THIRTY-ONEThe alarm sounded at twenty past two in the morning. The siren blasted through the frozen air and into every house in the village, traveling through fieldstone and mortar, through thick pink insulation and clapboard, through sweet dreams and restless sleeps, and announced a nightmare.
Fire.
Gamache leaped out of bed. Through the wail he could hear footsteps and shouting and the phone ringing. Tugging on his dressing gown he looked down the corridor and saw the vague outline of someone else in the darkness.
Beauvoir.
Downstairs he heard a woman’s voice, high and strained.
‘What is it, what’s happening?’
Gamache took the stairs rapidly, Beauvoir silent and following.
‘I don’t smell smoke,’ said Gamache, striding up to Nichol who was standing in the door to her room wearing p
