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“I’m the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec.”

“The what?”

“The police force in the Canadian province of Québec.”

“And you’re here? With a body?” The cop made it sound like he’d brought the body with him.

“I hadn’t expected to find her.”

“You need to stay there.” The voice had gone from courteous to curt. “Our people will have some questions for you.”

“Absolutely. I understand.”

Seemed he should have registered with them after all.

While he waited, Armand knelt again and examined her hands. The nails were broken, and there were splinters buried deep in the flesh.

He took photos and sent them to Beauvoir, Lacoste, and Sûreté forensics.

Then he carefully made his way up each flight. The UK cop had told him to stay there but hadn’t defined “there.” He chose to interpret it to mean the estate.

As he climbed, he reflected on how officious cops could sound, and how annoying witnesses could be.

At each floor, he stopped to examine the opening made by her plunging body. The wood was clearly rotten. Dried blood, hair, and strands of material were snagged on the shards.

More photos.

At the top floor, he knelt and examined the original break. It looked to him as though her weight on the rotten floorboards caused them to collapse. He could see scuff marks and dried blood where her hands scrambled and scratched, trying to stop herself from sliding over the edge. That was consistent with her broken nails and splinters in her torn fingers.

Was it an accident? It looked like it.

But this wasn’t his case. Though it did dovetail with his own murder investigation.

He had no doubt the body was that of Jeanette Bouchard. He’d known that from the first inhale of rotting flesh. She’d been lying there for several weeks. Perhaps since June 5. The last time her mother heard from her. Though the search of her phone and computer would tell them more.

He’d promised Jeanette’s mother to call when he had news. That was a call he’d have to make. Though he suspected the local police would want to be the first to speak to her.

He sent off another series of photographs and read the message from Lacoste. Brian Fillmore had been to Macdonald Campus, to see, and probably claim, what was left of the Wolcott collection.

And what had been left was a man’s suit. And a seed.

“Huh,” he muttered.

So, Brian Fillmore paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for an old suit of clothing. Why did he want it so badly? Did he know about the seed? Is that what he really wanted? And yet he’d left a seed of Miss Wolcott’s Ghost behind in the trunk.

Wouldn’t he have taken that with him, if he’d thought it was valuable?

The only answer was that he did not know exactly what he was looking for. Or what Miss Wolcott’s collection contained. Its value.

Sadly, neither did they. Without her notes it would be almost impossible to know.

That suit was, Armand knew, almost certainly what Brian Fillmore had been wearing when he was killed. In a final attempt to save the endangered plant, had she brought it, along with her notes, to Macdonald College? Her own Doomsday Vault.

In their message, Isabelle said they were going to Dr. Lagacé’s office at Macdonald Campus, to confirm that the seed was indeed Miss Wolcott’s Ghost.

Armand hadn’t realized Aimée Lagacé taught there, though he should have. It was, after all, the preeminent agricultural and horticultural college in Québec.

Things were beginning to make sense, on all sorts of levels. Including how Miss Wolcott’s Ghost came to grow on that grave.