Clara told them about their visits just that morning to the prominent art galleries in Toronto. No one had remembered seeing Peter.

Armand Gamache watched her closely as she spoke. Taking everything in. Her words, her tone, her subtle movements.

Just as Clara put together the elements of a painting, as Ruth the elements of a poem, Gamache pieced together the elements of a case.

And like a painting or a poem, at the heart of his cases there was a strong emotion.

“So no luck?” asked Olivier. “No trace of Peter?”

“Actually, we did finally manage to find someone who not only saw him, but spent time with him,” said Clara. And she told them about their visit to the art college.

“Why would he go back to your old college?” asked Gabri. “Has he done it before?”

“No, neither Peter nor I ever went back,” said Clara.

“Then why do you think he went back this past winter?” asked Gamache, ignoring his grilled shrimp with mango salsa. “What did he want?”

“I don’t really know what Peter wanted. Do you?” she asked Myrna.

“I think he wanted to recapture the feelings he had when he was there as a student,” said Myrna slowly. “Professor Massey said they talked a lot about Peter’s time there. The students, the professors. I suspect he wanted to be reminded of when he was young, vigorous, admired. When the world was his.”

“Nostalgia,” said Gabri.

Myrna nodded. “And maybe something slightly more than that. He might have wanted to recapture some magic.”

Clara smiled. “I don’t think Peter was into magic.”

“No, he wouldn’t have called it that,” Myrna agreed. “But it would come to the same thing. Art college was a magical time for him, so in his distress he was drawn back to the place where good things happened. In case he could find it again.”

“He wanted to be rescued,” said Ruth.

She’d moved Gamache’s dinner in front of her and was finishing off the last grilled shrimp.

“Too many layers of life,” she continued. “His world was slipping away. He wanted to be rescued.”

“And he went to the college for that?” asked Olivier.

“He went to Professor Massey for that,” said Myrna, nodding. Only slightly annoyed that demented Ruth should see what had eluded her. “To be reassured he was still vigorous, talented. A star.”

Reine-Marie looked around the quiet bistro. Out the mullioned windows to the now-empty tables on the terrasse. To the ring of homes, with soft light in the darkness.

Rescued.

She caught Armand’s eye and saw again that look. Of someone saved.

For his part, Gamache took a piece of baguette and chewed it as he thought.

What did Peter want? He surely wanted something, and was quite desperate for it, to travel so far and so fast. Paris, Florence, Venice, Scotland. Toronto. Quebec City.