Page 34 of Miss Wolcott’s Ghost

As Ruth left the Old Train Station, she wondered if maybe there wasn’t something there. The Brian Fillmore they’d met, Clara’s cousin, was a little eccentric, now that she thought about it. If for no other reason than the clothes he wore.

Yes, she’d have to ask Clara and the others about him. There was something strange there. And if anyone knew strange, it was Ruth Zardo.

But things were about to get a whole lot stranger.

Dr. Lagacé stepped over the outer ring of crime scene tape. The Chief Inspector nodded to the agent on duty, who had saluted.

“An odd place to bury people,” the botanist said as she followed Gamache deeper into the wood. “In the middle of a forest. I wonder why.”

“It wasn’t a forest when they were buried. It was fields. The forest grew up around them.”

It seemed to him more than a little poetic. He, alone among them, had heard Flossy Fuller’s story. The people buried here had cut down trees. Cleared the land. Logged the forest. Fed off it.

And now the trees fed off them. The people of Lost Nation were now part of the very woods they’d worked.

Dr. Lagacé jogged to keep up with the long strides of the Chief Inspector. “You’re with homicide. This is a murder, right?”

For the first time, the scientist’s excitement had waned. She looked serious, even, almost pale.

“Yes.”

Dr. Lagacé gave a curt nod and hurried forward. But after only a few steps, she reached for Gamache.

“Stop.”

“What is it?” Then he followed her eyes. She was staring at the grave.

“It’s Miss Wolcott’s Ghost.”

CHAPTER 16

“Miss Wolcott’s Ghost?” said Gamache. “What do you mean?”

He was looking at Dr. Lagacé. Behind her, he could see Jean-Guy and Isabelle. Both standing very still. Looking at the grave. To see if they could also see an apparition.

As homicide investigators, they were deeply rational. Digging for facts, collecting evidence. But it was, finally, not facts but feelings that would lead them to the truth. To the murderer.

Facts could only take them so far. It was the things they couldn’t see that would reveal who had committed the terrible act. Who had made a ghost.

None of the officers standing in the cemetery under the spreading maple trees, infused with those who’d cleared the land, dismissed what the botanist had just said as delusion.

Those who hunted killers knew that ghosts existed, though were extremely rare.

Was there one with them now? A Miss Wolcott? But there wasn’t a tombstone with that name. Maybe she was the one in the grave where they found the body. Risen and angered by the violation of her peace.

“I mean exactly that.” The botanist pointed to the grave. “Don’t you see it?”

“I see nothing,” said Beauvoir.

“Then you’re blind. Look!”

“Wait a minute,” said Lacoste. “Do you mean the plant?”

“Of course I mean the plant. You didn’t think I meant a real ghost?”

Suddenly galvanized, Aimée Lagacé ran to the grave and fell to her knees. Reaching out, she cupped one of the plants, as she might hold the face of an infant.

“Miss Wolcott’s Ghost,” she whispered, and looked up at Gamache, who was standing beside her. “We all thought it was extinct.” She looked around. “What’s it doing here?”