Page 191 of Miss Wolcott’s Ghost

“We found another judge who agreed to let us exhume there. We found a fetus, a stillbirth. But nothing else. We think Brian Fillmore took the bouquet with him to lay on the other grave. He was at heart a romantic. He’d grown to care deeply about the people in the wreck and Miss Wolcott. It must have blown over to the other grave.”

“Is it possible Dr. Lagacé and Monsieur Fillmore didn’t find Miss Wolcott’s research? Maybe it was never buried there.”

“If not there, then where?” Armand mused to himself.

Maître Lebel expelled a huge breath, then looked down at his scribbled notes. “There are a lot of gaps over which you’ve made huge leaps of logic. You have no way of knowing what really happened on the Empress. Or what the Receiver of Wrecks really brought up. It might have had nothing to do with botany and seeds and some eccentric Victorian.”

“True.”

“This whole case against Dr. Lagacé rests on the motive being finding that research. Documents we have no idea exist.”

“That’s not totally true. We have Thomas Morrow’s, the Receiver of Wrecks, second ledger, the one where he documents his illegal activities. In it, he records that documents were brought up from the wreck.”

“I saw that. But not what they say or who they belonged to. You have Ghost in Lost Nation scribbled in a margin. Hardly a smoking gun. The documents the professor carried could have been, as your report suggests, Canada’s plans in preparation for the inevitable war that was looming.”

Gamache narrowed his eyes. “You—”

The prosecutor raised his brows. “Son of a bitch?”

“You read my report?”

“I did. I spent much of the early hours of this morning reading it. Fascinating. Not your usual dull document.”

“Then why—”

“Make you tell me? Because, as you probably know from interviews, people reveal more in conversation than any document can capture. I needed to hear it. I’m not quite the lazy fool you think I am, Armand. And I can see you are not the fucked-up, insecure, neurotic egotist I think you are.”

Gamache burst out laughing. “I’m not so sure about that, sir.” Then he leaned forward again. “Tell me, Bernard. Is there enough to charge her?”

“There’s enough to hold Dr. Lagacé for now, but I need more before I can charge her with first-degree murder. A good defense attorney will backfill your leaps with reasonable doubt. Get me more, Armand, and I will get you your conviction.”

CHAPTER 64

The first big break came just an hour later.

“We have it, patron,” Jean-Guy’s excited voice burst out of Gamache’s phone. “We’re on our way up.”

He and Isabelle arrived in Gamache’s office minutes later. They’d waited for the elevator. Then, impatient, they’d run up the stairs from the basement lab. Twelve flights.

Jean-Guy wheezed, and Isabelle sweated. And both grinned like children at a birthday party who’d just seen the cake.

Jean-Guy, bent over with one hand on his knee, held out the cassette.

“We haven’t listened,” said Isabelle, since Jean-Guy was still struggling for breath.

His eyes bright, he did manage to spit out, “Fixed.”

Isabelle was holding a tape player.

Armand came around the desk, almost afraid to believe them. “Comeau?”

“Yes,” said Isabelle. “He got us into Réunion. He’s right, they have an amazing lab, designed to restore old media and even documents. Our own people would be jealous. We need to remember—”

“Focus,” wheezed Jean-Guy. Then he gathered himself. “The shithead got us in, and our technician went to work. He managed to splice together the broken tape, and fix the crushed plastic—”

“We came back here so that our own lab could clean the tape. Took most of the night.”

It had been agonizing. Waiting to see if it worked. Or if the damaged tape was too far gone.