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“I was thinking that maybe it’s not so bad being a witch.” She glanced down at his knapsack. “What else have you got in there?”

It wasn’t quite empty, and she hoped maybe he’d brought a cake. It was the right shape for a lemon loaf, though it looked too heavy for that.

She reached for it.

“I’m sending the family up to the lake with four agents,” said Jean-Guy. He named them and Armand nodded approval. They were good, they could be trusted. “I’m on my way back to Three Pines, but I had a thought.”

“Go on.”

“Suppose it’s Godin.”

“Fleming?” Gamache was about to point out that Monsieur and Madame Godin had been married for forty years and living in that house for fifteen. Godin could not be Fleming. But then he realized …

“Do we know for sure that is Monsieur Godin?” Beauvoir asked, just as Gamache got to that thought. “His ID checks out, but those could be faked. Fleming could have killed them both, then pretended to be Godin, knowing we’d show up.”

It could be, thought Armand. Godin was roughly the right age. He was taller, and heftier, but those could be changed with lifts in shoes and an intentional weight gain. Even eye color could be changed with contacts.

“There was her funeral,” said Gamache. “People would have seen that it wasn’t the real Godin. Their children would have seen it right away.”

“True,” said Beauvoir. “Maybe Fleming killed Madame Godin five weeks ago, but only killed Monsieur Godin a few days ago. Just before we arrived. Knowing we were coming.”

“But how could he know? We didn’t even know. At the time there’d been no crime, just the loft room and those items. It was strange, but not illegal. Billy and I were curious to speak to the Godins, that’s all. It wasn’t until we realized Madame Godin had been murdered that things changed.”

But then he thought about what Captain Moel had said. That Fleming was in control, manipulating them. It was possible hints were dropped that they didn’t even pick up on.

Yes, it was possible that Godin was Fleming. Just.

“Do we have a DNA sample of Monsieur Godin?” he asked.

“We do. And prints. I can check them against Fleming’s records.”

“That won’t work. The official records have been replaced.”

“Shit, of course. Fucking warden. We might be able to find one in the prosecutor’s office.”

“That’ll take time and probably a warrant. Still, worth trying. While you do that, I’ll go over to the Godin place.”

“Wait. Don’t go alone, patron. I can meet you there in forty minutes, maybe less.”

Armand paused and looked up the hill to the small chapel.

“All right. Park where he can’t see us. We need this to be a surprise.”

Though Gamache had the uneasy feeling that nothing they did would surprise John Fleming.

“One other thing. The warden told me that a woman passed messages to Fleming in the SHU, through the head guard. He said it was Fleming’s wife.”

“His wife? There’s nothing about that in the files, and nothing was said about a wife or family at his trial.”

Though there was definitely a woman in this somewhere, wife or not. The Mountweazel fiction.

“The last we see of her,” said Gamache, “was several months ago, when she ‘lost’ the Stone letter at the Norwich Castle Museum. Maybe her job’s done.”

They both knew what happened to people in Fleming’s orbit once that happened. What would he do with an old chair that was no longer needed?

“Why go through all that palaver with the letter?” Jean-Guy asked.

“‘Palaver’? Have you been talking to Ruth again?”