Page 49

“Yes. I double-checked. It might be music, of course. I think people made soundtracks and put them on cassettes, in the old days.”

They naturally looked at Armand. He was about to protest, then realized they were right. He was from those “old days.” One of the first gifts he’d given Reine-Marie was a mix tape. Mostly love songs. Remembering it now, it was all he could do not to cringe.

“But why call a mix tape ‘Ohio’?” asked Isabelle.

“There’s something else,” reported Ferdinand. “One of the investigators noticed the line to the fuel tank wasn’t broken.”

“Meaning there should not have been a fire,” said Jean-Guy.

“Exactly. He tried to push for more investigation, but the head of the detachment at the time shut it down.”

“Why?” asked Beauvoir.

“One of the victims, the archivist, was his daughter.”

There was a slight intake of breath from Armand, who could only imagine the horror of being called to an accident and finding …

Still. He suspected he would want to know what caused it. Or would he? Maybe he’d prefer to think it was a tragic accident.

And then there was the murder.

But clearly Madame Fuller wasn’t referring to her own imminent death.

As he considered this news, his phone dinged. A message had arrived from the homicide team back in Montréal. He glanced at it then got up and, walking over to the corkboard, he placed a call while those around the table engaged in heated debate.

“Allô, Fortin?”

“Yes, Chief. You asked about any possible murders on May 29, 1914. There were three reported. Two in Montréal. Drunken brawls. The third was in a fishing camp in the Gaspé.”

“Nothing in this area.”

“Non. I checked ten days on either side, in case, and even a few years on either side. May 29, 1915 and ’13, but nothing in the Eastern Townships.”

“Merci. Can you look at 1914 as a whole, and let me know what you find?”

“D’accord, patron. You know, of course, that’s the year the First World War began.”

“I do, but that was later.”

Chief Inspector Gamache hung up and looked closely at the corkboard, putting on his glasses to better examine the photo of the grave with the body lying on top of it. Tacked beside it was another picture of the same site, but without the body. Just a profusion of Miss Wolcott’s Ghost.

He looked closely at the tombstone. It definitely said May 29, 1914. But he could not make out the rest of the engraving. Was it even a name? Perhaps it was a symbol. A Celtic cross? But why not a name?

He planned to apply for permission to exhume the grave, but that would be easier if he had a name and could show cause. Disturbing the dead was a serious, and unsavory, business.

There was a reason the murdered man had gone to that long-abandoned cemetery in the cursed community.

There was a reason he’d been murdered and left in Lost Nation.

There was a reason Miss Wolcott’s Ghost was there. And Armand Gamache wanted to know what it was.

He stepped over to the blackboard and, picking up the blue chalk, he began to write.

Slowly the discussions around the table quieted, until all were watching him.

He looked at what he wrote, then stepped aside.

And then there was the murder. Murders.