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“I’d love to meet her.” Again the women spoke in unison.

“I did my thesis on her,” said Maryse.

“I went to her first solo show at the Musée d’art contemporain,” said Dr. Louissaint, as though trying to one-up Maryse.

“Perhaps…,” suggested Gamache, and tilted his head toward the painting on the floor.

“Right, désolée. Whoever did this just painted over the copy and added their own bits.” She pulled the loupe over her eyes again and turned to Gamache as though examining him closely. “Now why would anyone do this?”

He shook his head and hoped those glasses didn’t help her see his complete and utter bafflement. Though it was hardly hidden.

Dr. Louissaint knelt down again and minutely examined the canvas before struggling back up.

Gamache helped her to her feet, and she thanked him. “Too many years kneeling on cold floors or standing on scaffolding trying to save murals.”

“I know the feeling.” He did not say what he’d spent years kneeling beside. And that they were beyond saving.

Dr. Louissaint took off her headgear and stared down at the painting. Then she stepped back, taking in the full effect of the overpainted image.

“There’s something about it, isn’t there? And not just because of the deliberately modern touches, which are bizarre, and yet seem to fit in. It’s both compelling and”—Dr. Louissaint searched for the word—“offensive. I’m not sure that’s the right word. But close. It’s not just because of the young Black man as part of the Paston collection, or the fact they’ve ruined a masterpiece. It’s something else.”

Gamache felt it too. “Offensive” was, he thought, the right word. Offensive in all its meaning. It not only offended, but there was something aggressive about it. It seemed an attack, even as it just lay there on the cold concrete floor.

Dr. Louissaint wandered the room, walking off stiff joints. She stopped at the open door to the evidence locker, stared. And turned.

“What’s that?”

Gamache joined her. “The book?” He assumed she’d seen the grimoire.

“No, the elephant. Can I see it?”

Gamache put on gloves and brought the statue out. She took his elbow in an imperious way and walked him and the elephant over to a window. Re-donning her loupe, she bent close to the bronze sculpture. Getting Gamache to turn it this way and that.

“Nice, nice,” she mumbled. “Late eighteenth century. Maybe early nineteenth. Indian, of course. Solid?”

She peered at Gamache, who nodded. It was getting heavy in his hands.

“But these markings don’t make sense,” she continued. “Any work like this I’ve seen has had almost no etching. Besides”—she leaned closer, then lifted her headgear—“it’s recent. Someone’s put them on in the last couple of years, I’d say.”

He looked at the lines more closely. Then at Dr. Louissaint. “Do they look at all familiar?”

“No. They look like Sanskrit or…” She looked closer. “No, not hieroglyphics. But they do appear to be writing of some sort.” She turned to look back at the huge canvas. “There are similar marks on the painting.”

He stared at her for a moment, then both of them almost ran back to the canvas and knelt beside it.

He couldn’t see them, but when she handed him her special glasses, they popped out. There they were, passing as wood grain. As texture in the heavy curtains. Etched into the trumpet.

What had looked like random lines to the naked eye now came into focus. They were shapes. He looked up and down, left and right. Scanning the immense canvas. They were everywhere.

It was as though the painting were screaming at him. Trying to tell him something.

CHAPTER 24

While Dr. Louissaint continued her examination, Armand placed a call to a former colleague, now retired and living in Vancouver.

Thérèse Brunel had been a senior officer in the Sûreté. She worked well past retirement, partly because she was so valuable to the force and partly because no one had the guts to have “that” conversation with her.

She’d come into policing later in life after a career as a senior curator with the Musée des beaux-arts. An investigation into art theft brought her into contact with the Sûreté, and she discovered a fascination with, and aptitude for, crime. Solving.