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With just a touch of pity?

"OK, numb nuts, what’s all this about?" asked Ruth

Armand Gamache sat in the library of the Literary and Historical Society o he barely knew it, barely knew the people, and now he felt he knew them well

The board had assembled one more time

Tense, suspicious Porter Wilson at the head of the table, even if he wasn’t a natural leader The real leader sat beside hi up pieces dropped and broken by Porter Elizabeth MacWhirter, heir to the MacWhirter shipyard fortunes, a fortune long faded away until all that remained were appearances

But appearances mattered, Gamache knew, especially to Elizabeth MacWhirter Especially to the English coer and weaker than they appeared

The English co out A fact lost on the Francophone los, if they saw thelos still saw the, of power A ht conferred on them by birth and fate By General Wolfe, two hundred years earlier on the field belonging to the farmer Abraham

Like whites in South Africa or the Southern states who knew that things had changed, who even accepted the changes, but who couldn’t quite shake the certainty deeply, diploe

There was Winnie, the tiny librarian who loved the library and loved Elizabeth and loved her work aer relevant

Mr Blake was there, in suit and tie A benign older gentleman, whose home had shrunk fronificent room And what, Gamache wondered, would someone do to defend their ho, vital, wise, but not really one of theave him clarity, he could see as only visible from a distance

And finally, Ken Haslaround, a ht his way across a frozen river

A hter were buried in Québec but as not considered a Québécois, as though even more could be expected

They’d adjourned to the library once the coffin had been re Émile, Gamache and the board

Ga finally on Porter Wilson Expecting an outburst, expecting a deht accusation of unfairness

Instead they all si had changed, and Gamache knehat

It was the damned video They’d seen it, and he hadn’t Not yet They knew so about hi they wanted to know