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.
Armand tried it. Nothing.
They huddled around and watched him put in names. Reine-Marie’s. Daniel’s. Annie’s. His desperation growing. Showing. In the increasingly unlikely attempts.
Zora. Florence. Honoré. He typed. Pinot.
Nothing.
Then Rodin. Calais. Burghers. Ariel. Ferdinand. Canaris. Lutetia. Eustache de Saint-Pierre. Luxembourg. Rosiers.
He was running out of ideas.
“What, what,” he mumbled. “Stephen, what name did you use? What would you use?”
Armand stared at the screen. At the black slash of cursor throbbing.
What name, what word?
Remembering his conversation with Stephen in the garden of the Musée Rodin, and his godfather’s apparent mistake. Stephen knew perfectly well that he hadn’t proposed to Reine-Marie in the jardin du Luxembourg.
It was in the jardin—
“Joseph Migneret,” Armand muttered as he typed.
And up flashed a request.
CHAPTER 40
“Joseph Migneret,” read Judith de la Granger. “Who’s he?”
“One of the Righteous,” said Gamache, as he clicked through.
“The document was taken out at eleven twenty-five a.m., then almost immediately returned,” said Madame Lenoir, pointing at the times. “He had it out for only twenty minutes.”
“But what’s the document?” Judith asked.
They could only see the file number.
The head archivist typed in the reference number and shook her head in amazement and some amusement.
“He managed to request the most obscure of our documents. No one except your friend has asked for it in decades, probably centuries. Maybe ever.”
“What is it?” asked Pinot. Bending over, he read, “A survey of the number of hand-forged nails made in Calais in 1523? That’s the evidence? Nails in Calais? It doesn’t make sense.”
Calais, thought Armand and smiled. The burghers, you old devil.
“We need to see the file,” he said. “Where is it?”
She pointed down. “Purgatory. Where documents are put that can’t be thrown out, but neither are they likely to ever see the light of day.”
“This one has,” said Gamache. “And recently. Can you take us to it?”
Madame Lenoir made a note of the reference number. Then they followed her through another thick door, which Gamache quietly locked behind them, and down, down, down flights of stairs into a subbasement.
Turning on the overhead lights, they saw what looked more like a crypt than an archive. The brick ceilings were vaulted and the floor was dirt. But the temperature and humidity were constant and no daylight could penetrate. It was, in fact, the perfect place to keep very old, frail documents.
Allida Lenoir went looking for the file.
“You really think Stephen hid the evidence here?” Pinot asked, looking around.
“No.”
“No?”
“But you said—”
“I know what I said, but on seeing the name of that file, I think he had another idea. I think he’d get the evidence as far from him, as far from Paris, as possible. Wouldn’t you?”
“I guess so,” said Pinot. “So where is it?”
“Calais. That’s why he asked for that file. He’s not interested in nails in Calais. Who is? He’s telling us, telling me, where he hid the evidence.”
“It’s somewhere in Calais?” asked Pinot. “But that’s a city. How’re we supposed to know where to find the stuff, if it’s even there?”
Gamache looked down the long subbasement. He could no longer see the Chief Archivist.
“Do those work?” he asked, nodding at the computer terminals.
Madame de la Granger sat down and hit some keys. It sprang to life.
“Can you look up Calais?” said Gamache. “You know Stephen well, Alain. See if there’s a place you think he might’ve gone. We used to talk about the burghers. Maybe one of their homes. A museum there. Something.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“I’m going to find Madame Lenoir.”
Alain Pinot seemed far from convinced, but he sat beside Madame de la Granger and the two began to hunt while Armand went hunting for the Chief Archivist.
He found her down a side aisle, deep in a cabinet.
“It’s here,” she said, handing a dossier to Gamache.
Putting on his reading glasses, he rapidly went through the pages, once. Then, more slowly, a second time. Finally, he raised his head and caught her anxious eyes.
“Nothing,” he said, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “I was hoping this might tell us where in Calais he hid the evidence. That he might’ve even left a note behind.”
He looked at his watch. It was 6:35. Less than an hour. Making up his mind, he closed the folder.
“Can you keep the others here?” He tucked the file under his arm.
“While you?”
“Take this to where they’re holding my son.” Before she could ask, he said, “Time’s run out, and I have to take them something.”
Allida Lenoir stared at him, then glanced at the thick file. “You know, stealing a document, especially one as valuable as the number of nails in Calais in 1523, is a criminal offense.”
“I will await the full force of French law,” he said with a smile. “I locked the door behind us. Is there a back way out?”
“Yes. Not used often. It’s down this way. Apparently this was originally built by the second duke as a way to sneak out to see the stable boys.”
Gamache followed her to what appeared to be a dead end. But on closer examination what looked like paneling was actually a stout door.
“This will let you out onto the second floor of the museum. What was once the duke’s bedroom. When you get down to the main level, head to the right. There’s a corridor that’ll take you to a side door. It’ll be locked, but there’s a panic bar.”
“Merci. Lock this behind me. Whatever happens, don’t let them out.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just safer.”
She looked at him, then nodded. “Do you still want me to keep up the Calais ruse?”
“Ruse?”
She looked at the dossier he clutched. “There must’ve been a helluva need for nails in 1523. That file’s unexpectedly thick.” She paused. “But I am not.”
“Non,” he said with a smile. “You’re not.”
He slipped through the door and turned on the flashlight on his phone.
As he took the stairs two at a time, he heard the key turn in the lock.
There was no going back now.
“Where’s Gamache?” asked Alain Pinot.
“He’s gone.”
“Gone? Where?”
“How?” asked Judith de la Granger.
“There’s a door at the other end. He found it and went through.”
“Then we should leave, too,” said Pinot, getting up.
“We can’t.”
“What do you mean we can’t?”
“He locked us in.”
“Why would he do that?” demanded Judith de la Granger.
“Oh, shit,” said Pinot. “That file he found. It’s got the documents, doesn’t it? He’s going to give it to them.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Madame de la Granger. “He’d never do that.”
“No? Then why’s he free and we’re trapped down here?”
“Not trapped,” said Madame Lenoir. “Safe.”
“Is that what he told you?” said Pinot, staring at the locked door. “Does this feel safe?”
Gamache knew he was nearing the surface because his phone started vibrating.
And it also, he knew, began transmitting his location.
He looked at the battery level. It had been more than a day since he’d charged it, and it was down to four percent.
Putting it on low-battery mode, he took the final twenty steps and, pausing at the top, he shut off the flashlight.