“You were looking on the McGill site. Are you also going to check out the Université de Montréal? They have some terrific courses. Will you audit classes, or go for a degree?”

“I wasn’t looking up courses, Armand. I was looking up Gerald Bull. For a man whose work was supposedly secret, there’s a surprising amount out there about him if you know the keywords, like Project Babylon. The public search engines like Google have a fair amount, all saying much the same thing. But it gets really interesting once you go into the private records.”

“Private?” he asked, sitting up.

“I’m an archivist,” she reminded him. “Like a priest, we never really retire.” She held up the sheaf of papers. “And I have the codes to the private McGill archives.”

“Bless you,” said Armand, reaching for the printouts and his glasses. “What did you find?”

“Well, Gerald Bull was considered a bit of a failure in both his own academic record and his work. He seems to have been a great big pain in the derrière. According to his personnel file at McGill, he sort of muddled along, alienating everyone who came into contact with him. He was a big personality, with big and what were considered crazy ideas. No one wanted to work with him.”

“Why didn’t they get rid of him?”

“They did eventually, though it’s couched in all sorts of diplomatic, nonactionable terms. But they kept him on for a long time in the hopes that one of his outlandish ideas might work.”

“Which, of course, it did,” said Armand. He studied the papers, then looked up at her. “But by then he was long gone. When was he born?”

Reine-Marie scanned her notes. “March 9, 1928.”

Gamache did a quick calculation. “That would put him well into his eighties now. Almost ninety.”

Reine-Marie looked at him, puzzled. “But he’s dead. You know that. Dr. Bull was killed in 1990, at the age of”—she worked it out—“sixty-two.”

“Yes,” said Armand, leaning back in his chair.

“What’re you thinking?”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s ridiculous.”

“You’re wondering if Gerald Bull is still alive?” she asked, astonished.

“I’ve spent too many years being suspicious,” he said with a smile. “Forget I said anything.” He held up his weak Scotch. “Blame it on the Lysol.”

“Armand, there is something odd in the files.”

She took a couple of the sheets from his hands and lowered her glasses from the top of her head where they rested, to her eyes. Words and sometimes whole lines had been blacked out, redacted, on the pages. Even the secret files continued to hold some secrets.

“I’m used to seeing this,” she said. “Notes and papers are sent to the archives, but are edited by security first. It’s often the personal diaries of politicians or scientists, so I wasn’t particularly surprised.”