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.
They’d been through Hell together. Crossed the River Styx together. Paid the boatman in blood and agony and sorrow. Together.
They’d come back to the land of the living together. Scarred. Marked.
They were as connected as two humans could be.
And Armand had played God with Jean-Guy’s and Annie’s lives? He’d conspired to get Jean-Guy his job at GHS Engineering, without asking first? Without consulting him?
Armand sat on the side of one bed, while Jean-Guy sat on the other. Facing each other.
“I was afraid if I told you I had anything to do with the job offer, that you’d think I wanted you to leave the Sûreté. That it was some sort of veiled message that you weren’t up to the job of Chief Inspector.”
“Was it?”
“Are you really asking that?” said Gamache. “You were a gifted Chief Inspector. A natural leader. At the time I believed I’d be fired, maybe even put on trial. My one consolation was that the homicide department was in good hands. Your hands. But the brutality of the situation weighed heavily on both of us. I could retire. I’d had a full life. A good life. Reine-Marie and I would live quietly in the country.
“You’re just beginning. You and your family. I wanted to give you a choice. That’s all. But I was wrong not to discuss it with you before approaching Stephen. I am sorry.”
“Is Stephen on the board of GHS?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. When I asked him to find you a job offer in private industry, I assumed it would be in Québec. Not Paris. And not specifically GHS.”
Jean-Guy nodded, rocking back and forth slightly on the bed.
“The offer was legitimate,” said Armand, reading his thoughts. “GHS would never have hired you for that position if they hadn’t known you were perfect for it.”
“Did Stephen approach Carole Gossette, my boss?”
“I honestly have no idea.” Armand hesitated before going on. “You leaving the Sûreté was painful for me. You and your family leaving Québec broke my heart.”
Jean-Guy nodded. He knew the truth of that.
“Still,” Armand went on, “it was a terrible mistake, not asking if you wanted the option to leave the service.”
His use of that word reminded Jean-Guy that Gamache almost never called the Sûreté a force. He called it a service.
Jean-Guy took a deep breath, then nodded.
Armand reached into his pocket and brought out the nickels. He looked at them, then handed them to Jean-Guy.
“Compensation?” asked Jean-Guy.
Armand gave a short laugh. “Non. If this really is Stephen’s good-luck charm, I know he’d want you to have it.”
Jean-Guy closed his fist around the fused coins. “We might need it.” He looked his father-in-law in the eyes. “Merci.”
He made to get up, but Armand motioned him back down.
“There is something else.”
“Oui?”
“When Reine-Marie and I found the body, we noticed a scent in the air. A man’s cologne. That’s how we knew someone was still in Stephen’s apartment.”
“It wasn’t the dead man’s or Stephen’s?”
“No. This was fresh.”
“What did it smell like?” asked Jean-Guy.
When Gamache paused, Beauvoir assumed it was to think about how best to describe a scent. But he was wrong.
Gamache’s answer not only surprised Beauvoir, it changed everything.
“It smelled like Claude Dussault.”
CHAPTER 12
“What was that about?” asked Dussault as the two men returned to the living room.
“I’m not sure if you know that I work at GHS Engineering,” said Jean-Guy, pointing to the annual report. “I hadn’t realized until I saw that that Stephen must’ve had a hand in my hiring. I thought I got it on my own merits.”
“And you did,” said Armand. “But I needed to explain how it happened, and apologize for my part in it.”
“Which was?” asked Dussault.
Armand explained.
“Well, Horowitz must be on the board of GHS,” said Dussault, holding up the annual report. “That’s how he got Beauvoir the job, and why he has this.”
He put it back in the box and replaced the lid.
“I’ll check with Mrs. McGillicuddy, his secretary,” said Gamache.
“I’ve heard from Fontaine,” said Dussault. “They’re removing the body. I need to be at the autopsy. Would you like to be there, too?”
He looked at Gamache, then, slightly reluctantly, widened the invitation to include Beauvoir.
“Please,” said Gamache while Beauvoir nodded.
After they set up a time to meet the Prefect at the Quai des Orfèvres later that afternoon, Dussault said, “Commander Fontaine wants to interview you and the family. You’re witnesses to the attack on Horowitz.”
It was agreed that Fontaine would interview them at Daniel and Roslyn’s apartment in the Third Arrondissement, mid-afternoon.
Dussault left the Hôtel Lutetia with the box, while Reine-Marie, Jean-Guy, and Armand returned to bar Joséphine.
They needed to talk.
A waiter asked what they’d like to order.
Reine-Marie asked for tea then quickly scanned the menu, taking the first thing she saw. Thankfully it was lobster mayonnaise.
Armand ordered an herb omelette. He wasn’t hungry and knew he’d just push things around on the plate. Beauvoir had a burger.
Finally, the waiter left, and Reine-Marie turned to Armand.
“Claude? That cologne we smelled in Stephen’s apartment. It’s the same one Claude’s wearing.”
“Oui. I told Jean-Guy while we were in the bedroom.”
“You don’t think…? He’s a friend. He’s the head of the Préfecture de Police, for God’s sake.”
Armand shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“A lot of people might wear that cologne,” suggested Jean-Guy, who’d made sure he got a good whiff of the Prefect before he left.
Reine-Marie hesitated, but knew this wasn’t the time to shy away from the truth. “I’ve never smelled it before. Have you?”
Jean-Guy had to admit he hadn’t. “But it might be more popular here. Like tête de veau.”
He’d never quite recovered from the first time he and Annie, with Honoré, had wandered the Marché des Enfants Rouges, near their new home.
Turning from a bank of éclairs, he came face-to-face with a row of skinned calves’ heads. Glaring at him.
He’d scooped Honoré up and made sure the little boy didn’t see.
“What kind of people eat that?” he’d hissed at Annie as he hurried away.
“What kind of people eat poutine?” she’d countered.
“That’s different. It doesn’t have eyes. You’re okay with eating the head, and brain, of a calf?”
“Non. It’s disgusting. But the French like it.”
Reine-Marie and Armand understood the slightly tortured point Jean-Guy was making.
“I wonder what the cologne is,” Reine-Marie said, and thanked the waiter, who’d just brought her a pot of tea, already steeped.
She poured a cup and looked out the window, across the park, to the huge department store on rue de Sèvres.
Picking up her cup, she noticed a line down the side and a drip.
“It’s leaking,” she said, putting it back down.
“A lane to the land of the dead,” said Jean-Guy, to the astonishment of the Gamaches.
“What did you just say?” Reine-Marie asked.
“Sorry. Part of a poem, I think. I heard it recently. Can’t remember where. Oh, right. We were flying to the Maldives—”
Since Annie wasn’t there to moan, Reine-Marie did.