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“Why send it back to an address obviously more than a century and a half old?”
“Why not?” said Clara. “Old documents pop up all the time, right?”
“True,” said Reine-Marie. “The descendants of this Clémence must’ve been clearing out an old home and came across it.”
“It’s strange,” said Gabri. “Wouldn’t you just toss it out? Why go through the trouble of mailing back some letter between two long-dead people you’d never heard of? To an address that’s more than a hundred years old?”
“I agree with Monsieur Gamache,” said Fiona. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“I didn’t say it didn’t make sense,” said Armand, looking at her.
He’d tried not to make eye contact with Fiona all day. He was used to hiding things from suspects. But what she’d done wasn’t criminal, it was personal. In letting Sam into their home, Fiona had betrayed his trust.
He didn’t want her to see that he knew. And he didn’t want her to see his hurt.
But as he looked at her now, all he saw was the young woman who’d worked so hard to put her life back together.
“I just said I was curious.” Armand held her eyes for a moment before turning to Billy. “When your family sold the house, were there old letters and things you had to go through?”
“I don’t know,” said Billy. “My sisters and I offered to help our parents sort through things, but they preferred to do it themselves. I think they threw a lot away, and anything else went to charity jumble sales.”
“What’s bothering you, Armand?” Reine-Marie asked.
He shook his head. “It just seems”—he looked at Fiona and smiled—“curious.”
She smiled back.
Harriet had wandered away from the dissection of an old letter, by old people, and was looking at the painting.
“Have you noticed that this isn’t exactly The Paston Treasure? At least, not the one we see online.”
“Well, we already know that,” said Ruth. “The real one’s someplace in England. This’s just a copy.”
“That’s not what I mean,” said Harriet. “Come see. It’s made to look like the other one, but it’s different. Look.”
Reine-Marie leaned closer, then pulled back as though given an electric jolt. “Is the girl in the painting wearing—”
“A digital watch,” said Harriet.
“You’re kidding,” said Olivier. He and the others crowded around.
Now that they examined it more closely, they could see other anomalies. Oddities.
The boy held a small model airplane. A straight-back chair was upholstered in a William Morris print.
What had looked like a rolled-up scroll was actually a tourist poster. They could just make out the lettering. It featured the Manneken Pis and the Atomium, in Brussels. Armand knew that because he’d been there.
Something stirred in him. Something deep and dark and disconcerting.
This painting was strange, there was no denying that. How did it get here? Why reimagine The Paston Treasure? And if the room had been bricked up more than a century ago, how did these modern elements get into the painting?
And why?
Why?
Why?
And who?
