“People looking for the plans,” said Gamache. “That’s why we asked you here, and that’s why we need to find them ourselves first. You’ve just read the play, most of you for the first time. If anything should strike you later, please let us know right away. And, of course, it’s vital you tell no one about this. Jean-Guy?”

He invited Beauvoir into the study and closed the door.

Gabri left to go back to the B and B and Olivier headed over to the bistro, which would be busy at this time of day.

Brian helped Reine-Marie clear the coffee mugs while Clara and Myrna put the furniture back, and Ruth did nothing.

“May I borrow her?” Monsieur Béliveau asked with his exaggerated politeness, indicating Ruth.

Ruth got up. “No need to ask them. I don’t even know who they are.”

“We have a no-returns policy,” Clara warned him.

“And she was already broken when we found her,” said Myrna, picking up a chair.

Ruth scowled at them and Monsieur Béliveau looked perplexed, then he nodded.

“I know,” he finally said. “I think I was there when it happened.”

It was Clara and Myrna’s turn to be perplexed as the two elderly villagers left.

*   *   *

Gabri stood in the doorway of the small library at the very back of the B and B, staring.

What he saw was so ordinary and yet it was riveting.

Mary Fraser was reading.

That was it. Just sitting there. Looking down at her lap. Not at a book, but at a script. The script.

There was nothing even remotely remarkable about it. Except for the intensity with which she was looking at the page.

Sean Delorme sat in the wing chair, watching her, studying her as she studied the play.

And then he looked up. At Gabri. And then he got up and walked slowly, deliberately toward him.

Gabri took a step back as this previously nondescript, dull man came toward him. There was no weapon in his hand, not even a threatening expression on Delorme’s face, but Gabri found his heart pounding. Sean Delorme stopped at the doorway and the two men stared at each other across the threshold.

Then Delorme slowly, wordlessly, closed the door until it clicked shut. And then there was another sound, as a bolt was drawn across.

Gabri stared at the wooden door. His last image of the small library fused into his memory. Of Delorme’s dark eyes and beyond him, Mary Fraser continuing to read. As though her life depended on it.

*   *   *

From the study Beauvoir phoned across to Lacoste at the Incident Room.

She confirmed that Cohen was at the SHU. “He’s in his car, waiting.”

“Good” was what Beauvoir said, but good was not what he felt. “Anything in the case files?”