by Louise Penny
“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.
“—and Carole Gossette said it.” He closed his eyes, remembering. “And the crack in the tea-cup opens / A lane to the land of the dead.”
“Why would she say that?” asked Reine-Marie.
“I’m beginning to wonder,” said Jean-Guy.
Turning to Armand, Reine-Marie said, “You do suspect Claude, don’t you. If you didn’t, you’d give him everything.”
“Pardon?” said Jean-Guy.
Armand reached into his jacket and brought out Stephen’s slender agenda. “I haven’t had a chance to go through it yet.”
“While you do, I’m going shopping.” Reine-Marie got up.
“Now?” asked Jean-Guy.
“Now.”
“But your lunch?” said her son-in-law.
“Save it for me, please,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll be long.”
* * *
She was wrong.
Reine-Marie paused in the sun-filled atrium of Le Bon Marché department store. It hadn’t changed. The bright and airy space was an unlikely and perfect confluence of commerce and beauty. And now, with the passage of time, history.
Le Bon Marché was the oldest, the first, store of its kind in Paris. Practically in the world. Opened in 1852, it predated Selfridges in London by more than half a century.
In fact, the Hôtel Lutetia was built by the owner of Le Bon Marché, primarily to give his customers someplace to stay while spending money in his remarkable store.
He was a visionary. What he saw was wealth. What he could not have envisioned were the other uses his magnificent hotel would be put to.
As children, Daniel and Annie had loved nothing better than to ride up and down the famous white-tiled escalators, looking out over the wares, the people, gawking at the huge installations that were as much art as marketing. They’d visit the toy department, the bonbons department, before returning to the Lutetia for a hot chocolate.
This near-perfect commercial creation was filled with happy memories.
But not today.
She was there for a reason, a dark purpose.
Reine-Marie Gamache made her way to the parfumerie. And from there, to the colognes.
* * *
Gamache and Beauvoir had their heads together, looking at Stephen’s cramped writing.
They’d first check
ed his entries for the day before. There were several.
Stephen had written Armand, Rodin, and the time.
Below that he’d written AFP.
“Alexander Francis Plessner?” asked Beauvoir.
“Must be. That’s when he arrived in Paris.”
Below that Stephen had written dinner, family, Juveniles, and the time.
“You said he was meeting someone for drinks before coming to dinner,” said Jean-Guy. “Do you think he meant Plessner?”
Gamache was nodding, staring at the page.
“Jacques?”
“Oui, Monsieur Armand?”
“Was Monsieur Horowitz here yesterday?”
“Bien sûr. He came in for ice cream.”
“Who was he with?”
“No one, monsieur. He was alone. I personally waited on him.”
“You’re sure.”
“Certain. Will he be joining you?”
Armand stared at him and realized the maître d’ had no idea what had happened. Why would he?
Gamache got up and stood facing Jacques. “I’m afraid there’s been an accident.”
Jacques’s face slackened. “Non,” he whispered. “Is it serious?”
His blue eyes, sharp as ever, trained to pick up the most nuanced of movements, the smallest change of facial expression in his patrons, now betrayed his own feelings.
Jacques had known Monsieur Horowitz from the first day he started at the Lutetia. The visiting Canadian’s water glass was practically the very first one he’d filled.
In his nervous state, Jacques had tipped the silver beaker too steeply and ice cubes plopped out, spilling water onto the linen.
Jacques, all of fifteen, stared in horror, then lifted his eyes to the man sitting there.
The patron’s face was placid, not revealing that anything was wrong. But he gave a small smile and nod of encouragement.
It was okay.
While everything else about his first few days was a blur, the Canadian businessman had made an impression. And not just for that act of kindness.
His accent, for one. It was a mixture of German, English, and French. And was, for the new busboy, a little hard to follow.
Where other patrons were clearly wealthier, more powerful, this one had an assurance. As though he belonged.
And then there’d been the tip. Slipped into his pocket.
Three hundred francs. As much as he’d make in a week.
At the time, though Jacques didn’t know it, Stephen wasn’t yet rich. But he recognized, and rewarded, a hard worker. A worker who cared.
Besides, Stephen Horowitz knew the courage it took to bus tables for difficult, even scary, patrons. Courage must always be rewarded.
The other thing Jacques remembered was looking down the long corridor as Monsieur Horowitz paused at the mosaic in the tile floor by the entrance to the Hôtel Lutetia. It was the symbol of the hotel, and also the ancient symbol of Paris.
The city had originally been called Lutetia. And her emblem was a ship in peril on a stormy sea.
That symbol was imbedded in the hotel floor.
Monsieur Horowitz had turned to young Jacques and said, “Fluctuat nec mergitur.”
Every schoolchild in Paris learned those words. It was the motto of the ancient settlement of Lutetia. And of Paris.
“Reminds me of The Tempest,” Monsieur Horowitz had said, nodding to the mosaic.
Jacques had looked around at the hushed corridor. A place less like a storm would be hard to find.
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” quoted Monsieur Horowitz. He’d turned his clear, clear crystal-blue eyes on the puzzled busboy. “And sometimes nightmares, eh, young man?” He gazed around before returning to Jacques. “Who knows where we’re going to find the devil?”
“Oui, monsieur.” Though Jacques had no idea, at the time, what the man could possibly be talking about.
That had been almost fifty years earlier.
Now young Armand, for Jacques couldn’t help thinking of this man that way, stood before him. With news.
