‘I don’t know,’ admitted Lacoste. ‘It’s possible they were done on different days. Maybe she tossed the video at the same time she threw away the necklace, but it took her a while to get round to the Li Bien ball.’

‘It would have been more precious,’ agreed Gamache. ‘She’d have hesitated to destroy it. It’d become a symbol of her family, her philosophy, her fantasies. That’s probably why she couldn’t bring herself to just throw it away, but placed it gently in the dumpster.’

‘CC killed her own mother,’ repeated Beauvoir. ‘Why?’

‘Money,’ said Lacoste, who’d had time to think about it. ‘She was about to meet with American buyers, hoping to sell her philosophy to them. She’d market Li Bien and make a fortune.’

‘But that was probably fantasy on her part,’ said Lemieux.

‘Maybe, but as long as she believed it that’s all that mattered. Everything was riding on selling Li Bien to the Americans.’

‘Then along comes a drunken bag lady as a mother,’ nodded Gamache, ‘putting the lie to her carefully constructed life. Something had to die, either her dream or her mother. It wasn’t much of a choice.’ He looked down at the box in his hands. He turned it over, yet again.

B KLM.

Why had L collected those letters? He opened the box and his index finger swam through the other capital letters. Ks, Ms, Cs, Ls and Bs.

Slowly he closed the box and placed it on his desk, staring into space. Then he got up and walked round the room. Round and round he went, with a measured, unhurried pace, his head down and his hands clasped behind his back.

After a few minutes he stopped.

He had his answer.

THIRTY-THREE

‘Madame Longpré.’ Gamache rose and bowed to the slight woman in front of him.

‘Monsieur Gamache.’ She nodded slightly and accepted the chair he held for her.

‘What can I get you?’

‘An espresso, s’il vous plaît.’

The two of them settled into the bistro, their table slightly to one side of the fireplace. It was ten o’clock the next morning and flurries were falling. It was one of those not uncommon but still extraordinary meteorological phenomena that happened in Quebec in the winter: it was snowing and sunny at the same time. Gamache glanced out the window and marveled. Crystals and prisms, delicate and fragile, floated by and lay soft on Three Pines. Pink and blue and green sparkled from the trees and the clothing of villagers strolling through it.

Their coffees arrived.

‘Have you recovered from the fire?’ she asked. Em had been there, along with Mother and even Kaye. They’d spent the night serving sandwiches and hot drinks and providing blankets for the freezing volunteers. They’d all been exhausted and Gamache had decided to wait until this morning before speaking to Émilie.