Page 2 of Miss Wolcott’s Ghost

“A body?”

He reached for the pen and notepad kept by the bed.

Armand waited, pen poised. The line kept dipping in and out. Crackling. He thought he’d lost the person until the voice, a man’s, young, vaguely familiar, came through with almost startling clarity, as though he’d materialized at the foot of their bed.

“There’s a body in Lost Nation.”

“Where?” demanded Armand, even as he scribbled on the pad. “Can you repeat?”

No longer Reine-Marie’s husband. No longer Annie and Daniel’s father. No longer grandfather to Florence and Zora, Honoré and Idola.

The man in pajamas sitting on the edge of the bed in the village of Three Pines, pressing the phone to his ear, was now Chief Inspector Gamache, the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec.

“Allô?” Pause. “Allô? Who is this?”

But the line was dead. He looked at the phone. There was no number. No name. It was as though a ghost had called them at—he made a note of the time—3:17 in the morning.

Reine-Marie dropped her eyes to the notepad. “Lost Nation? What does that mean?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

CHAPTER 2

Armand put on his bathrobe and quietly, so as not to disturb the household, went down to his study.

While Reine-Marie put on the coffee to perk, he placed a call to Sûreté headquarters.

“This is Chief Inspector Gamache. I need a call traced, an incoming to our personal phone.” He gave the number.

“Yessir. I’ll call you right back.”

“Non. I’ll hold.”

While he waited, he did an online search for Lost Nation. Québec. Nothing. Ontario? New Brunswick?

But no, it would have to be Québec. Otherwise, why call the head of homicide for the Sûreté? Someone knew who he was. Knew his jurisdiction. Knew his personal number.

There’s a body in Lost Nation.

Still waiting, Armand got up and consulted the map on the wall above his desk. It was, he knew, a lost cause since there were tens of thousands of towns and villages. The Canadian province was immense. The territory the Sûreté was responsible for, that Gamache was responsible for, was three times the size of France and stretched from the Arctic to the border with Vermont. From the Atlantic to the Ontario border.

More than 1.5 million square kilometers.

“Café?”

“Merci.” Armand took the mug and smiled at Reine-Marie. Then the two of them stared at the map, hoping, partly even believing, their eyes might actually land on it. They’d find Lost Nation.

“Chief Inspector?” said the voice down the phone.

“Oui?”

“I can see there was an incoming at 3:17 this morning, but the connection was too fragile, and too short, to be able to trace where it came from. But I do have a name.”

“What’s going on?” The question came from the doorway.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir, their son-in-law, stood on the threshold in his bathrobe, his dark hair standing up. Though Reine-Marie could see by his eyes, by his stance, that it was not, in fact, her daughter’s husband there. It was her husband’s second-in-command.

Inspector Beauvoir, while rumpled, was awake. Alert. Something had happened. Was happening.