“You drew the etching,” said Isabelle Lacoste. “You knew the gun was there. What did you do, Monsieur Lepage, when your son came home and told you what he’d found in the forest? A giant gun with a monster on it. We’ve been looking for someone, just one person, who’d believe such a far-fetched story. And we’ve found him. You. Did you take him back there? Did you kill your son to keep your secret?”

Al gaped at them, his blue eyes wide with terror.

“You knew if the gun was found, the etching would eventually be traced back to you,” Lacoste pressed on. “And we’d start asking questions. We’d find out who you really are. And what you did.”

Evelyn turned to her husband. “Al?”

Gamache sat across from the couple and waited for the answer.

He’d been on the bench with Ruth and Monsieur Béliveau when the vehicles drew up to the old railway station.

He’d been trying to absorb the news that John Fleming was once in Three Pines. Was in fact Gerald Bull’s project manager. In a slight daze he watched Beauvoir and Lacoste get out of the car with Al Lepage, while Clara and Evie climbed out of the pickup truck. Evie ran to her husband’s side while Clara hesitated, then walked back to her home.

Gamache turned back to Ruth and Monsieur Béliveau.

“When you sent John Fleming his way, did you know who Al Lepage really was?”

He hadn’t directed the question specifically to either one, but both nodded.

“You helped him across the border.” It was a statement, not a question, and once again, they nodded.

“It was 1970,” said Monsieur Béliveau. “We were involved in the peace movement, working to get draft dodgers across. We were approached about a special case.”

Ruth was silent, her thin lips all but disappearing.

“You didn’t approve?” asked Gamache.

“I was conflicted,” she said. “I couldn’t decide if I thought Frederick Lawson was also a victim of the war or a psychopath.”

“A conflict,” said Monsieur Béliveau with a small smile. “Your own civil war.”

Armand knew if he’d said such a thing Ruth would have lashed out at him, but with Monsieur Béliveau, Clément, she accepted what he said.

“Because I wasn’t sure, and he hadn’t been convicted, I didn’t feel I could refuse,” said Ruth. “But it didn’t mean I had to like it. Or him.”

“It helped that we didn’t have television at the time. The signal didn’t make it into the valley,” said Monsieur Béliveau. “We’d read the reports of the atrocity in the newspapers and seen the photographs, but it wasn’t until years later that we saw the newsreels.”

“If you’d seen film of the Son My Massacre,” Armand asked, “would you have helped Frederick Lawson find sanctuary here?”