“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “But that gun and Laurent’s death are connected. He was killed because he found it. I don’t suppose you remember anyone, a stranger, coming here in the last few years, asking about a gun in the woods?”

“Non, madame, no one came into my store asking for a Supergun.”

His morose and serious tone made his answer all the more ludicrous.

She put the photograph of Dr. Bull back into her pocket. They were doing the forensics, doing the interviews, collecting all the facts. But it wasn’t a fact that had killed Laurent. It was fear. Someone was so frightened of what the boy had found, by what the boy would do or say, that they had to kill him.

It took a certain type of person, and a certain type of secret, to kill a child. And a great, big, stinking, putrid emotion.

Chief Inspector Gamache had taught her that.

Yes, collect evidence, collect facts. Absolutely. The facts would convict him, but the feelings would find him.

*   *   *

Clara had put the shepherd’s pie and apple crisp in the fridge. They’d been her own comfort food, after Peter had gone. She’d followed the casseroles back to sanity. Thanks to the kindness of neighbors who kept baking them, and kept bringing them. And who’d kept her company.

And now it was Clara’s turn to return the comfort and the casseroles and the company.

“Where’s Al?” she asked. The large man was usually at home, fixing something or sorting baskets of produce.

“In the fields,” said Evie. “Harvesting.”

Clara looked out the kitchen window and saw Al Lepage, his gray ponytail falling down his broad back as he knelt in the squash patch.

Immobile. Staring down at the rich earth.

It seemed far too intimate a moment, and Clara turned back to Evie.

“How’re you doing?”

“It feels like my bones are dissolving,” said Evelyn. And Clara nodded. She knew that feeling.

Evie left the kitchen and Clara and the dog followed her. Clara thought they were going into the sitting room, but instead Evie lumbered up the stairs and stood at a closed door. Harvest had stayed at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at them, either too old to climb, or no longer motivated, without the reward of the boy to play with.

“Al won’t come in here,” she explained. “I have to keep the door closed. He doesn’t want to see anything to do with Laurent. But I come up, when he’s outside.”

She swung the door open and stepped inside. The bed was as Laurent had left it, unmade. And his clothes were scattered about, where he’d tossed them.

The two women sat side by side on Laurent’s bed.

The old farmhouse creaked and groaned, as though the whole home was in mourning, trying to settle around the gaping hole in its foundation.