‘Yes sir.’

Brébeuf hung up. As soon as this case was over he’d have to figure out what to do with Robert Lemieux. The young agent was really too impressionable.

Agent Lemieux hung up, a strange sensation in his chest. Not the tightening he’d had ever since Superintendent Brébeuf had appealed for his help, but a loosening, a euphoria.

Had Superintendent Brébeuf just offered him a promotion? Could he do what was best and benefit at the same time? How far up could he ride this? It might turn out all right after all.

Hazel Smyth was waiting for Madeleine to come home. Each footfall, each creak of the floorboards, each turn of a knob was her.

Then not. Every minute of the day Hazel lost Madeleine again. And now the door to the living room opened and Hazel looked up, expecting to see Mad’s cheery face and a tea tray – it was tea time after all. But instead she saw her daughter’s cheery face.

Sophie stepped in holding a huge glass of red wine for herself and made her way around the crowded room until she’d reached the sofa.

‘So, what’s for dinner?’ she said, flopping into a chair and picking up a magazine.

Hazel stared at this stranger. It was as though she’d lost both of them last night. Madeleine dead and Sophie possessed. This wasn’t the same girl. What had happened to morose, selfish Sophie?

The thing in front of her was radiant. It was as though the spirit of Madeleine had entered Sophie. Only without the heart. Without the soul. Whatever was radiating from Sophie wasn’t joy or love or warmth.

But it was happiness. Madeleine was dead, horribly, grotesquely dead. And Sophie was happy.

It scared Hazel almost to death.

Beauvoir drove while Gamache navigated, trying to read the map while the car bounced along the heaved and holed road. He saw nothing of their progress except lurching squiggles and dots. It was fortunate he didn’t get car sick.

‘It’s just beyond here.’ Gamache folded the map and looked through the windshield. ‘Watch out.’

Beauvoir yanked the steering wheel but they hit the pothole anyway.

‘You know I was doing just fine before you looked up,’ he said.

‘You hit every hole between here and Three Pines. Watch out.’

The car rammed into another hole and Gamache wondered how long his tires would hold.

‘We go through the village of Notre-Dame-de-Roof Trusses and out the other side. There’s a turn off to the right. Chemin Erablerie.’

‘Notre-Dame-de-Roof Trusses?’ Beauvoir couldn’t believe his ears.

‘You expected maybe St-Roof Trusses?’

At least Three Pines made sense, thought Beauvoir. Williamsburg and St-Rémy made sense. Weren’t Roof Trusses something to do with building?

Goddamned English. Trust them to choose a name like that. Like calling a village Royal Bank or Concrete Foundation. Always building, always bragging. And what was with this case? Didn’t anyone die a normal death in Three Pines? And even their murders weren’t normal. Couldn’t they just haul off and stab each other, or use a gun or a bat? No. It was always something convoluted. Complicated.

Very unQuébécois. The Québécois were straightforward, clear. If they liked you they hugged. When they murdered you they just whacked you over the head. Boom, done. Convicted. Next.

None of this ‘is it’ or ‘isn’t it’ shit.

Beauvoir was beginning to take this personally, though he was grateful the case had taken him away from the Easter egg hunt with his in-laws. There weren’t actually any children. Just him and his wife, Enid. Her parents had expected them to spend the morning searching for chocolate eggs they’d hidden all over the house. They’d even kidded that it should be easy for him since he was an investigator, after all. He thought the easiest way would be to simply put his gun to his father-in-law’s head and force him to say where the goddamned eggs were. But then the miraculous call had come. His calling.

He wondered how poor Enid was doing. Well, too bad. They were her crazy parents.

They were through the village of Notre-Dame-de-Roof Trusses in no time. Sure enough there was a huge faded sign in the yard of a small factory advertising ‘Roof Trusses’. Beauvoir shook his head.

The old brick house overlooked the road, a few large maples on the front lawn and what Gamache suspected would be lush perennial beds full of flowers in a few weeks close to the house and along the drive. It was a tiny, tidy home that today spoke of potential. Leaves not yet out, flowers not yet up, grass not yet growing.

Gamache loved to see inside the homes of people involved in a case. To look at the choices they made for their most intimate space. The colors, the decorations. The aromas. Were there books? What sort?