Bury Your Dead

lifetime, they stopped seeing it as it is, instead always seeing it as it was.

And yet, the outside of the home had been kept up. Painted, repaired.

“Speaking of small communities, do you know the Mundin family?”

“The Mundins? Yes, of course. He ran a successful antique shop on Petit-Champlain for years. Had beautiful things. I’ve taken a few things there.”

Gamache looked at her quizzically.

“To sell, Chief Inspector.”

It was said without flinching, without blushing, without apology. A statement of fact.

And he had his answer. She noticed everything but used her modest income to only repair the outside. The facade, the public face. The famous MacWhirter fortune had disappeared, become a fiction, one she chose to keep up.

This was a woman for whom appearances mattered, facades mattered. What would she be willing to do, to keep it in place?

“There was a tragedy, I hear,” he said. “With the Mundin family.”

“Yes, very sad. He killed himself one spring. Walked out onto the river and fell in. They called it an accident, but we all knew.”

“Thin ice.”

She smiled slightly. “Just so.”

“And why did he do it, do you think?”

Elizabeth thought about it then shook her head. “I can’t imagine. He seemed happy, but then things aren’t always as they seem.”

Like the gleaming paint, the pointed stones, the perfect exterior of this home.

“Had a couple of children though I only met the one. His son. Adorable, with curly blond hair. Used to follow his father everywhere. He had a nickname for him. Can’t remember it now.”

“Old.”

“Pardon?”

“ ‘Old’ was the nickname.”

“Yes, that’s right. ‘Old son,’ his father would say. I wonder what became of the boy.”

“He lives in a village called Three Pines, making and restoring furniture.”

“The things we learn from our parents,” said Elizabeth with a smile.

“My father taught me the fiddle,” said Agent Morin. “Did your father teach you an instrument?”

“No, though he used to love to sing. My father taught me poetry. We’d go for long walks through Outremont and onto Mont Royal, and he’d recite poetry. I’d repeat it. Not well, most of the words meant nothing to me, but I remembered it all, every word. Only later did I realize what it meant.”

“And what did it mean?”

“It meant the world,” said Gamache. “My father died when I was nine.”

Morin paused. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine losing my father, even now. It must have been terrible.”

“It was.”

“And your mother? It must have been awful for her.”

“She died too. It was a car accident.”

“I’m sorry,” said the voice, small now, in pain for the large man sitting comfortably in his office while the young agent was all alone, tied to a hard chair, strapped to a bomb, facing a wall with a clock.

Counting down. Six hours and twenty-three minutes left.

And on Gamache’s computer the rapid instant messages from his team, covertly following leads.

It was clear now the young agent wasn’t being held at the La Grande dam. Agent Nichol and Inspector Beauvoir couldn’t pick up the sounds of the massive turbines. But they could pick up other sounds. Trains. Some freight according to Nichol. Some passenger. Planes overhead.

Agent Nichol stripped back layer after layer of sound. Isolating bits and pieces.

We can’t trace the call because it’s embedded, her message had said.

What does that mean? Gamache had written.

It’s like a hobo, riding along on a telecommunication line. Popping up here and there. That’s why he seems to be everywhere at once.

Can you find which line?

Not enough time, Nichol replied.

Six hours left. Then two things would happen, simultaneously. A bomb would destroy the biggest dam in North America. And Agent Paul Morin would be executed.

As the moments ticked down Chief Inspector Armand Gamache knew a terrible decision was racing toward