When he finished, he turned back to Armand. “Did I hear you say Antoinette put these things out? That they belonged to her uncle?”

“She must have,” said Armand. “The books were suggestive, but that photograph puts it beyond doubt. How about this?” Armand motioned to the ornament that had first caught his attention. Brian had pointed it out as something he’d never seen before. “Are you sure this isn’t from your props department?”

Brian gnawed on his lower lip. “Pretty sure. It’s kind of memorable, isn’t it?”

It was that, Gamache agreed. And it was manufactured to be just that. Memorable. He was certain it hadn’t been on the stage when he’d visited Antoinette a few days earlier. He’d have remembered.

It was, after all, a souvenir. Bending closer, he came eye to eye with the statue. It was small and tacky and cheap. He knew because he’d bought one himself, but not for himself. Or Reine-Marie.

They’d bought one each for their granddaughters when last they’d visited Paris. They’d taken the girls for a weekend away, to give Daniel and Roslyn time on their own.

In a series of clear images, Armand saw little Florence and her littler sister Zora in front of the Eiffel Tower. In the Luxembourg Gardens. At a laiterie with dripping ice cream cones.

Then little Florence and littler Zora on the train à grand vitesse, the TGV, in profile, side by side, looking wide-eyed out the window, the French countryside zipping by at great speed as they hurtled toward Belgium.

And then little Florence and her littler sister Zora pointing to and laughing at the little bronze boy, peeing into the fountain in Brussels. The famous statue was called the Manneken Pis, which was also greeted with hilarity. Grandpapa had told them the story of the baby prince who, legend had it, in 1142 had peed on his enemies from a tree during battle. Legend also had it that somehow this act had led to victory. If only the arms dealers knew it wasn’t arms that won a war.

The girls were so taken with the story and the silly statue that they’d pleaded for their own from a souvenir stand. It proved a little embarrassing to explain to their parents how the girls could have gone to the beautiful city of Brussels and their only memory, their only souvenir, was of a peeing boy.

But Gamache now remembered something else from that trip. They’d taken the girls to the Atomium, a huge reproduction of an atom, shepherding in the atomic age. It was possible to go inside, to visit rooms, to look out the windows, and to travel up and down on the quite singular, indeed unique, escalators.

And that’s what Reine-Marie had remembered when looking at the picture of the scientists.