Jacques was no fool. Monsieur Horowitz was elderly. Getting frailer. He expected, one day, to receive bad news. But he had not expected it to be this bad.
“He’s in the Hôtel-Dieu hospital. A hit-and-run.” No need to say more, thought Gamache.
“Merde,” whispered Jacques. “Désolé,” he quickly added, shocked at himself for swearing in front of a patron. He’d have fired a waiter on the spot for doing the same thing.
“You’re right,” said Armand. “It is merde. We’re trying to work out where he was yesterday, and who he met with.”
“I see.”
If Jacques really did see, Armand couldn’t tell. The maître d’s professional mask was back.
“He came here at three thirty and ordered his usual peppermint ice cream.”
Armand almost smiled. “With hot fudge?”
“Of course.”
Three thirty, thought Armand. The time he’d walked Stephen back there. That fit.
He’d sat here, alone, eating his ice cream. And?
Was he expecting someone? Monsieur Plessner maybe? But was he already lying dead across the street?
Why would Stephen be waiting here and not in his own apartment?
He heard Jean-Guy on his phone to Isabelle Lacoste, back at the Sûreté headquarters in Montréal. He was asking her to find out all she could about Alexander Francis Plessner.
“Oui, Canadian citizen, probably living in Toronto.”
“Did Monsieur Horowitz meet anyone here in the last ten days?” Gamache asked.
“Ten days? I assumed he’d just arrived.”
Armand brought up a photo on his phone. “Does this man look familiar?”
It was a close-up of Plessner’s face. He appeared asleep. Except for the pallor.
“Is he dead? He looks dead.”
“Please, just tell me if he’s been here recently, or ever. Do you recognize him?”
“No.”
Armand nodded. “Bon. Merci, Jacques. Oh, what time did Stephen leave yesterday?”
“I’d say just after four.”
“He met us at eight,” said Jean-Guy. “Four hours unaccounted for.”
“For now,” said Armand.
“May I visit him?” Jacques asked.
“I’m afraid not. But I’ll let him know you were asking after him.”
“Yes, please. And can you tell him, Fluctuat nec mergitur?”
“What does it mean?” Jean-Guy asked.
“‘Beaten by the waves,’” said the maître d’. “‘But never sinks.’”
Armand and Jacques stared at each other, then nodded. And went about their jobs. Jacques to command the army of staff in the bar and restaurant, and young Armand to find a murderer.
CHAPTER 13
“May I help you, madame?” a young man asked.
“I’m trying to find a cologne. I smelled it recently but don’t know the name,” Reine-Marie said. “I’m sorry. That’s not much help.”
“Not to worry,” he said. “I love this sort of thing. Now, are you sure it was a man’s cologne and not a woman’s eau de parfum?”
“Absolutely.”
“Bon,” he said. “That helps. We can ignore all those.” He waved toward the archipelago of women’s scents. And then asked the question she’d been dreading. “Can you describe it?”
Short of saying it smelled like a senior police officer, she racked her brain. What were the words she’d used when first trying to imprint it on her brain in those horrific few seconds in front of the corpse?
“Was it earthy?” the salesperson asked, trying to help. “Did it smell like moss or bark? Lots of men’s fragrances do. They think it’s masculine.”
He made a face, and Reine-Marie smiled. She liked this man.
“No. It was lighter than that.”
“Fruity?”
“Non.”
“Citrusy?”
“Yes
.”
“Good.”
“Maybe a little woody,” she added, and grimaced to show her uncertainty.
“Okay,” he said.
“With a kind of chemical-y smell?”
“Are you asking me?”
“Telling?” she said.
“It seems we’re looking for a lemon tree made out of plastic. It’s a good thing you’re not trying to sell fragrances, madame.”
* * *
Armand pushed his omelette away after one bite. It was moist, with aged Comté cheese and tarragon. Just as he remembered it. Just as he liked it.
But not today.
Adjusting his reading glasses, he leaned over the agenda once more.
Jean-Guy had wolfed down the juicy burger, with the young, runny Gorgonzola, Mont d’Or, and sautéed mushrooms, and was now also reading while absently dipping the herbed frites into mayonnaise.
“Stephen arrived on the eleventh of September,” said Jean-Guy. “Air Canada flight from Montréal. That was ten days ago, just like the manager at the George V told you. So, what’s he been doing?”
The rest of the agenda, from the eleventh to the day before he was hit, was empty. Until the entry about meeting Armand in the garden of the Musée Rodin. Then AFP, which they now knew stood for Alexander Francis Plessner.
Below that, Stephen had written in the dinner with the family. His family, Armand noticed. His family.
Armand brought out his own notebook.
“This’s ridiculous,” said Jean-Guy as he leaned back against the sofa. “Stephen came to Paris for a reason. Why didn’t he write anything down? The rest of the agenda is packed with meetings and notes.”
It was true. They’d been through it once, scanning, and would need to go over it a few more times, carefully. The ten days previous were empty.
But the days going forward were not.
On Monday Stephen was planning to attend an eight a.m. board meeting of GHS Engineering.
“He has a reservation on the Air Canada flight back to Montréal on Wednesday,” said Armand. “But there’s a note beside it.” He leaned closer to read the cramped writing, then smiled. Stephen had written, only if baby has arrived.
Armand sat back and took a deep breath.
Going more slowly through the agenda, they found notes on meetings with an AP, presumably Alexander Plessner, in the past year. And lunches with friends, including Daniel.