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“Pardon?”

“The drawing on the letter,” said Beauvoir. “What does it mean?”

“How should I know?”

“I think, Dr. Gilbert,” said Gamache, “you’ve proven there’s a great deal you do know that you’re not admitting. Madame Horton died recently. In the attic the family found boxes filled with, among other things, monkeys. Dolls. Books. Drawings. Why this fixation on monkeys?”

Gilbert was silent for a moment. Sullen. But as the silence went on, his expression changed. His face opened, in realization.

“There was a woman in the room next to where the animals were kept. She was part of the sleep-deprivation trials. She must have heard . . .”

They looked down at the drawing, the first one. Of the terrified animal with the human eyes.

The monkeys, their screaming, must have, in her muddled near-demented state, become part of her nightmares. Become part of her. The lab monkeys had fused to her shattered mind and stayed there.

In drawing them, she freed them. An act of compassion that the great Dr. Gilbert could never achieve.

“Do you also hear them?” Armand asked.

Had Gilbert also conflated the animals and the people? And convinced himself it wasn’t people he’d heard screaming? Begging for help. Searching, with wild eyes, for one decent person to free them.

“Not monkeys, no.” Gilbert paused before going on. “Have you ever heard a blue jay shriek?”

And they had their answer. Vincent Gilbert thought he’d find refuge, peace, deep in the forest. But all he’d done was go deeper into the nightmare. Where all the wild creatures, the forest itself, screamed at him. Every day and all night long.

But if he could just do one magnificent thing, maybe he and they would be free.

Maybe, thought Beauvoir, the Wicked Angel would be redeemed.

Maybe, thought Gamache, the era of prominent madmen would end.

“When Abigail Robinson threw Ewen Cameron in your face last night,” he said, “what did you think?”

“I thought she knew.”

“And?”

“And I was afraid.”

“And?”

Gilbert shifted in his seat. “And you want me to say I tried to kill her? To keep her quiet? But that I killed her friend by mistake?”

“Tell us, Vincent,” said Gamache, leaning forward.

“The truth? Yes, I saw a chance to redeem myself. Not because she knew about my work with Cameron, but because what she’s proposing is wrong, on every level. It was too late to stop her with intellectual arguments. I’d missed my chance. I should have done something when Colette sent me the paper. But now I could make it right. I’d failed to save those men and women years ago, I’d failed to help in the pandemic. I’d failed to condemn her work when I first read it, but now, maybe I could make up for it. Abigail Robinson has to be stopped. I knew that. You know that.” He stared at Gamache.

Beauvoir looked over at Gamache. They had him. It was over.

“And?” said Gamache. They needed to hear him say it.

“And nothing. Someone got there first. Except they messed it up. Killed the wrong person.” He held Gamache’s eyes. “I wouldn’t have made that mistake. I’m not the one you’re looking for, Armand.”

“Were you and Colette Roberge in this together?” Gamache asked. “Did she know what you had planned?”

“All she knew is that I was determined to stop Professor Robinson.”

“She brought Professor Robinson to the party so you could kill her,” said Beauvoir.