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Then something unexpected happened.

Gamache backed away. He realized he was threatening an unarmed man. A man half his age. Rock of Ages, cleft for me. Let me hide myself in thee …

This was wrong.

His heart pounding, he took another step back. And another.

Then he turned and walked away.

Comeau waited for him to turn around. To come back. To ask, beg him for the information.

He watched his former mentor and boss get closer and closer to the door. His hand on the knob. It was opening. Opened.

Gamache was on the porch, walking away.

Comeau took a step forward.

Suppose the threat was real? Suppose the next person he saw was that brute Beauvoir. Come to drive him back to Montréal and dump him, like a trussed-up lamb, at Réunion.

“Wait!” He ran to the door and shouted. “That date on the tombstone. I know what it means. The Empress of Ireland. That’s the connection to Clybourne. Look it up!”

Still Gamache kept walking. He was across the dirt road now, making for the Old Train Station.

“Wait!” Then something occurred to Comeau. Something that was guaranteed to work. Had in the past. “I’m sorry! I was wrong.” Then a pause. “Please. I need help.”

Gamache broke his stride, for an instant. As though the words had gently shoved him forward. Then he continued on.

Comeau watched the Chief Inspector get further and further away.

“The cassette!” he yelled. “I know more. Jeanette was looking for some tape labeled Oral History.”

CHAPTER 42

Reine-Marie was just coming out of Monsieur Béliveau’s General Store when she heard the shout from the B&B and saw Armand stop in his tracks.

He caught her eye and motioned for her to stay where she was. Then he turned around, but still said nothing. He just stared at the bearded young man on the veranda of the B&B.

“It had something to do with Lost Nation,” the man called.

By now, Clara, Myrna, and Ruth had emerged from their homes to watch. Gabri and Olivier, dish towels in hand, came onto the bistro terrace.

“In her notes under the cassette, there was a sentence.”

Let me guess, thought Reine-Marie. Thought Clara, Myrna, Ruth, Gabri.

Thought Armand: And then there was the murder.

“And then there was the murder.”

Jeanette Bouchard couldn’t have found that tape. They had it. But did this explain the empty file folder? Did Jeanette have the missing transcription? Or had Brian Fillmore gotten there first? Jeanette was one step behind him. And they were one step behind her.

As Reine-Marie watched Armand step toward the B&B, she heard the thin voice of Flossy Fuller. And thought about the newspaper headlines. The crash. The burned cassette tape labeled Ohio. Was it, as they had speculated, a mix tape? Music for the road. Maybe with Neil Young’s brilliant anti-war song? Or had the archivist realized that the oral history she was recording was dangerous? Had she mislabeled the tape on purpose?

She followed Armand’s slow progress back to the B&B and thought about the Sûreté officer who’d found his daughter in that car.

Suppose that had been Armand finding Annie? What would he have done? What would I have done?

Ohio. Oh … It couldn’t be. Could it?