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“That’s true,” said Gamache. “It terrifies me.”

Lauzon seemed surprised by this admission and briefly thrown off balance.

“You were Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté for a while. You were even offered the top job at the RCMP but turned it down. I long wondered why, but now I think I have the answer. Power is for the brave. Those who not only want to lead but are not afraid to lead. Who are not afraid of heights.”

Lauzon watched to see how much damage that just did.

Tardiff was trying not to look at Gamache but finally gave in. It was like approaching a car wreck and looking inside. How bad would it be?

There weren’t many things worse than being called a coward. And for a cop, a senior cop? Even if not true, an accusation like that would still sting.

Yes, Armand had led the Sûreté during an especially tumultuous time and been fired. But not for cowardice or incompetence. It was for illegally chasing a drug lord into the United States.

The Chief Inspector Gamache she saw now was not the same man who’d literally dragged the head of the cartel back across the border, to face trial in Québec.

Armand was gazing at Lauzon, perplexed. And what happened next was worse.

“Désolé,” he said. “But could you repeat that? You were talking too fast.”

It was Jean-Guy Beauvoir’s turn to grip his knees. He could almost feel the blood vessels bursting under his fingers. Would Lauzon see through the ruse? And was it part of the act, or was Armand serious?

Marcus Lauzon opened his mouth, then shut it again in frustration.

“You were talking about power, I believe,” said Gamache. “And heights. Then something about leadership. I caught that much. You would’ve given a lot, I think, to be Prime Minister. But you knew you could never be elected, so your only route to the top was in a coup. Though it couldn’t be seen to be that.”

“Yes, I heard that said at my trial.” Lauzon was still smarting from having his coup de grâce, his thrust into Gamache’s heart, miss. Worse, ignored. “Your own testimony, in fact, Armand. That I plotted to poison the drinking water, creating a national catastrophe that would be blamed on the incompetence of the current Prime Minister. He’d be ousted, and I would rise, heroically, selflessly even, taking charge in the face of great personal danger. I’d bring in the Emergencies Act, to head off future attacks, thereby giving myself unlimited power. All approved and even applauded by a terrified and cowed citizenry.”

Gamache lifted his hands in an eloquent That’s it.

“You despise me”—Lauzon leaned forward slightly—“and yet you have doubts.”

“If not you,” Gamache repeated for the third time, “then who?”

Lauzon leaned back again and studied the large, contained man before him. A man he’d rarely met in person—both had avoided it—but whom he’d hated from a distance. For decades. Far from diminishing the hate, time had only deepened that loathing.

It was all he could do now not to leap across the table and strangle the man who’d arrested his daughter for manslaughter. Who’d tried to ruin her young life.

That hit-and-run years ago had been an accident. Nothing more. She was his only child. Young and foolish, certainly, but she did not deserve to pay for one mistake for the rest of her life. The fact she’d left that grocery clerk to die alone in a ditch was a shame, but the boy probably would have died anyway.

Getting his daughter off had cost the newly elected MP decades of IOUs.

When the charges had been dropped, Gamache had lodged a complaint and requested an investigation. Nothing came of it except a mutual vendetta.

In return for Gamache’s actions against his daughter, Lauzon had gone after Daniel Gamache. An eye for an eye. A child for a child.

The Chief Inspector had brought it on himself. Was solely responsible, including for his son’s suicide attempt. Lauzon did not feel the least bit guilty, was not the least bit sorry. Not then. Not now.

Over the years, over the distance from Ottawa to Québec City, he’d studied Gamache, watching his career and influence grow. Every time he appeared on television, in interviews and news conferences, Lauzon had watched. Smiling with satisfaction when that young journalist had appeared on the scene and begun harassing Gamache, hurling insulting accusations at him in the form of questions.

It would have been more satisfying had she managed to land a few blows. If Gamache had lost his temper and shown his true self. A large, powerful, older white cop lashing out at a young woman of color. How perfect that would have been. But instead, he’d answered each insult with a calm and reasoned explanation. Meeting rudeness with the same courtesy he showed all the journalists.

But while others might’ve been fooled, the former Deputy Prime Minister was not.

Lauzon had even recorded some of Gamache’s appearances, sitting in his study at night after dinner, hearing his wife and daughter and grandchildren talking and laughing in the next room. He drank cognac and played and replayed the recordings. Over the years he’d watched the man age. Seen his hair turn grey. Seen that deep scar appear at his temple. Seen that familiar face become heavier, weatherworn. Careworn. Seen the lines appear. Surely more than a man his age should have.

But what struck Lauzon now, and what he’d missed from the television and the courtroom, was the look in Chief Inspector Gamache’s eyes. Intelligence, yes. You’d expect that. Even now, through the slightly perplexed look, they were thoughtful. Determined even.

Despite the fact Gamache was clearly diminished, it was best, Lauzon warned himself, not to underestimate this man. There was still, in those eyes, a cunning. And yet. And yet. He narrowed his own eyes, and as he did, he saw what Gamache was clearly trying to keep secret.