All the Devils Are Here
- Автор: Пенни Луиза
- Серия: Chief Inspector Gamache #16
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: St. Martin's Publishing Group
- ISBN: 9781250145253
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «All the Devils Are Here». Краткое содержание книги:
On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather as a family for a bistro dinner with Armand's godfather, the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. Walking home together after the meal, they watch in horror as Stephen is knocked down and critically injured in what Gamache knows is no accident, but a deliberate attempt on the elderly man's life.
When a strange key is found in Stephen's possession it sends Armand, his wife Reine-Marie, and his former second-in-command at the Sûreté, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, from the top of the Tour d'Eiffel, to the bowels of the Paris Archives, from luxury hotels to odd, coded, works of art.
It sends them deep into the secrets Armand's godfather has kept for decades.
A gruesome discovery in Stephen's Paris apartment makes it clear the secrets are more rancid, the danger far greater and more imminent, than they realized.
Soon the whole family is caught up in a web of lies and deceit. In order to find the truth, Gamache will have to decide whether he can trust his friends, his colleagues, his instincts, his own past. His own family.
For even the City of Light casts long shadows. And in that darkness devils hide.
Thankfully none of the art itself appeared to have been destroyed.
Dussault nodded, and the brigade went to work while the two senior officers walked from room to room. Armand hadn’t had a chance to look at the rest of Stephen’s apartment, but now he did.
“Horowitz’s bedroom?” Dussault asked.
“Oui.”
The bed had been taken apart, the mattress thrown to the floor. The doors of the huge armoire were open, and clothing lay in heaps.
“Someone’s done a number on this place,” said the Prefect.
Even Stephen’s bathroom had been searched, the medicine cabinet’s contents in the sink and on the floor.
They walked down the long corridor, glancing into the other bedroom, the bathroom, the dining room.
“Coming?” Dussault asked.
He’d noticed that Armand had stopped.
“What is it?”
“Nothing, really. Désolé.” He looked away, into the second bedroom.
“What?”
Armand turned back to the Prefect, his colleague and friend, and said with a very small, almost sad smile, “Just a memory.”
“Did you stay here as a child?”
“Yes.”
“Hard to see this,” said Dussault. “It must be quite something when not…”
“It is.”
Stephen Horowitz’s Paris apartment spoke of untold wealth and unusual restraint.
The financier preferred the simplicity of the Louis Philippe style, with its warm wood grain and soft, simple lines. Each piece, searched out in auction houses and even flea markets, had a purpose. Each was actually used. The armoires, the bedsteads, the dressers and lamps.
As a result, the place felt more like a home than a museum.
But right now, it could pass as a dump.
“Robbery gone wrong or professional hit?” Dussault asked.
Armand shook his head. “Whoever did this was searching for something. Had Stephen not been attacked last night, I’d have said a robbery gone wrong, but—”
“But it can’t be a coincidence,” agreed Dussault. “The two must be connected. The simplest explanation is that the killer came here knowing Stephen was at dinner, and the apartment would be empty. He could search it without fear of interruption. When he arrived and discovered this fellow, he killed him. Then continued the search. Poor guy was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Gamache raised his hands. He had no idea if that was true. It was just one scenario.
What he did know was that while it was necessary to go through various scenarios, there was folly, there was danger in landing too heavily on one particular theory early in an investigation. Too often the investigators became invested in that theory and began interpreting evidence to fit.
That could lead to a murderer going free, or, worse, it could lead to the conviction of an innocent person.
Don’t believe everything you think.
Chief Inspector Gamache wrote that on the board for the incoming cadets at the start of every year at the Sûreté academy, and it stayed there all year.
At first the students in the class he taught laughed. It sounded clever but silly. Little by little most got it. And those who didn’t did not progress further.
That phrase was as powerful as any weapon they’d be handed.
No. Right now there were any number of theories, all equally valid. But only one was correct.
“Why was the killer still here this morning?” asked Dussault. “They don’t normally hang around.”
“Or why did he return? The only explanation I can think of is that he hadn’t found what he was looking for.”
“Okay, here’s a thought,” said Dussault. “The original plan was to search the apartment while Monsieur Horowitz was at dinner. When he found what he wanted, the intruder would head over to the restaurant and kill Horowitz, hoping it would look like a hit-and-run. No one would suspect anything other than a terrible accident. Clean. Simple. Fini.”
Armand considered that. It could be true. Except …
“The place is a mess,” said Armand. “If he really wanted Stephen’s death to look like an accident, wouldn’t he leave the apartment as he’d found it?”
“Yes, that would’ve been the plan, but it went south as soon as he discovered this man and killed him,” said Dussault. “Then there was no need to be careful. In fact, he was in a hurry. He had to find whatever he needed, fast. Then get to the restaurant in time to run down Horowitz.”
“By then, why not just shoot Stephen?” asked Armand. “If what you say is true, there was no longer any need to make it look like an accident. We’d find the body in his apartment and realize it was deliberate.”
“He needed to buy time,” said Dussault. “If Horowitz had been shot, the brigade criminelle would’ve come here right away.”
As they should have anyway, thought Gamache.
The only constant in these theories was that the dead man was killed unexpectedly. One of several big mistakes made that night by the intruder.
Murdering the wrong man, failing to kill the right one, and apparently not even finding what he was looking for. If he had, he wouldn’t have still been hanging around when they’d arrived.
“Aaach,” said the Prefect. “My head is beginning to hurt.”
Gamache didn’t believe that. This was the sort of puzzle that people like Dussault, like him, were good at. Trying to unravel what appeared to be a Gordian knot.
But were they working on the same knot?
“It is possible,” said Armand, looking at Dussault to see his reaction to what he was about to say, “that it wasn’t the killer Reine-Marie and I interrupted, but someone else.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Claude Dussault sighed. “People coming and going. Mistaken identity. We appear to be looking at two different mises-en-scène. I’m seeing an Émile Zola tragedy, while you see a farce straight out of Molière.”
It was not unlike what Gamache himself had been thinking a few moments earlier. Though Dussault’s description, while said with humor, held an implied criticism. And some mocking.
“Could be,” said Armand, with equanimity. “Fortunately, truth is on the march and nothing will stop it.”
Dussault laughed and clapped Armand on the arm. Clearly recognizing the Zola quote.
“Touché, mon ami.”
Dussault turned and they continued down the hall.
“Is this the way you came, following the intruder?”
“Yes.”
“He obviously knew there was a back stairway through the kitchen,” said Dussault.
“Exactly. He’d had plenty of time to get to know the apartment. It’s unfortunate. I thought I’d trapped him.”
“How did you even know there was someone else here?” asked Dussault.
“We heard a sound.”
Dussault was shaking his head. “And what would you do, Armand, if one of your agents, unarmed, chased a murderer with a gun down a narrow hallway?”
Armand gave a small laugh. “I’d have them on the carpet for sure.”
“You’d probably be scraping them off the carpet. Not very smart of you. He could’ve shot you, too.”
“Interesting that he didn’t. Though I am grateful.”
“As am I,” said Dussault, with a smile. “But I am also a little surprised.”
They were standing in the kitchen. Like most older apartments in Paris, it was small. Not much more than a galley, though there was a large window that looked out over the rooftops.
Cereal, sugar, coffee had been shaken out. The cupboards emptied.