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“Not a bioweapon?” asked Armand.
“Not even close,” said Agrawal with a laugh. “Just the opposite.”
“I went to her estate and found the folly you described, Chief Inspector,” said Lamontagne. “I cleaned off the rest of the soot. What she wrote up there wasn’t just a list of odd plants she’d found and brought back, apparently at random. They’re all very special, with unique properties.”
“Healing properties,” the professor from Cambridge leaped in when Lamontagne took a breath. “She tried to tell us. Tell the academic community. Her peers. Anyone and everyone. But no one listened.”
“She was considered a kook, a madwoman,” said Lamontagne.
“What’s in there”—Agrawal pointed to the documents—“are recipes she picked up in her travels for serums, poultices, ointments.”
Professor Lamontagne placed her hand on the photocopies. The pages were dog-eared and stained with rings from mugs of coffee and tea and glasses of wine. There was dirt smeared on some of the pages, and a large mustard splotch.
“She discovered medicines years, decades, before anyone else thought to take a look,” said the Québécoise prof.
“Primrose, rosemary, digitalis,” said the Cambridge prof. “We know about their healing properties now, but a hundred years ago? The idea that a plant could be more than decorative was considered lunatic.”
“Anyone who returned from explorations claiming that witch doctors had given them recipes for cures was accused of ‘going native.’ It was not considered a good thing.”
“Periwinkle?” said Gamache. He was holding Reine-Marie’s hand and squeezing. Just this side of painful.
Professor Agrawal nodded. “Not just periwinkle, Madagascar periwinkle. That was our first clue. It’s only in the last few years that researchers have discovered the potential of that plant in treating cancer. Like I told you over dinner in Cambridge, the findings are beyond exciting.”
“And Daisy Wolcott described it a hundred years ago,” said Lamontagne. “If only…”
They fell silent, imagining what might have been, had anyone listened to her.
“But you say we know about them now,” said Reine-Marie. “So, there’s no longer any value in her findings. In 1914, yes. But not anymore.”
“That’s true for all of the plants she brought back and described, except one,” said Lamontagne.
“Miss Wolcott’s Ghost?” said Armand.
“Yes. Miss Wolcott’s Ghost. The demonized plant.”
“What does she say about it?” asked Clara.
They looked over to the spire.
“She doesn’t,” said Lamontagne.
“Are you kidding?” said Jean-Guy. “She must have. That’s the one she spread. It must be important. She can’t have just left it up to everyone to guess.”
“Why wouldn’t she tell us?” asked Gamache. “Are we sure it’s also medicinal and not—”
“Not a bioweapon, buried in a treasure?” said Jean-Guy.
“That was our first fear,” admitted Agrawal. “Over dinner in Cambridge, Armand, we also discussed the possibility you’d found and brought back from extinction a maliciously invasive species.”
“There might be a reason she didn’t describe it,” said Isabelle.
“There is,” said Lamontagne. “But not the one you’re thinking. She didn’t describe its properties because she thought she had.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Jean-Guy. “She either did or didn’t.”
“What does AFIS mean?” asked Lamontagne.
“Automated Fingerprint Identification System,” said Isabelle.
