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He felt himself losing his balance. As he swayed almost to the point of no return, Armand felt hands reach out and hold him steady. Hold him up. Hold him safe.

All this Armand remembered as he stared out the window at Honoré and Idola and Annie. At Rosa and mad Ruth, who was perhaps the sanest of them all.

And now it is now

and the dark thing is here,

The lines that drifted into Armand’s mind were from Ruth’s poem “Waiting.”

and after all it is nothing new;

it is only a memory after all:

a memory of a fear …

you have long since forgotten

and that has now come true.

Now there was a new fear. One the young Sûreté highways agent had inadvertently alerted Beauvoir to. Not about Armand himself and what he’d done, but what had been found hiding in plain sight on the internet.

If a trained Sûreté agent could believe the lies, believe the poisoning plot never happened, then how many others had been manipulated too?

How many others now believed Lauzon was a hero. Railroaded. Wrongly convicted and soon to be martyred.

And the most pressing question: Who was behind those posts? And why do it? Was it just to stir the pot, or was there another reason?

Merci, he wrote.

What do you want me to do now? replied Jean-Guy.

Armand wrote, Nothing. Come back. But then he erased it and wrote, Find Jeanne Caron. Bring her down here.

In his car, Jean-Guy looked at the text and frowned.

And don’t make a face, wrote Armand. I’ll meet her in the church, not at home.

They both knew Reine-Marie would never allow that woman in her home. Or the bistro. Or the bench. The church was okay. It could be cleansed.

Armand could imagine the women, led by Myrna with her smoldering stick, smudging the space in an ancient and powerful ritual.

D’accord, wrote Jean-Guy. And what do we do about Lauzon?

We need to speak to Caron before deciding.

Jeanne Caron had been Marcus Lauzon’s assistant, then Chief of Staff, and chief architect of his ascent and wrongdoings since the early days in their small Québec town.

Caron had also been the instigator of the attacks on Chief Inspector Gamache when, years ago, he’d refused to let Lauzon’s daughter off a manslaughter charge.

The charges had ultimately been dropped, thanks to the first in what would be a long series of dirty dealings by Caron on her boss’s behalf. But Gamache had still gone to the ethics commissioner to report the then junior member of Parliament.

It did no good. The daughter remained free, and the attacks on Gamache only escalated. When those didn’t work, Caron and Lauzon turned their attention to the Chief Inspector’s teenage son, Daniel, who was struggling with drug addiction.

Their attacks, the lies and insinuations, had been so brutal, so aggressive, Daniel had relapsed and tried to overdose, in a suicide attempt.

Straight now for decades, neither son nor parents would ever forget.

And yet, when the gun had been pressed against Armand’s skull as he’d knelt on the concrete floor, handcuffed and helpless in that water-treatment plant, it had been Jeanne Caron who had saved his life. And almost certainly the lives of thousands, perhaps millions, of others.