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“We haven’t met,” Gamache put out his hand. “Armand Gamache.”

“Yes, I know. Douglas Walls.” They shook.

“I need your help, Senator.”

“Really?” The bushy grey eyebrows rose. It might have been a while since anyone sought his help. “Is what they say true? You actually think the Americans are about to invade us?”

He tried to keep a straight face as he asked.

“Well, not ‘about to.’ I think it’s already happening. I really hate to use the word, but I do think there’s a conspiracy.”

“You’re right. Probably best for someone just labeled nuts not to start babbling about conspiracies.”

“I didn’t realize I was babbling.”

“Well, at least you’re not drooling. Why me?”

“You’re the oldest person here.”

Walls looked around, then smiled. “That’s true. You need an éminence grise? Isn’t that what senators are supposed to be? The wise counsel. But every time I hear that expression, my mind goes to Marguerite d’Youville and her Grey Nuns. Les Soeurs grises.”

The senator couldn’t see Shona standing behind him, pretending to shoot herself.

Gamache opened his mouth to head off a history lesson, but the senator got there first.

“Did you know, Chief Inspector, that the name ‘Grey Nuns’ is a misnomer? They never wore grey, and at the time, back in the 1700s, ‘grise’ meant drunk. The Drunk Sisters.”

He laughed, though his eyes were sharp and clear and held Gamache’s.

“Then the Senate, being filled with éminences grises—” said Gamache.

“Bunch of drunks.”

“So much for sober second thought.” Which was how John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister, described the Senate. Though he himself was rarely sober.

“Given what’s happening…” Senator Walls looked behind him at the television. A crawl across the bottom said that the President was safe but that the head of the Joint Chiefs had been critically injured when he took the shots meant for her. “How could my age possibly matter?”

When Gamache explained what he needed, there was a pause. Then Senator Walls turned his back on Gamache and returned to the group, shaking his head.

After whispering to the cabinet secretaries, Chiefs of Staff, functionaries, and politicians, they all looked back at Gamache, amused.

“This isn’t going to work. They’re laughing at you,” said Shona.

Though a few looked sad. Sorry that a fine career like the Chief Inspector’s should end in such ignominy. Even Shona Dorion was beginning to feel bad for him.

A few minutes later, while Armand was trying to get an update on Bert Whitehead’s condition, there was the sound of something shattering. He looked over and saw that Senator Walls had dropped his coffee mug.

The senator’s face went slack. Reaching out a veined hand, he tried to grab the arm of a chair before he sank to his knees. And fell over.

A cabinet minister ran to the door and pounded while others knelt beside the prone man, loosening the senator’s tie, feeling for a pulse.

When the door opened and the guard saw what was happening, he rushed over.

And Gamache and the others slipped out.

CHAPTER 27

Shona Dorion found herself being marched down the wide hallway, almost suspended between the two Sûreté officers gripping her arms.