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.
Stephen Horowitz. And after the name exactly the same four letters. Written longhand.
JSPS.
“It’s something my grandmother Zora always called him,” Armand explained.
“But what does it mean?” asked Dussault.
“‘JSPS’ stands for ‘Just Some Poor Schmuck.’”
Dussault laughed. “Really? But ‘schmuck,’ that’s an insult, isn’t it? Why did your grandmother call him that? Was it a private joke, a term of endearment?”
“Just the opposite,” said Armand. “She loathed him. Did from the moment they met in the late 1940s. He was an easy man to dislike.”
Jean-Guy smiled. It was true. Stephen Horowitz could be a real piece of merde. And it wasn’t an act. It was genuinely who he was. But Beauvoir knew that was just one side of a complex man.
“How did she know him?” asked Fontaine. “Come to think of it, how did you?”
“My father hired him to do odd jobs. Stephen had nothing when he came to Québec after the war, but my father quickly saw his potential. They were roughly the same age, and only fate decided that one would lose his home and family, and the other would have both. My father had huge admiration for Stephen, but Zora hated him from the get-go. She called him—”
“Just some poor schmuck?” said Dussault.
“C’est ça. And that was when she was being polite.” Armand smiled, remembering her muttering “Alte kaker” whenever Stephen showed up.
“Why did she hate him so much?” asked Fontaine. “What did he do to her?”
“Nothing, except to be born German. I think it was asking a bit too much of her, at that time, to like or trust anyone who was German.”
“But you told me he fought for the Resistance,” said Dussault.
“I don’t think my grandmother ever believed it.”
Armand glanced out the window, at the Hôtel Lutetia. That was another reason Zora distrusted Stephen.
Because he chose to live right next door to the Lutetia.
It had taken Armand many years to understand her hatred of the beautiful hotel.
He knew he’d have to explain the complex relationships in his family, eventually. Now seemed as good a time as any.
“My father met Zora in Poland, in the final days of the war. She and her family had been deported from Paris and sent to Auschwitz. There were more than a thousand people in that transport. Three survived the war. Zora was one of them.”
He looked at Claude Dussault, who dropped his eyes.
Paris might have a lot of light, but there were also strong shadows.
“She never called it the Holocaust. It was, for her, ‘the Great Murders.’”
He’d been raised to consider Zora his grandmother, which he did to this day. She’d impressed on him that murderers had to be stopped. No matter the cost. That was, Armand knew, the reason he’d joined the Sûreté.
To stop them. No matter the cost.
“My father was with the Canadian Red Cross and was helping with the ‘displaced persons,’ as they were called. Those liberated from the death camps but with nowhere to go. No home left. He sponsored Zora to come to Montréal. She lived with us and raised me after they were killed.”
“They?” asked Fontaine. “Killed?”
“My parents. Car accident. I was nine years old. Stephen was my godfather and helped raise me. He brought me to Paris once a year. I practically grew up in this apartment.”
He looked around, trying to recapture that sense of security.
But it eluded him amid the wreckage. And the murder.
“So, wait a minute,” said Commander Fontaine, nodding toward the card. “Go back. If it was an insult, why would Horowitz write JSPS on his business card?”
“It was an inside joke. He actually liked Zora, and I think as he got more successful, it was a way for him to keep his considerable ego in check. It was also a code.”
“For what?” asked Fontaine.
“For his senior management, his bankers, his security. Most importantly, it was code to his secretary, Mrs. McGillicuddy. Whoever had that card was to be given all access. All help. No matter what was asked.”
“But what would stop anyone from writing JSPS on a card and getting that access?” asked Fontaine.
“Stephen made it known that anyone who tried would be dealt with severely. It wouldn’t be worth it.”
Fontaine looked over at the body of Alexander Plessner.
“Not that severely,” said Gamache.
“Do you know how many of these he gave out?” Fontaine asked.
“I actually thought I had the only one,” said Gamache, returning his thin card to his wallet. For safekeeping.
Stephen had given it to him after the funeral of his parents. He’d taken Armand aside and, under the watchful, wrathful eye of Zora, had brought out a business card and written, JSPS.
“Do you know what that stands for?”
Armand had shaken his head. He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. Nothing mattered anymore.
Stephen told him, and for the first time since the knock on the door, Armand smiled. He could hear Zora saying it, in her thick accent.
“You keep this card with you always, Armand. And anytime you need help, you come to me. If someone won’t let you in, you show them that. They’ll give you everything you want.”
“Ice cream?”
“Yes, any flavor. Money. A safe place to stay. And they’ll find me, no matter where I am, and I’ll come to you. You understand?”
It was a good question. Stephen’s German accent was still thick at the time. And while Armand couldn’t understand each and every word, he understood the meaning.
He put the card in his pocket. Then went outside with his best friend, Michel.
Every now and then, as the day moved to evening, moved to night, he’d put his hand in his pocket. Touch the card. And look at the house.
Zora would be watching over him. And now he knew Stephen would be, too.
He was not alone.
Half a century later, it was Armand’s turn. To watch over Stephen. To protect him.
To find out what had happened. What was happening.
But what was happening?
He looked over at the dead man.
Was Alexander Plessner the intended target, or was he, as they suspected, killed by mistake? Mistaken for Stephen.
Just some poor schmuck.
“Armand,” Dussault said, taking Gamache aside while Beauvoir examined the body. “I don’t mind you being involved with the investigation. In fact, I welcome it. You know Monsieur Horowitz better than anyone. But this fellow? He’ll only get in the way. He’s already annoying Fontaine.”
“Beauvoir is an experienced homicide cop,” Gamache explained. Again. “And ended his career as head of homicide—”
“In Québec.”
“Oui. But murder is murder, and people are people. Even in Québec. No one is better at tracking down killers than Jean-Guy Beauvoir.”
“You forget,” said the Prefect, looking from Gamache to the men and women collecting evidence. “This is the brigade criminelle. In Paris. We choose the very best France has to offer. And these are the best. Not just in Paris. Not just in France. But in the world.”
They stared at each other.
“You’re right, of course,” Armand conceded. “But Jean-Guy stands with the best of them.”
“Does he really? I looked you up this morning, to get caught up on your career. A lot has happened, my friend.”
“True.”
“In my reading, I saw his record, too. He’s an alcoholic and drug addict—”
“In recovery,” snapped Armand. “He’s been clean for years. Don’t tell me you don’t have fine officers who’ve battled addiction. The incidence in our line of work is—”