papers, photographs, testimony. Evidence from cases, solved and unsolved.

These were his own files, containing evidence gathered but unused. All the secrets people had told him in the course of his investigations. All the notes from his subsequent private investigations, done on his own time.

He kept them here, safe under lock and key.

Armand stood in the middle of the room and looked around. He knew that no one had been in there. Still, he paused a moment. To be sure.

As he left, relocking the door behind him, something on the ground caught his eye. Thinking it was the tab of a soft drink can, he stooped to pick it up.

Brushing off the dirt, he saw that it was a ring. Thin, iron, with worn facets where the edge had been pounded.

It was an engineer’s ring.

He stood there very quietly, then heard a sound behind him. Turning quickly and raising the bat, he saw it was Fred. The old dog had followed him down. He was standing in front of the shelf with the large bag of dog food, his tail slowly swishing from side to side.

Armand placed the ring in his dressing gown pocket, leaned the bat against the cinder block wall, and picked Fred up in both arms. He knew that while Fred could make it down the stairs, he could not make it back up.

After rechecking the windows and doors, he went back to bed. Picking up his book, he read for a while, then turned off the light and fell asleep, wondering what if …

CHAPTER 15

“Well,” said Olivier. “I’ll be damned.”

A small delegation stood on the landing just outside the church and stared across the village to the rooflines of the interconnected shops below. Monsieur Béliveau’s General Store, Sarah’s Boulangerie, the bistro, and finally the bookstore.

A very light rain had started falling, more like a fine mist. Low clouds shrouded the hills, surrounding and enclosing the village.

“You were right,” said Myrna, looking at Fiona.

A roof, just visible, was jutting out at right angles from Myrna’s loft.

“How could we not have seen it before?” asked Clara.

“We weren’t looking,” said Myrna.

“Well, we would have found it eventually,” said Gabri. “As soon as we fixed the roof.”

“In about twenty years,” said Billy.

“Can I get my sledgehammer now?” Clara asked Olivier.

“You might want to wait.” But it wasn’t Olivier who’d spoken. It was Billy.

“What’s wrong?” asked Myrna.

“What’s wrong, Armand?” asked Reine-Marie.

They were sitting in their kitchen. He’d waited for Fiona to leave before bringing out the ring and placing it on the table. And then he told Reine-Marie what had happened the night before.

When he’d finished, she picked the ring up, turning it over and around. “An engineer’s ring, for sure. It’s pretty worn. Old. Looks to me like it might’ve been there for a while.”

She replaced it on the table.

“True. Fiona still has her ring, I checked. And I’ll check out Harriet, just to be sure. The ring aside, someone was here last night.”

“You think it was Sam, don’t you.”