That had been four days ago.

And now she was packed and ready to leave. Just one last cup of tea in the bistro, and she’d be off.

“Don’t go.”

Myrna had spoken softly.

“I have to.”

Constance broke eye contact with Myrna. It was altogether too intimate. Instead, she looked out the frosted windows, to the snow-covered village. It was dusk and Christmas lights were appearing on trees and homes.

“Can I come back? For Christmas?”

There was a long, long silence. And all Constance’s fears returned, crawling out of that silence. She dropped her eyes to her hands, neatly folded in her lap.

She’d exposed herself. Been tricked into thinking she was safe, she was liked, she was welcome.

Then she felt a large hand on her hand and she looked up.

“I’d love that,” Myrna said, and smiled. “We’ll have such fun.”

“Fun?” asked Gabri, plopping onto the sofa.

“Constance is coming back for Christmas.”

“Wonderful. You can come to the carol service on Christmas Eve. We do all the favorites. ‘Silent Night.’ ‘The First Noël’—”

“‘The Twelve Gays of Christmas,’” said Clara.

“‘It Came Upon a Midnight Queer,’” said Myrna.

“The classics,” said Gabri. “Though this year we’re practicing a new one.”

“Not ‘O Holy Night,’ I hope,” said Constance. “Not sure I’m ready for that one.”

Gabri laughed. “No. ‘The Huron Carol.’ Do you know it?” He sang a few bars of the old Québécois carol.

“I love that one,” she said. “But no one does it anymore.”

Though it shouldn’t have surprised her that in this little village she’d find something else that had been all but lost to the outside world.

Constance said her good-byes, and to calls of “À bientôt!,” she and Myrna walked to her car.

Constance started it to warm up. It was getting too dark to play hockey and the kids were just leaving the rink, wobbling through the snow on their skates, using their hockey sticks for balance.

It was now or never, Constance knew.

“We used to do that,” she said, and Myrna followed her gaze.

“Play hockey?”

Constance nodded. “We had our own team. Our father would coach us. Mama would cheer. It was Frère André’s favorite sport.”

She met Myrna’s eyes. There, she thought. Done. The dirty secret was finally out in the open. When she returned, Myrna would have lots of questions. And finally, finally, Constance knew she would answer them.

Myrna watched her friend leave, and thought no more of that conversation.

THREE

“Think carefully,” said Armand Gamache. His voice was almost neutral. Almost. But there was no mistaking the look in his deep brown eyes.

They were hard, and cold. And unyielding.

He stared at the agent over his half-moon reading glasses and waited.

The conference room grew quiet. The shuffling of papers, the slight and insolent whispering, died out. Even the amused glances stopped.

And all focused on Chief Inspector Gamache.

Beside him, Inspector Isabelle Lacoste shifted her glance from the Chief to the assembled agents and inspectors. It was the weekly briefing for the homicide department of the Sûreté du Québec. A gathering meant to exchange ideas and information on cases under investigation. Where once it had been collaborative, now it was an hour she’d come to dread.

And if she felt like that, how did the Chief Inspector feel?

It was hard to tell anymore, what the Chief really felt and thought.

Isabelle Lacoste knew him better than anyone else in the room. Had served with him longest, she realized with surprise. The rest of the old guard had been transferred out, either by request or on the orders of Chief Superintendent Francoeur.

And this rabble had been transferred in.

The most successful homicide department in the nation had been gutted, replaced with lazy, insolent, incompetent thugs. Or were they incompetent? Certainly as homicide investigators they were, but was that really their job?

Of course not. She, and she suspected Gamache, knew why these men and women were really there. And it wasn’t to solve murders.

Despite this, Chief Inspector Gamache still managed to command them. To control them. Just barely. The balance was tipping, Lacoste could feel it. Every day more new agents were brought in. She could see them exchanging knowing smiles.