Page 75 of Miss Wolcott’s Ghost

Charles Fillmore was holding out a piece of paper. “The shops in London where Brian gets his clothes.”

Gamache took the paper, glanced at it, then stuck it in his pocket. “Merci.”

There was a pause in the conversation before Charles spoke again.

“I did get worried about him at one stage. Brian, I mean. About his behavior. But then I realized these eccentricities are just Brian. So, no, Chief Inspector. He’s not odd.”

Gamache hadn’t said that he was. Though he was beginning to wonder about this brother.

Charles was examining him, searching for a reaction. But Gamache was just listening. There was no hint of judgment, only interest.

“He told me once…” Charles studied the cop’s face before taking the plunge. “That he believes in reincarnation. He said he believes that he was once Aldous Clybourne.”

Charles’s stare was now intense, trying to judge the Chief Inspector’s reaction. But there was none. Gamache’s face remained composed.

“I know, I know.” Charles lifted his hand. “It sounds ridiculous. But is it really that odd to think you’d had a prior life? Haven’t you ever had that feeling? Walked into a house, or gone to a town you’d never visited, and felt like you knew it? Or met a person for the first time and knew instantly that you belonged together?”

In fact, that was exactly what had happened when he’d met Reine-Marie. And how he’d felt when he first crested the hill and saw the tiny village of Three Pines. It had always mystified Armand.

“And what did that belief lead him to do?”

“Well, for one, he put up the picture of James Clybourne on our site.”

“The man he considers his grandson?”

“Look, I know this all sounds absurd, but it did no harm.”

To Armand’s ears, this man was sounding more and more adamant that his brother wasn’t strange. While saying everything he could to prove he was.

Gamache rose. “May I see his office, please?”

CHAPTER 28

“Isabelle? It’s Sharon. I’ve just finished a second examination of the body, and I’ve received the DNA results. It’s definitely a man.”

“Hold on.” Lacoste, back in the Incident Room, sent off a quick message to the Chief and Beauvoir. Then she took her mug of tea over to the corkboard and stood in front of the photographs from Lost Nation.

The body. The grave. The riot of Miss Wolcott’s Ghost. The tombstone.

“Any more idea what the weapon might have been?”

“It was heavy and seemed to be both flat and sharp.”

She made it sound like a piece of music.

“Merci.”

Armand’s phone buzzed. After glancing at the message from Isabelle, he slid the device back into his pocket.

“I still don’t understand what you want from me, from us, Chief Inspector.”

They were standing in the corridor outside the closed door into Brian Fillmore’s office. This building had once been a schmata factory, for the burgeoning rag trade in Montréal, but had closed and sat empty for decades before the Fillmores bought it. There were still traces of the clothing trade, in the marks on the concrete floors and stencils on the walls.

“A murder investigation is never linear, Monsieur Fillmore. We need to follow up all sorts of leads, however tenuous.”

“But what does this have to do with Brian? If the victim was one of our clients, Brian wouldn’t have anything to do with that. He didn’t deal directly with clients.”

“I didn’t say the victim is one of your clients.”