‘Good question,’ admitted Gamache, walking briskly toward the relative warmth of their car. The day was growing dangerously cold and it was getting hard to talk. ‘And why didn’t Kaye Thompson see anything? And how did the murderer unhook the cable and toss it back into Billy’s truck again without being seen?’

The men got into the car and sat while it warmed up. Agent Lemieux’s toes were numb and he scrunched them up and down in his boots trying to get the blood going. Beauvoir looked out the frosted window.

‘Well, the curlers are off the list. They couldn’t have done it. And if Myrna Landers sticks to her story and says Richard Lyon was beside her the whole time that lets him out, though I still think he did it.’

‘What do you think, agent?’ Gamache asked Lemieux.

‘I think this doesn’t make sense. The murderer had to feed her niacin at the community breakfast, spill anti-freeze behind the chair, make sure she was wearing boots with metal soles or nails, hook up booster cables and wait for the perfect moment, all without being seen. Then clean up after himself? It’s just way too complicated. Why not just shoot her?’

‘I wonder,’ said Gamache.

The photographs from the lab arrived after lunch and the team huddled round anxiously as Gamache opened the envelopes. It was eerie to see the face of someone about to die. Gamache always expected to see in their eyes some foreboding, some premonition, but he’d looked at thousands of pictures just like these and never seen it.

Still, it was eerie. This was as close as they’d ever come to meeting the victim, and Gamache realized that the only photo he’d seen up ’til now was on the cover of her book and that was more a caricature. Now here she was, minutes before her time ran out. It was a shame she didn’t seem to be enjoying herself. Instead she sat lemon-faced and defensive at the community breakfast. All around her people were animated, talking to neighbors, heads thrown back in laughter, but CC de Poitiers sat rigid. Beside her Richard stared down at his plate.

Was he planning murder? Were the sausages the curlers and the pancakes the chairs? Was the bacon the booster cable? And CC? What would she have been on his plate? The knife?

More pictures. Mother Bea and Myrna behind CC. CC posing with a group of suddenly glum villagers, as though CC was a cloud that had moved across their sky.

Then they were at the curling. CC in her chair, trying too hard to look like Audrey Hepburn on holiday in the Alps. But now something interesting appeared. CC’s face was flushed. True, the sudden redness could be from the cold, but beside her Kaye was a delicate pink, not the purple CC’d become.