“Everything. She told me everything, Thomas. How she killed Vinca and how your mother and Francis helped her cover it up.”

Suddenly I understood why Pianelli had seemed agitated when he drove me to the police station. He had not simply been upset by my mother’s death; he was overwhelmed that he had stumbled onto a murder story.

“Did she tell you what happened to Alexis Clément?”

“No,” he admitted. “That’s the one piece of the puzzle I’m still missing.”

The traffic light turned green and the Dacia turned onto the highway, heading toward La Constance. I felt completely crushed. I could barely think straight. I felt as though the day would never end, as though a wave would come and sweep everything away. There had been too many revelations, too many tragedies, too many deaths; there were too many threats still hanging over those dearest to me. So I did what no one should ever do. I let down my guard. I broke my twenty-five-year silence because I wanted to believe in people. I wanted to believe that Pianelli was a decent guy, that he would put our friendship before his job as a journalist.

I told him everything, about Clément’s murder and what I had found out in the past few hours. When he reached my parents’ house, Pianelli parked outside the gates and left the engine running. We sat talking in the battered SUV for half an hour, trying to figure things out. Stéphane patiently helped me piece together what had happened the previous afternoon. My mother had obviously overheard my conversation with Maxime. Like me, she had probably spotted the difference between the handwriting in Vinca’s book and the handwriting in the notes Alexis Clément had made on my essay. Unlike me, she had been able to use this to identify the person who had murdered Francis. Either she had arranged to meet the killer or she had tracked him to Cap d’Antibes, planning to kill him. In a nutshell, she had succeeded where we had failed; she had unmasked the monster whose murderous rage seemed boundless.

It was an insight that had cost her her life.

“Try to get some rest,” Stéphane said, hugging me. “I’ll call you later. We can go to the hospital and see how Maxime is doing.”