Clara could feel her heart throbbing in her throat.

“We’re in Port-Menier,” Gamache was saying. “Can you pick us up?” After a pause he shook his head. “I understand. Merci.”

He hung up.

“It was Professor Massey he recognized,” Clara confirmed. “Not Peter.”

Gamache nodded, grim-faced. “He flew to Tabaquen yesterday.”

*   *   *

“Where’re you headed?” The old woman slid into the booth beside Beauvoir.

“Up the coast,” he waved.

“I figured that. Where?”

“Tabaquen.”

“Are you sure?”

He laughed. “Pretty sure.”

“Here,” she said. “You’ll need this.”

She took the hat from beside her on the torn Naugahyde seat and placed it on his head.

“It’s wet and cold out there.”

“I’m not heading into the North Atlantic,” he assured her, taking it off and smoothing his hair.

“You have no idea where you’re headed.” She brought something from the pocket of her cardigan and placed it on the table in front of him.

He looked at it.

A rabbit’s foot. No, not rabbit. Hare.

“No hares here on the island,” she said. “It was given to me years ago, by another visitor. Said it would bring me luck. And it has.”

She looked at all her sons. And all her daughters. Not of her loins, but the family of her heart.

“It’s yours.” She pushed it toward him.

“You need it.” Beauvoir pushed it back.

“I’ve had it. Now it’s your turn.”

Beauvoir put it in his pocket. And as he did he heard a long, deep horn.

The Loup de Mer was calling them.

*   *   *

“Yesterday?” Clara gaped. “I just saw him a few days ago. He didn’t say anything about going. What’s this about?”

“I don’t know,” said Gamache. He looked across the calm waters of the sheltered harbor. Then he dropped his eyes. Below the dock he could see fish darting. Flashes of silver in the cold, clear water.

“Professor Norman’s in Tabaquen,” he spoke to the fish. “And now Professor Massey’s gone there. Why?”

“Massey lied to us,” said Clara. “He said he didn’t know where Norman was.”

“And maybe he didn’t at the time,” said Gamache. “Maybe our questions got him to wondering, and he looked at the file too.”

“But why would he go there? It’s not just down the street, it’s halfway across the continent. You’d have to be pretty desperate.”

Yes, thought Gamache. That was the word. And he was feeling increasingly desperate to get there himself.

“I asked the pilot if he could pick us up here but he said the weather had closed in. All along the coast. He wasn’t flying in or out of the villages.”

“So we couldn’t have made it to Tabaquen today anyway?”

“I doubt it,” said Gamache. “Red sky in the morning.”

The ship’s horn sounded, deep and mournful. She looked at her watch. “It’s leaving.”