“I came home and decided I’d had enough of my own grief. I wanted to move on.”

“Is such a thing a choice?” asked Gamache.

“In a way,” said Clara. “I think I might’ve gotten stuck. I haven’t even been able to paint. Nothing.” She waved toward her studio. “But after seeing the size of their loss, mine suddenly seemed manageable. And this”—she looked around the room—“is how I decided to manage it. With friends. I called up Evie and invited them, but she said they couldn’t.”

Evie Lepage had made it sound as though they had another engagement, which Clara supposed was true in a way. They were bound to their home and engaged to their grief.

Evie had hesitated, though, and Clara could hear that part of her wanted to come. To try. But the grip was too strong, the loss too new, the desire to isolate too powerful. And then there was the guilt.

Clara knew how that felt.

“The painting will come back,” said Armand. “I know it.”

“Do you?” she asked, searching his eyes for the truth, or evidence of a lie.

He smiled and nodded. “Without a doubt.”

“Merci,” she said. “Ruth’s helping me.”

“Ruth?” both Armand and Jean-Guy asked at once. Neither had realized Clara had a creative death wish.

“Well, to be honest, more as a cautionary tale.” Clara looked over at the old poet, who was having an animated conversation with a painting on the wall.

In the foreground they saw Reine-Marie with a fixed smile on her face as Professor Rosenblatt entertained her with anecdotes from the world of algorithms.

“I think I’ll just see if Madame Gamache needs rescuing,” said Jean-Guy, and walked off.

“Not that I’m not delighted,” said Armand, turning back to Clara, “but I’m wondering why you invited them?”

He looked toward Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme, then over to Rosenblatt.

“They don’t know anyone here,” she said. “I thought they might be lonely. Especially the professor. I wanted them to feel welcome. We all want that.”

“True. And the fact they have information about the Supergun?”

“Totally irrelevant. Never entered my mind. But now that you bring it up, since they won’t talk, what can you tell us?”

“Us?”

“Me. Spill.”

He smiled. “Sorry, I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know.”

“But I know nothing. None of us does.”

“Someone does, Clara. The gun was built here, just outside Three Pines, for a reason.”

“Exactly. Why? What’s its purpose? Does it work? Who built it?”

Unfortunately they were all questions he genuinely couldn’t answer.

*   *   *

Reine-Marie Gamache, relieved of physicist duty, wandered over to where Isabelle Lacoste was talking with Mary Fraser.

Someone who seemed less like an intelligence agent would be hard to find, though Mary Fraser did look very intelligent, thought Reine-Marie, but not exactly sharp. More the slow, steady, often frightening mind, that took its time and arrived at a conclusion others might miss or did not want to see.

Having worked in archives and research all her professional life, Reine-Marie knew and admired that type of mind, though they could be a little frustrating to work with. They were often stubborn. Once a conclusion was finally reached they were loath to leave it, since it had taken so long to get there.

“Lots of people spent lots of time in the early nineties looking, but the plans were never found,” Mary Fraser was telling Isabelle Lacoste.

“Who were these people?”

Mary Fraser gave Reine-Marie a swift glance.

Reine-Marie veered away, recognizing this was not a conversation she should interrupt.

“Arms dealers hoping to sell the plans,” said Mary Fraser, once Madame Gamache had walked out of earshot. “Or intelligence agencies hoping to suppress them.”

“Including CSIS?” asked Isabelle Lacoste.

“Yes. We looked for them but weren’t successful. After a while most agencies gave up, thinking either the plans to Dr. Bull’s Supergun never existed, just another of his fantasies, or, if real, it had become obsolete, overtaken by advances in technology. Project Babylon would be just an oddity now. Everyone lost interest.”

“Except you.”

“And him.” She pointed to Professor Rosenblatt, now deep in conversation with Jean-Guy Beauvoir.

“But now we have the Supergun,” said Lacoste. “It proves everyone wrong, and Gerald Bull right. The plans just got valuable, didn’t they?”