Olivier shrugged.

“Keep looking,” said Gamache, kneeling by the overturned blanket box. He could feel the fire behind him and hear the clock above him.

Chapter 40

CHAPTER 40

“What is it?” Beauvoir asked, taking a seat next to Ruth in her living room.

Monsieur Béliveau sat across from them on a lawn chair that looked familiar because it had once belonged to the grocer.

Ruth’s home was furnished with what she described as “found” objects. Found, that is, in other people’s homes.

“I know where the plans are.”

“Where?” he asked.

She leaned forward and tapped the play, which was sitting on a plank of wood held up by a stack of books found in Myrna’s bookstore.

“The play?” demanded Jean-Guy. “We already know that.”

“Not the play, numbnuts,” she snapped. “This.”

She thumped the cover and now his eyes widened in frustration.

“For Christ’s sake, what are you saying?”

But then he saw what she’d been indicating. Not the play itself, but the title.

“She Sat Down and Wept?” he said. “You think the title’s the key?”

“It’s a reference to Babylon, isn’t it?” said Ruth. “And what would Fleming want to immortalize? What would give him the most pleasure?”

“A moment of despair,” said Monsieur Béliveau.

“I don’t understand.”

“He came asking for help and I sent him to Al Lepage,” she said. “I’d have done anything to get him away from me.”

Beauvoir was listening, nodding. None of this was new, so why was she repeating herself? Once again, she tapped the title.

She Sat Down and Wept.

“Why did he call it that?” Ruth asked. “We just read it. At no stage does any woman actually sit down and weep. No one does. So why call it that?”

*   *   *

Gamache looked at the mess on the floor of the bistro. Old newspapers and magazines were scattered everywhere. But no plans.

What was he missing? It was ten to six and they were no closer to finding the designs for Project Babylon.

He looked at the play, the goddamned play, which he’d tossed onto one of the armchairs at the bistro. Had Fleming lied? It seemed likely now.

She Sat Down and Wept. She Sat Down and Wept.

It was, he had to admit, a strange title. No one in the play, man or woman, ever sat down and cried. Or stood up and cried. No one wept at all.