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He glanced over the hedge toward the B&B, where the former agent was waiting.

“Help me, patron.”

Yes, help him, patron.

Gaston Comeau left the cemetery, creeping behind the preoccupied agent.

He began to jog, picking his way between the trees. He had to get back to the B&B before Gamache came looking for him. It was an interview neither could be looking forward to. But at least he had something to offer, if Gamache and that brute Beauvoir were nice.

At the very least, he could rub their noses in the fact he knew more than they did. A lot more. They needed him.

At the mention of Stephen’s name, Henri had swung his immense ears toward Armand.

Fred lifted his head off the grass, and Gracie stopped chasing a butterfly.

Armand’s godfather was a particular favorite of theirs, since he was always “accidently” dropping food onto the ground. All three suspected it was deliberate, and they adored him for it.

Now they turned their attention to the garden gate, in hopes the elderly man would appear.

“Stephen told me something interesting. A rumor about the sinking,” said Armand. “He was on the board of McGill when the university commissioned a history of the institution as a fundraiser, to be sold to alumni. The researcher, of course, found a few unsavory events in the institution’s past—”

“You’re talking about Ewen Cameron, and the LSD brainwashing experiments?” said Isabelle.

“Among other things, yes. Including a suggestion that a McGill professor was on the Empress when it went down and that he was taking valuable papers to England. And that maybe the sinking wasn’t such an accident. Because it was speculation, they chose not to include it in the official history.”

“Someone sank an ocean liner filled with passengers on purpose?” said Lacoste.

“The Germans did it almost exactly a year to the day after the Empress sank,” said Jean-Guy. “The Lusitania.”

Armand nodded. “True. It was not beyond the realm of possibility. McGill commissioned a much more thorough search into that rumor about the Empress, and found nothing. But the timing of the tragedy was suspicious.”

“The First World War started two months later,” said Jean-Guy. “Are the two connected?”

“The theory was the professor was carrying some papers that Germany didn’t want to reach England.”

“Okay,” said Isabelle. “Assuming that’s true, how would Aldous know about it? Surely the professor wouldn’t blab, would he?”

“After a few drinks? Who knows,” said Jean-Guy. “People boast. It would make the professor a big man.”

“So much of this story doesn’t track,” said Gamache. “If the Germans knew he had the documents, and really wanted to get a hold of them, wouldn’t they just assassinate the professor before he boarded and take the papers? Or even sink the ship in the mid-Atlantic, like the Lusitania? Not in shallow waters where there would be survivors. And where the documents could be recovered.”

“Could Clybourne and Morrow have been paid by German agents to bring up the documents?” asked Isabelle. She felt foolish asking. It sounded so ridiculously melodramatic. But she knew, they all knew, that more apparently far-fetched things happened every day.

“I suppose it’s possible,” said Armand. “But it’s still a ridiculously convoluted way to go about getting documents, non? To sink an ocean liner? I can think of far easier, more effective ways to steal papers.”

“And the ship that hit the Empress was a legitimate cargo vessel,” said Isabelle. “No, I agree. The story makes no sense.”

“And yet…?” said Jean-Guy.

“And yet, as with many rumors, there might be some seed of truth buried in the fantasy. Twisted and exaggerated over time by fabulists, but still containing some truth.”

“Who was that professor?” Isabelle asked.

“Someone named McDonald, Stephen thinks. He associates that name with the story.”

“I’ll have an agent look for that unpublished research in the McGill archives,” said Isabelle.

“And I can look for this Professor McDonald in the passenger list,” said Jean-Guy. “Presumably he didn’t survive.”