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.
“Yes, that’s it,” said Monique. “It’s called 4711. I knew it was a number. Says here it’s the first cologne ever made. Ha, probably why Claude wears it. He loves history. As does Armand. Something they have in common.”
“Oui,” said Reine-Marie.
As she closed the phone, she thought it might be the only thing the two men had in common.
The cologne was exactly the same as the one hidden in their bedroom. She’d confirmed the scent. But in doing that, she’d uncovered another, more important question.
Was it Claude Dussault they’d surprised in Stephen’s apartment or Irena Fontaine?
Jean-Guy got up from his laptop and went to the open window. He scanned the dark street below and breathed in the fresh night air. Trying to clear his mind. To get the clutter out and to see more clearly the connections that were appearing.
SecurForte was the link.
The security firm owned by GHS Engineering. It looked after security at the George V and almost certainly the Lutetia.
And where else?
He looked at his watch. Almost ten. He’d call the Gamaches at ten thirty. By then their guests might be gone.
Returning to his laptop he clicked on the link the GM of the George V had sent, to access the tapes from the hotel cameras. They’d been edited, almost certainly by SecurForte. To hide something or someone.
But it had to have been done quickly, and something might have been missed.
And sure enough, after twenty-five minutes of going back and forth, he found something. Someone.
Not Stephen. Not Alexander Francis Plessner.
What he found was a grainy image of a gray-haired, elegant woman.
She was just emerging from behind a huge floral arrangement in the lobby. It was a split second of tape they’d failed to erase.
There was no mistaking Eugénie Roquebrune, the president of GHS, entering the George V yesterday afternoon. She was there one moment, then the next there was no trace of her on the video. She’d disappeared.
But why was she there, and why had she been erased? Could she have been the one Stephen was meeting before dinner Friday night?
He got up and walked around the living room, unable to settle. What could this mean?
Had Stephen sat across from her, looked her in the eyes, and told the president of GHS Engineering that he’d found out about their industrial espionage?
Was that what he was going to announce at the board meeting on Monday?
Is that why they tried to have him killed? That might explain the lack of finesse in both attacks. They were ordered at the last minute.
But something wasn’t quite right.
For a man who’d survived the war as a member of the Resistance. Who’d been cunning then and throughout his long life. Why would he make such a foolish strategic error now? Effectively signing his own death warrant.
Presumably he was in the George V to hide. Why invite over the very person he was hiding from?
After another circuit of the small living room, Jean-Guy sat back down and went through the video again. The lobby. The hallway to the elevator. The elevators, including the service elevators.
Nothing. Eugénie Roquebrune had disappeared.
He broadened the search.
And that’s where he found her. In the reflection of a waiter’s large silver tray. Polished and gleaming. It showed, for 2.7 seconds, three guests at a private corner table in the Galerie lounge.
The head of GHS Engineering sat with two male companions. Stephen Horowitz and Alexander Plessner?
Back and forth Jean-Guy went, over and over the footage. Until he was certain that he recognized one of the men at the table.
Just hours before the attacks, Claude Dussault, the Prefect of Police, was having tea with Eugénie Roquebrune.
Beauvoir got to his feet. It was almost ten thirty. He could call, but …
Dussault was at the Gamaches’. He didn’t want to say anything that might be overheard.
A man naturally given to action, Jean-Guy had come late to the value of pausing.
“It is solved by walking,” Gamache had often said.
In the middle of a stressful case, the Chief would leave his office, and instead of doing something, he’d go for a walk. Often just up and down the corridors of Sûreté headquarters, hands clasped behind his back, occasionally muttering, while Beauvoir, figuratively, danced Tigger-like around him.
Gamache had patiently explained, over and over, over the years, that he was doing something.
He was thinking.
It had taken Beauvoir years to see the power of pausing. And of patience. Of taking a breath to consider all options, all angles, and not simply acting on the most obvious.
After looking in on Annie and Honoré, he put on a light jacket and went out for a walk.
CHAPTER 24
When the men returned to the living room with dessert and coffee, Reine-Marie nodded toward the box. “Find anything interesting?”
“Look at this,” said Armand. “And tell us what you think.”
He handed them the GHS annual report, open to the page listing the board of directors. “My God. The former President of France?” said Monique. “An ex–American Secretary of State?”
“Look, a Nobel laureate,” said Reine-Marie. “I read her book. Formidable.”
They scanned the list of diplomats, world leaders, philosophers, and artists.
“Anything strike you?” asked Armand.
“Besides the caliber of members?” said Monique. “GHS must be incredibly powerful to attract such people.”
“Yes,” said Armand. He was watching Reine-Marie as she stared at the list. Then, after taking a large forkful of creamy cake, she turned to the President’s Report. There was a photo of the CEO, Eugénie Roquebrune. And below it a précis of their corporate philosophy.
“Seems interesting to me,” she said slowly, “who’s not on the board.”
“What do you mean?” Monique reexamined the names.
“This’s an engineering firm, right?” said Reine-Marie. “So why aren’t there any engineers? There’re no scientists of any kind. Nobel laureates, but not in economics or physics. They’re in literature. And why aren’t there any accountants? Anyone who could read a financial statement and see if there’s anything wrong? They’re all politicians and diplomats. Minor royalty and celebrities. There’s this one fellow, head of a media empire, but that doesn’t mean he can read a spreadsheet even if he wanted to.”
And that, thought Armand, was the crux. How much did these people actually want to know?
“Not exactly the checks and balances you’d hope for in a board of directors,” said Monique.
The photo of Madame Roquebrune smiled out at them. She seemed pleasant enough, but did not give the impression of immense power or even authority.
But then, that might’ve been the idea. Gamache suspected nothing, no word, no image, not even the font, was chosen without intense scrutiny.
Reine-Marie also studied the photograph. She saw a woman in her early fifties. Elegant, warm. Kindly even. Not at all intimidating or formidable. In fact, as she looked closer, Reine-Marie saw there was a very small eyelash on Madame Roquebrune’s cheek.
It was almost unnoticeable, except as a tiny human flaw.
It was actually quite endearing. She wanted to brush it away.
And that, Reine-Marie knew, was the trap. Even as she felt herself drawn into it.
Could this, she found herself wondering, really be one of the most powerful people in France? In Europe?
But then, her own husband was often mistaken for a college professor. Not a man who hunted killers.
The GHS president was not kindly and benign, and its board was not oversight. It was a façade, a stamp of legitimacy. The men and women on the board gave the corporation access, and cover, should anything go wrong.