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Columbine. He asked his phone what it meant, in the language of flowers. Up came the answer.

Folly.

CHAPTER 49

Once at the airport in Lyon, Armand went to the Air Canada counter and was just about to book the return flight when he changed him mind.

Less than two hours later, he was in the air. His plan was to go to the only other of Miss Wolcott’s estates they knew about.

Her ancestral home. Her original garden, in Suffolk.

But there was a stop he had to make first. His suspicions were growing. About Jeanette Bouchard’s role in all this. And how she might have been recruited.

But he needed a botanist. What had the librarian said? When it came to plants, a botanist would always be the first port of call. And she was right.

It took much longer and proved far more difficult than Isabelle thought to track down that ship Miss Wolcott took out of Liverpool in 1906.

Finally she’d thought to call the Receiver of Wrecks.

The idea came to her because she’d just been reading through the ledger he’d sent. Thomas Morrow’s official accounting. According to Monsieur Morrow, what they brought up were personal letters and photographs, along with stock certificates, bonds, legal documents proving ownership of property or businesses.

But nothing that could be considered sensitive. Or of great value to anyone other than the families of the victims. And certainly nothing worth killing for. Though the senior homicide investigator knew that “worth” was subjective.

If valuable documents existed at all, they would be noted in the second ledger. If that existed at all.

But this document did contain something of immense value. There, in the margin, almost illegible, was that word that had baffled so many for so long. Ghost. It looked like an attempt had been made, almost certainly by Thomas Morrow, to erase it. So that the word itself looks ghostly on the page. But there was something else, more words, also smudged out. She turned the page. There were the indents from the letters. Taking out a soft pencil, she rubbed gently, and a few letters resurfaced.

o t N t n.

She sat back and smiled. “Gotcha.”

Morrow had written Ghost in Lost Nation, then tried to erase it, in too much of a hurry. Had Fillmore also seen it? Probably.

She tried to imagine how Brian Fillmore must have felt when he saw it. This was the Rosetta stone. The key that suddenly made sense out of nonsense.

That told him where the treasure was buried. Now he just had to find Lost Nation.

“Bonjour, Inspector Lacoste,” said the Receiver of Wrecks. “I hope what I sent has been helpful.”

“It was.”

That clearly surprised the man on the other end of the call. “Really? How? What did you find?”

“I’ll tell you later. For now, I’m wondering if you can find out about a ship that sailed out of Liverpool on June 29, 1906.”

She could hear him writing down the date. “It should be possible. I’ll get back to you.”

True to his word, within half an hour he’d called.

“You won’t believe it—”

Though, like Armand, Isabelle thought she probably would.

“It’s the Empress of Ireland. On her maiden voyage from Liverpool to Québec City.”

“Was there a Miss Daisy Wolcott onboard?”

“I’m sure I can get the passenger list, but it might take a little while.”