“We can’t say much,” said Mary Fraser, who obviously wished she didn’t have to say anything. She shot a withering look at Rosenblatt, who refused to wither. He sat contentedly holding a glass of Scotch, like a benign grandfather among precocious children.

“Don’t worry,” said Delorme. “We’re on it.”

“Don’t worry?” asked Ruth. “There’s a huge fucking missile launcher in our backyard and apparently the only thing between us and Armageddon is some guy who’s afraid of a duck.”

Sean Delorme gave a strained smile and squirmed slightly. But Gamache thought his discomfort stemmed as much from the social situation as Ruth’s caustic comment. Delorme seemed more at home with people on paper than in person. And Mary Fraser, while perhaps better at covering it up, looked like she was searching for someplace to hide. Or a file to read.

She drifted, naturally, over to the bookcases and read the spines.

The phone rang and Clara left to answer it.

“Don’t mind Ruth,” said Olivier, taking Delorme’s arm with one hand and Mary Fraser’s with the other and steering them to the drinks table. “She’s one sneeze away from the asylum.”

“We’re already there,” shouted Ruth.

Armand turned his attention to the old poet.

Ruth had said “Armageddon.” Not “catastrophe,” not “disaster,” but the one word associated with the gun. With the etching. With the Whore of Babylon, marching toward the end of the world.

But no one had been told about the etching. Was it a coincidence, or did she know something? It was the sort of word she’d use, and certainly the sort of event she evoked.

“Speaking of asylum,” Beauvoir said to Ruth. “Do you have a record player at home?”

“Is that a non sequitur?”

“No. I have Al Lepage’s record and I’d like to hear it, but it’s only on LP.”

“Come over if you must after dinner,” she said. “I have a record player somewhere.”

It was as gracious an invitation as he’d had from Ruth.

Myrna excused herself to see if she could help in the kitchen, and Armand and Reine-Marie took her place beside Professor Rosenblatt.

Gamache hadn’t spoken with him since that morning when the elderly physicist had left the breakfast table with Armand’s question ringing in his head.

Did Gerald Bull create the Supergun, or was he just the salesman, and someone else the actual designer? Did Dr. Bull have a silent partner, who’d survived assassination because Bull had taken all the credit? And all the bullets.

Gamache hadn’t tried very hard to track down Rosenblatt and continue that conversation. He knew, from years of investigation, that sometimes a difficult question was best left to burrow into a person. And sit there, barbed.

He suspected Professor Rosenblatt had been avoiding him, and that was fine with Gamache. Let the question fester. For now.