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Except Inspector Beauvoir.

Maybe the Chief wasn’t so delusional after all. Maybe he could see what was coming.

There is always another story, thought Jean-Guy. There is more than meets the eye.

After getting into her dress, bought solely for this occasion, Harriet looked in the mirror.

You can do this, you can do this, you can do this.

She took several deep breaths, holding them, then slowly exhaling. As she’d been taught to do when she felt overcome with anxiety. Then she looked around to make sure she was alone.

Harriet Landers was nothing if not careful. It was a point of pride, as she’d watched the reckless behavior of her fellow students. Though as she’d seen them going to parties, getting high, heading to Cuba and Mexico and Florida for March break, Harriet had begun to wonder if “careful” was really the word.

Bending down quickly, she reached into her knapsack for the special gift for her aunt. She felt its heft in her hand and knew Auntie Myrna would be surprised.

By the time Armand and Reine-Marie had found parking and got to the auditorium, the place was throbbing as hundreds of parents and friends greeted each other. Barely believing this day had finally come. When they could stop writing checks.

Though they all suspected that day never really came. But the big obligation was done.

Their children were graduating from university, and with a degree that might actually get them a job.

How well Armand and Reine-Marie remembered sitting in similar auditoriums watching first Daniel, then Annie take their degrees.

But this event, in this university, evoked far more complex feelings.

Armand’s eyes swept the crowd, observing, noting. The proud parents and grandparents. The bored and resentful younger siblings, glancing toward the windows. And the sunshine.

The Chief Inspector’s practiced gaze took in the professors in their gowns, the Chancellor in his ceremonial robes, chatting with parents. The technicians onstage, preparing to begin.

But his eyes kept returning to the large young man standing by the door. He wore jeans and a hoodie and was unlike anyone else there.

Dark hair in a bun. A small growth of beard. And a bulge—was that a bulge under his sweatshirt?

Gamache started forward just as a uniformed officer went up to the man. Armand watched. Alert. Prepared.

Then he stopped and smiled with relief.

The younger man was a plainclothes officer, assigned by the local Montréal police. He looked over at Gamache and brought his hand up in a subtle salute.

Gamache nodded. Then continued his survey of the auditorium.

It was a scrutiny born of long years of practice. And necessity. Crowds were always, for a cop, problematic, and never more so than here. Today.

While he’d spent part of that morning remembering the early days with Beauvoir. Jean-Guy. Agent. Now, as he walked through the milling crowd, Armand remembered his own early days in the Sûreté. And the first time he’d come here to the École Polytechnique, the engineering school for the Université de Montréal.

He’d been in the final week of a placement in the Montréal ambulance service, training with a senior paramedic. Though already a graduate from the Sûreté Academy, and having applied to the Criminal Intelligence Division, he’d volunteered for this extra training while waiting to hear about his first placement.

It had been a cold day in early December. He’d just bought a plane ticket to visit his godfather, Stephen Horowitz, in Paris. He’d be flying out Christmas Day. It was the cheapest flight he could find.

Armand and his supervisor were packing up at the end of their shift when the call came through.

There was an incident at the École Polytechnique. That was all. No other information. Armand looked at the clock on the station wall. It was almost six p.m.

“Come on, Gamache,” she said. “Let’s go. It’s probably nothing. A drunk student. I’ll buy you a beer later.”

They went.

She was wrong.