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“Then who is it?”

There was a plea in Charles Fillmore’s voice. Was he beginning to suspect…?

Armand was not enjoying this. He was now fairly certain the body on the grave was that of this man’s brother. But he couldn’t say anything. Not yet. Not until they had hard evidence.

Gamache knew his very presence terrified people. He was like the grim-faced surgeon exiting the operating room. The wide-eyed flight attendant hanging up from the cockpit. The telegram messenger on the wobbly bike. Approaching.

He was the person they never hoped to meet.

Also, and often especially, true if they were the killer.

Charles was looking at the closed door, the keys jangling in his hand. “I suppose I should ask you to get a warrant.”

“If you like. Is there anything in there”—Armand nodded toward the door—“you don’t want me to see?”

“No, no, nothing.” Fillmore sounded unsure. He made a decision and a moment later Armand stepped across the threshold and into a whole other world.

Brian Fillmore’s corner office was large. Bright. Cheerful even. The floor-to-ceiling windows on one side looked toward downtown Montréal. Out the other, Armand could see the huge cross on Mont Royal that was lit up every night. A beacon. Placed there as a reminder to the citizenry. A higher power was watching.

Though the luminous cross no longer acted as a moral compass to guide their immortal souls. The crucifix was now a directional aid, so drivers always knew where they were in the city.

So enormous and clean were the windows, it felt to Armand as though there was no glass there at all. That he could step right over the edge and plunge …

He fought the urge to step back, and kept his eyes averted from the view.

Instead, he studied the interior. This space was so completely different from his brother’s, it was hard to believe only a few inches of wall separated them.

For one thing, this office, while larger and brighter, was much more modestly decorated. One wall, the only one not concrete or glass, was covered in a light green grasscloth wallpaper. It made the space feel intimate. Warm.

The sofa was lumpy and looked like something found in a dumpster, or the side of the road. Lugged there by next of kin when they inherited the family home and contents. Unwanted, except by this man. Who was trying, it seemed, to crawl back into a previous life.

The oriental carpets, thrown one on top of the other, were of good quality, if slightly worn. The armchairs were large, comfortable. But again, like the sofa, heavy and old-fashioned. Even the upholstery was out of date. Certainly out of favor. The furniture was covered in William Morris prints, Armand guessed. A famous Victorian designer. His work showed up in museums, admired but rarely used in actual homes. And even less in offices.

The desk was dark mahogany, as was the bookcase, which was crammed full of books, higgledy-piggledy.

Yes. It would be possible to believe he’d just walked into the study of a gentleman from the turn of the twentieth century. Just before the Great War. Just before everything changed. This was a moment, a place, suspended in time.

Despite that slight sense of dislocation, there was something deeply comforting about this room. It was welcoming. It felt like it had a past. A history. A soul. That the furniture had seen celebrations. Mourning. People had hugged each other on it, comforted each other. Wept with each other. Proposed. Planned parties. Held babies. Lively conversations, laughter, were embedded in the horsehair stuffing. Children had played on it. Spied on grown-ups from behind it.

It was lived in. And on.

This was a place created by a man who did not care what people thought of him. That, Armand knew, was very rare.

The only things slightly out of place, and time, were those two paintings on the wall. Armand stood in front of one of them.

“Impressive, isn’t it,” said Charles, at his elbow. “It’s a Morrow.”

But not, Armand knew, a Clara Morrow. Not the one Brian had bought from her Montréal gallery. That was the one next to it.

This one was an abstract, or what appeared abstract, with its bubbles and slashes, all in shades of grey. Some almost white. Some almost black. But not quite.

It was not quite anything. And yet it was something. Armand had seen it before, in a catalog. It was, in fact, a very, very close study, an achingly close study, of a stone. Almost certainly a fieldstone in one of the two huge fireplaces in the Three Pines bistro.

It was signed Peter Morrow.

Armand stepped back to admire it. It was indeed a fine work. Clever. Armand found he could appreciate it but didn’t actually care about it. This work lacked the heart of the painting next to it. The one by Clara. The one that had, apparently, prompted Brian Fillmore to visit her.

Clara Morrow had lived and worked in her husband’s shadow, his shade, for much of their lives together. And done so happily, working in anonymity on her own creations.