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Comeau knew a lot about the Fillmores and whatever they were into.
Comeau knew Jeanette Bouchard well.
Comeau was into this up to his neck.
Comeau almost certainly knew more than he was telling them.
CHAPTER 54
“Then this is definitely Miss Wolcott’s Ghost?”
Isabelle was holding up the small evidence bag, with the single tiny seed inside. Not all that long ago, that question would have seemed absurd. A ghost in a baggie. Now she was able to say it with a completely straight face.
“It is,” said Dr. Lagacé. “From being apparently extinct for decades now, we can’t seem to get away from it. Where did you find it?”
“Next door,” said Beauvoir.
“Where?”
“Well, in your archives.” He described what they’d found and watched as the professor’s eyes practically popped out of her head.
“Are you saying Daisy Wolcott’s collection has been here all this time? That I passed it almost every day?”
“What was left of it, yes.” Lacoste tucked the bag into her pocket. “Unfortunately, her actual papers are still missing.”
“Then what was left? Just that?”
“Yes.” Isabelle chose not to mention the suit that Brian Fillmore had taken.
“How in the world did her collection come to be here?”
“We’re still trying to piece that together. We need to ask you about other plants that might figure into this case.”
“More plants?” The botanist leaned forward.
Beauvoir consulted the message from Gamache and listed the plant names carved into the folly.
“Do you have any idea why Miss Wolcott would have made special note of them?” Jean-Guy asked.
Dr. Lagacé shook her head. “I can’t think. They’re all well-known. I suppose she might have had a special fondness for them.”
“Why would that be?”
Dr. Lagacé considered. “I honestly can’t tell you.”
“And if the plant she spread everywhere, that became known as Miss Wolcott’s Ghost after her death, was so important to her, why isn’t its name up there?” asked Isabelle.
“Maybe it didn’t have a name.”
That was a new thought.
“Is there a connection between these plants?”
“Not that I can see. But who knows what might have struck a Victorian amateur botanist.”
Again, that word “amateur,” thought Isabelle. Even Aimée Lagacé, despite declarations that she was a fan of Miss Wolcott’s, stressed the amateur nature of her work.
When, Isabelle wondered, did an explorer who spent years in the field stop being considered less legitimate than a book-learning professor who lived behind a desk?
