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Caist and his head technician pried up the nails, long and rusty red With a slow shriek they came out of the wood, reluctant to leave, reluctant to reveal what they’d hidden for so long

Finally freed of the nails the lid was ready to be lifted Serge Croix reached out then hesitated Looking over at Ga hiist insisted he agreed

Armand Gamache stood before the worm-eaten coffin A simple maple wood, made from the ancient forests hacked down to build Québec four hundred years earlier Gaht hand, and knew it showed

He reached out and touched the coffin, and the tre his hands there he considered as about to happen After centuries of hunting, after lifetiular search for the Father of Québec, after his own childhood spent reading about it, drea it with friends A stick in his hand, he’d stood astride rocks in Parc Mont Royal, co terrible stor with every other school child in Québec his hero had been Sa Québec

Gaently on the old wood

Saestured to Émile to take his place The elderly man shook his head but Gamache walked over and led him to the coffin then stepped back and sether he and the Chief Archeologist slowly, carefully, raised the heavy, lead-lined lid

A skeleton lay there Finally, found

After a long silence the Chief Archeologist, gazing into the coffin, spoke

"Unless Cha secret, this isn’t him"

"What do you ed Jean-Guy Beauvoir could feel it It was the way people looked at hih they’d seen him in a position so vulnerable, so exposed it was all they could see now

Not the man he really was An edited man

They’d seen the video, all of them That much was obvious He was the only one in Three Pines who hadn’t, he and es

But while the people of Three Pinesabout the no one else knew He kneho’d killed the Her since set and the bistro was clearing out, people heading home for dinner after a drink