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He liked to pretend they weren’t thousands of kilometers away in Paris

But hter of neighborhood children And smiled And relaxed

Gaazine to his knee His wife, Reine-Marie, sat across from him on their balcony She too had a cold beer on this unexpectedly warm day in mid-June But her copy of La Presse was folded on the table and she stared into the distance

"What’re you thinking about?" he asked

"My "

He was silent for a ray now, but then, so was his She’d dyed it auburn for lad Like him, she was in her e looked like If they were lucky

Not like models No one would mistake them for that Arer visited this hoht think Monsieur Gamache a quiet academic, a professor of history or literature perhaps at the Université de Montréal

But that too would be a mistake

Books were everywhere in their large apartraphies, novels, studies on Québec antiques, poetry Placed in orderly bookcases Just about every table had at least one book on it, and often several azines And the weekend newspapers were scattered on the coffee table in the living room, in front of the fireplace If a visitor was the observant type, and ht see the story the books in there told

And he’d soon realize this was not the ho professor of French literature The shelves were packed with case histories, with books on medicine and forensics, with toenetic coding, wounds and weapons

Murder Armand Ga the death, space wasReine-Marie as they sat on the balcony, Gaain struck by the certainty he’d married above himself Not socially Not acadeotten very, very lucky

Arreat deal of luck in his life, but noneloved the same woman for thirty-five years Unless it was the extraordinary stroke of luck that she should also love him

Now she turned her blue eyes on hie"

"Oh?"