“I hope you have another husband waiting in the wings,” said Antoinette. “I’m not sure this one will survive the walk to the car.”

They watched Armand put the bicycle in the back of the Volvo, then he put the stick in the backseat, but the boy took it out and stood firm. He was going nowhere without it in his hands. It was, after all, a dangerous world.

Armand admitted defeat and relented, though they could see him giving the boy ground rules.

“I’d go on match.com right now, if I were you,” said Myrna to Reine-Marie.

*   *   *

After a few kilometers the boy turned to Gamache.

“What’re you humming?”

“Was I humming?” said Armand, surprised.

“Oui.” And the boy perfectly reproduced the tune.

“It’s called ‘By the Waters of Babylon,’” said Armand. “A hymn.”

John Fleming. John Fleming. He associated the hymn with him, though Gamache could never figure out why.

It couldn’t be the same man, he thought. It’s a common name. He was seeing ghosts where none existed.

“We don’t go to church,” said the boy.

“Neither do we,” said Armand. “Not often anyway. Though sometimes I sit in the little one in Three Pines, when no one else’s there.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s peaceful.”

The boy nodded. “Sometimes I sit in the woods because it’s peaceful. But then the aliens arrive.”

The boy began humming again, in a high, thin voice, a tune Gamache recognized from long, long ago.

“How do you know that song?” Gamache asked. “It’s way before your time.”

“My dad sings it to me every night at bedtime. It’s by Neil Young. Dad says he’s a genius.”

Gamache nodded. “I agree with your father.”

The boy clutched the stick.

“I hope the safety’s on,” said Gamache.

“It is.” He turned to Armand. “The gun’s real, patron.”

“Oui,” said Gamache.

But he wasn’t listening. He was watching the road, and thinking of the tune stuck in his head.

By the waters, the waters of Babylon,

We sat down and wept.

But the play wasn’t called that. It was called She Sat Down and Wept.

The play could not possibly be by that John Fleming. He didn’t write plays. And even if he did, no director in his right mind would produce it. It must be another man with the same name.

Beside him, the boy looked out the window at the early fall landscape and clutched the stick just below where his father had etched his name into the hilt.

Laurent. Laurent Lepage.

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

Their dinner guests had already arrived and were sipping drinks and eating apple and avocado salsa with corn chips by the time Armand returned.

“Got Laurent home all right, I see,” said Reine-Marie, greeting him at the door. “No alien invasions?”

“We nipped it in the bud.”