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She placed a bag in front of Armand. In it were some—
“Leaves?”
“To smoke?” Jean-Guy asked with a grin.
“No. Though I have some of those too. Sage and sweetgrass, for smudging. Thought that cemetery could use it.”
“You do that?” asked Jean-Guy. “Magic?”
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” said Isabelle.
“Magic,” said Lagacé, holding Isabelle’s eyes and smiling. “Indeed. And so are these. Plantain leaves.” She used the half-eaten baguette and cheese to indicate the bag. “You put them in the bottom of your shoes. Go on.”
Armand was about to laugh, but faced with her schoolmarm face, he did as he was told. “Why am I doing this?”
“Because you’re old and I imagine after a long day of work your feet ache. Studies are showing that plantain leaves are good for relieving inflammation.”
Jean-Guy looked at the large leaves now spilling over the Chief’s shoes. There was no hiding his amusement. “Let’s pray Rosa doesn’t see that. You’ll never hear the end of it.”
Rosa could be very judgmental.
“We’ll get to what you found out about Miss Wilmott’s—”
“Wolcott’s.”
“—Ghost in a minute,” said Armand. “But first, we have a question. You were at the grave site—”
“Where you found Miss Wolcott’s Ghost.”
“And a body,” said Isabelle.
“If someone dug up that grave a few months ago,” Armand continued, “could it have looked like that when we found it?”
“Overgrown, you mean? Yes, of course. As long as they put the soil back. Farmers depend on it. They turn over the soil, plant seeds in the fall, and up they come in the spring. Miss Wolcott’s Ghost is very hardy. Was. Is.” She seemed caught in a time loop. Was the plant past tense or present?
“So, it’s possible,” Isabelle interrupted what threatened to go on for some time.
“That the grave had been dug up?” said Dr. Lagacé. “Yes. I’d say almost a certainty. Otherwise, the seeds from Miss Wolcott’s Ghost would have fallen on hardened ground and could not take root. It’s a self-seeding perennial.”
“The murderer dug up the grave,” said Jean-Guy.
“Or someone did,” said Isabelle.
The killer had probably gone there with Brian Fillmore, maybe to help him dig. And once they had it, they’d replaced the soil. Then the one had killed the other and left him there. Knowing no one would find the body. Perhaps ever.
Gamache sent off a quick message to the coroner.
Could the blows to Brian Fillmore’s body have been done with a shovel?
“Can I tell you now what my European colleagues said?” asked Dr. Lagacé, clearly not used to being interrupted. “I thought they’d be more excited to discover Miss Wolcott’s Ghost isn’t extinct, but the reaction was cool at best. Seems it was a pest, not unlike Daisy Wolcott herself.”
“She discovered all sorts of plants in her travels and brought them back. Not just that one. Something she found must’ve been valuable,” said Isabelle.
She’d grown unexpectedly fond of the woman. And her Ghost. And felt the need to defend both.
“You’d have thought that at least one of her discoveries would have been important,” Dr. Lagacé mused. “Or even just interesting, but apparently not. None of the plants was considered valuable. The Royal Society of Botanists virtually ignored her. We have no accurate records of what she brought back. It doesn’t help that Miss Wolcott spread her finds, and apparently her papers, among her various homes and gardens and institutions. There was no one collection.”
“Why those plants?” asked Isabelle.
