A curtain moved in an upstairs window and she saw Evelyn’s face, a look of distress glancing across it, as though Clara was a germ and Evie an open sore.

An old mongrel dog, Harvest, lay on the grass. He struggled to his feet, his tail wagging slowly.

“Clara,” Evie said, coming to the screen door, forcing a smile that looked painful.

“I didn’t want to disturb you,” Clara said, cradling the dishes. “But I know how much energy it takes to get out of bed in the morning, never mind shop and cook. There’re a couple bags of groceries in the trunk. They’re from Monsieur Béliveau. And Sarah sent some croissants and baguettes from her boulangerie. She says you can freeze them. I wouldn’t know. They never last that long in my house.”

Clara saw a hint of a genuine smile. And with it a slight relief, a loosening of the tight bands holding Evie Lepage in, and the world out.

*   *   *

Armand Gamache watched the old scientist leave the B and B dining room.

As soon as Gamache had asked about Gerald Bull’s real contribution to Project Babylon, Michael Rosenblatt had looked at his watch and slid awkwardly out of the banquette.

“I really must go. Thank you for the company.”

Armand had got up too.

Professor Rosenblatt offered his hand and Gamache, stepping into the handshake, had whispered in the scientist’s ear.

Then stepped back to look into the startled face.

Rosenblatt had turned and strolled away with forced leisure, and Armand had returned to the banquette, and his coffee, and his musings.

Had Gerald Bull designed his Supergun? Or was he just the clever front man? Was there another genius behind that one? Someone younger, smarter? And far more dangerous?

And perhaps still alive. According to Reine-Marie, Gerald Bull had been sixty-two when he’d been murdered. Gamache knew that most scientists did their best work, their most dynamic and creative work, by the time they were forty.

Did Bull have a silent partner? A scientist, a physicist, an armaments designer? Did they make the perfect team? One staying in the shadows, scribbling plans for a gun unlike any other? An elegant weapon? While the other schmoozed, moved about in powerful circles, made deals? Found buyers. Found Saddam?

Both brilliant and both commanding different fields.

Gamache did the math. Michael Rosenblatt would have been in his mid-forties when Gerald Bull was killed. The design of the Supergun must have been made half a decade earlier, perhaps more. Putting Rosenblatt in his thirties.

It fit. Was Michael Rosenblatt the father of the monster in the woods?

Armand Gamache noticed that Rosenblatt had left so quickly he’d forgotten the redacted papers. Armand gathered them up, and thought maybe it hadn’t been an oversight. Maybe there was nothing in them that could possibly be news to the elderly scientist.

Gamache sipped his coffee, and thought.