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“Inspector?”

“Sir,” came an unfamiliar female voice. “He’s not here, but Inspector Beauvoir did make note. There are fifteen children.”

“Merci. Inspector Lacoste, did you hear that.”

“I did. I’m on it.”

Gamache could see that the press forward had begun. Professor Robinson had come to the moment juste.

The noise in the auditorium rose, as demonstrators awoke from their daze.

“Shame!” they shouted.

“Too late!” the others screamed back.

It became a primal call and response. The beating of drums before battle.

“Where did Inspector Beauvoir go?” Gamache asked the agent at the door.

“But there is a solution,” he heard Professor Robinson break her silence, as his sharp eyes scanned the now pulsing crowd. “It takes courage, but I think you have that.”

“He’s inside,” the agent said.

“Inside?” said Gamache. “Are you sure?”

If it was true, Jean-Guy Beauvoir had disobeyed orders, abandoned his post, and, worst of all, brought the gun in with him. There was now a loaded weapon in this crowd.

It was not only shocking, it was unforgivable.

“Yessir.”

“Shame, shame,” half the crowd chanted.

“Too late,” came the angry response.

“—money and time and expertise are being spent on what is futile. Hopeless. Even cruel. Do you want your parents, your grandparents, to suffer, as too many already have?”

“No!” came the cry from the crowd.

“Do you want your children to suffer?”

“No!”

“Because they will. They are. But we can change that.”

Gamache stepped out onto the stage, quickly assessing the situation. He saw that, while the situation was volatile, his officers had it under control.

Still, he could . . . No one would blame him . . .

But he did not stop it. Instead he gave a brief, reassuring nod to the nearest agent on the front line. A young man who reminded him of another impossibly young agent from a lifetime ago.

The man nodded back and turned forward, to face the crowd.

“But it’s not too late. I’ve done the numbers and the solution is clear, if not easy,” Abigail Robinson was saying. “If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s that not everyone can be saved. Choices must be made. Sacrifices must be made.”

Gamache kept his eyes forward.

“It’s called—”