Wordlessly, the women removed their boots, smiled at me one by one, and disappeared through a doorway to the right just as a tiny nun in an enormous ski sweater shuffled into the foyer. Fuzzy brown reindeer leaped across her chest and disappeared beneath her veil. She blinked at me through thick lenses and reached for my parka. I hesitated, afraid its weight would tip her off balance and send her crashing to the tile. She nodded sharply and urged me with upturned fingertips, so I slipped the jacket off, laid it across her arms, and added cap and gloves. She was the oldest woman that I had ever seen stil breathing.

I fol owed Father Menard down a long, poorly lit hal way into a smal study. Here the air smel ed of old paper and schoolhouse paste. A crucifix loomed over a desk so large I wondered how they'd gotten it through the door. Dark oak paneling rose almost to the ceiling.

Statues stared down from the room's upper edge, faces somber as the figure on the crucifix.

Father Menard took one of two wooden chairs facing the desk, gestured me to the other. The swish of his cassock. The click of his beads.

For a moment I was back at St. Barnabas. In Father's office. In trouble again. Stop it, Brennan. You're over forty, a professional. A forensic anthropologist.

These people cal ed you because they need your expertise.

The priest retrieved a leather-bound volume from the desktop, opened it to a page with a green ribbon marker, and positioned the book between us. He took a deep breath, pursed his lips, and exhaled through his nose.

I was familiar with the diagram. A grid with rows divided into rectangular plots, some with numbers, some with names. We'd spent hours poring over it the day before, comparing the descriptions and records for the graves with their positions on the grid. Then we'd paced it al off, marking exact locations.

Sister Elisabeth Nicolet was supposed to be in the second row from the church's north wal , third plot from the west end. Right next to Mother Aurelie. But she wasn't. Nor was Aurelie where she should have been.

I pointed to a grave in the same quadrant, but several rows down and to the right. "O.K. Raphael seems to be there." Then down the row. "And Agathe, Veronique, Clement, Marthe, and Eleonore. Those are the burials from the 1840s, right?"

"C'estga."

I moved my finger to the portion of the diagram corresponding to the southwest corner of the church. "And these are the most recent graves.

The markers we found are consistent with your records."

"Yes. Those were the last, just before the church was abandoned."

"It was closed in 1914."

"Nineteen fourteen. Yes, 1914." He had an odd way of repeating words and phrases.

"Elisabeth died in 1888?"

"C'est fa, 1888. Mere Aurelie in 1894."