Armand Gamache stood on the bank. The barbarian wind raced out of the mountains, across the lake, past the three women, past the buried curling rink and the spot where CC had died, gathering strength and pain and terror and finally hitting him in the face. He gasped for breath and clutched Em’s letter, the white paper invisible against the white snow behind and in front and all around him. He was enveloped in white, as were they.

He took a step forward, yearning to race onto the lake after them. Every part of who he was demanded he save them, but he stopped, sobbing with the effort. In her letter Émilie had begged him to let them die, like the fabled Inuit elders who walked onto an ice flow and drifted to their deaths.

They’d murdered CC, of course. He’d known that since the day before. He suspected he might have known it for much longer. All along he’d known it was impossible no one saw the murder. Kaye could not have been sitting beside CC and not seen her killer.

And then there was the murder itself. It was far too complicated. The niacin, the melted snow, the tilted chair, the jumper cables. And finally the electrocution perfectly timed for when Mother cleared the house, and all eyes and ears were on her.

And then to clear up the cables afterwards.

No one person could have done it without being seen

The bitter niacin was in the tea Mother served at the Boxing Day breakfast. Em had spread the anti-freeze when she’d delivered the chairs to the site. She’d sat in the chair herself, to keep CC away from it.

Kaye was pivotal. Gamache had assumed whoever had electrocuted CC had attached the cables to the chair first, then hovered around Billy’s truck waiting for the right moment to attach them to the generator. But Em’s letter said otherwise. They’d attached the cables to Billy’s generator and then Kaye had waited for a signal from Em that Mother was about to clear the house. When it came, she’d gone to the empty chair, leaned on one corner to knock it off kilter, and attached the cables. From that moment on it had electricity coursing through it.

By then the niacin was working and CC had removed her gloves.

Mother was winding up to ‘clear the house’. All eyes were on her.

The rock was thrown, moving like thunder down the ice, the stands cheering, everyone on their feet, and CC got up. She went forward, stepped in the puddle, put her bare hands on the back of the metal chair and that was it.