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“Oui.” Billy got up.

“Where’re you going?”

“To look.”

“That’ll wait. I want to talk to you about the letter.” Billy sat down again. “What do you really think of it?”

“I can’t see that the letter is the strangest thing about today.”

Armand smiled. “Agreed, but it is where all this started. With Pierre Stone.” He looked down at the paper, now sitting on the table. “I wonder if whoever sent it to you, or to your old house, wanted you to go looking for the hidden room.”

“But we didn’t. I showed it to Ruth, but we just dismissed it. It wasn’t until Fiona mentioned the room yesterday that we thought to look. But there is something strange about the letter.”

“What?”

“I don’t think Pierre Stone wrote it.”

“Go on.”

“Pierre was a skilled craftsman, but I doubt he got beyond third grade, if that. He’d have been literate enough to be able to read plans, but this—” Billy tapped the old paper and shook his head. “This was written by an educated person.”

Billy had hit on something that had niggled at Armand since reading the letter, but he hadn’t quite put it together. It didn’t seem like the sort of letter a stonemason a century and a half ago, living in the countryside, would write.

“He might’ve had someone else write it,” said Armand, wanting to explore all the corners. “Though it seems unlikely. This is a very personal letter, describing something clearly meant to be private, even secret. Why did you show it to Ruth?”

“She knows the history of Three Pines better than anyone. I thought if there was a hidden room, she might know about it. Might know the story. The room might’ve already been found and it was all in the past. Behind us.”

But it was not. Something was in front of them. Approaching. Or already there.

“I can’t believe we found a grimoire,” said Reine-Marie, still clutching it. “The only one I’ve heard of belonged to a woman in Montréal three hundred years ago. But it was lost, probably destroyed by the church.”

“Anne Lamarque,” said Ruth.

“You know her?” Very little about Ruth surprised Reine-Marie, but this did.

“We never met,” said Ruth.

Harriet laughed. Then, seeing the serious look on Ruth’s face, she stopped. And looked at Gabri, who did not seem surprised.

“She’d be very old,” he whispered to Harriet. “Pickled.”

“Who’s this Anne Lamarque?” asked Myrna.

“A witch,” said Ruth.

“Oh, God,” moaned Gabri. “Of course she is.”

“You think it belonged to her?” asked Myrna. “Is that possible? What’s it doing here?”

Reine-Marie opened the grimoire and carefully, carefully turned the first few pages. There were notations in the margins. Drawings of plants. What looked like recipes.

“No name,” she said. “But that can’t be a surprise. A grimoire would be proof of witchcraft. The Catholic Church in New France frowned on that.”

It was an intentional and monumental understatement. Bishop Laval, a Jesuit and head of the church in the New World, had hunted down and punished anyone even suspected of witchery.

No. No one would be foolish enough to put their name on a grimoire.

“Can you get me a knife?” Reine-Marie asked.