by Louise Penny
She explained.
“It was a good try,” he said as he shoved a few inches away from her and gestured to Jacques to bring their bill. Quickly.
From a distance, Jacques waved the suggestion, or something, away.
Their food and drink were on the house.
As Reine-Marie and Beauvoir stepped into the fresh air and sunshine on boulevard Raspail, they noticed that Armand was still inside.
He’d paused at the entrance and was, once again, staring down at the mosaic in the floor.
Jostled and shoved by impatient guests, Armand stood his ground and contemplated the ancient symbol of Paris before it was Paris.
Jacques had quoted the Latin motto. Fluctuat nec mergitur.
Beaten by the waves, but never sinks.
For the first time, despite seeing it for decades, Armand realized the mosaic looked like a scene from The Tempest. Shakespeare’s play opened with a terrible storm, and a ship in peril.
As a young man leaped from a sinking ship to almost certain death, he screamed, “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”
Armand raised his head and looked around.
Here, here? In the Hôtel Lutetia?
CHAPTER 14
Beauvoir sat on the Paris métro as it rumbled out of the center of the city to the area known as La Défense, where he worked.
The district sounded more romantic than it actually was.
When Jean-Guy heard that’s where he’d be working, he’d been excited. The very name, La Défense, conjured childhood images of chivalry. Of bold and brave deeds. Of towers erected to defend the City of Light.
There were indeed towers in La Défense. Incredible numbers of them. But they wouldn’t repel a rock, never mind an army. They were made of glass.
There was barely a tree, barely any grass to be seen. Just concrete. And glass. With helicopters droning overhead, ferrying presidents and CEOs to important meetings.
Beauvoir wondered if their feet ever actually touched the ground.
It was a place of industry, of finance, of unimaginable wealth.
Of inconceivable power.
And that, he suspected as the train approached his stop, was what they were defending.
As he got off, he looked around.
This man, born and raised in inner-city Montréal, was beginning to yearn for a tree. Or two. Or maybe even three.
* * *
Reine-Marie parted with Armand at the Quai des Orfèvres, but not before giving him the paper bag with her purchase from Le Bon Marché.
While she went home to take a long, long, hot, hot shower, he approached the old building overlooking the Seine.
The 36, as it was known, had once been the bustling headquarters of the Paris police. How many cops, how many criminals, had walked through that archway?
Most of the operations had been moved to more modern facilities, leaving just the BRI. The Brigade de recherche et d’intervention. The serious crimes squad.
It was also where the Prefect chose to have his main office.
As Gamache approached the door, his phone vibrated.
Before he even had a chance to bring it to his ear, he heard a gravelly voice say, “Is it Mr. Horowitz? Has something happened?”
It was Agnes McGillicuddy.
“He’s alive, but he was hit by a van last night.”
“Is he all right?”
He could hear the fear, and delusion, in that question.
How could a ninety-year-old man be all right after that?
“He’s in a coma,” Armand went on. His voice gentle. Though he knew nothing could soften the blow he was about to deliver to an eighty-year-old woman who also loved Stephen. “He might not recover.”
As he spoke, Armand walked away from the 36, down the stone ramp to the walkway along the Seine.
“How could you let this happen?” Mrs. McGillicuddy demanded.
Armand opened and closed his mouth. Surprised by the accusation and trying to work out an answer. Should he have, could he have, prevented it?
“I’m sorry,” was all he could think of to say. “I didn’t see it coming. Mrs. McGillicuddy, do you know why Stephen was in Paris?”
“To see you, of course. And because of the baby. He wants to be there to support you all.”
“He isn’t here just for that. Stephen’s also in Paris for a board meeting.”
“No, he isn’t.”
“We found the annual report on his desk. For the engineering company GHS. It’s in his agenda.”
“Not in the one I have.”
“His personal agenda.”
“Mr. Horowitz isn’t on any boards anymore. He gave them all up.”
“Why?”
“Most corporations have bylaws saying board members must step down at a certain age. Mr. Horowitz passed all those ages. And then some.”
Bikers pedaled by. Kids on scooters passed. Pedestrians walking dogs glanced at the man staring into the river.
“Why would he have the annual report then?”
“He liked reading annual reports, like others like reading celebrity magazines.”
“Was he ever on the board of GHS Engineering?”
“No.”
“Does he own shares in the company?”
“I’d have to check.” He heard clicking as she looked it up on her laptop. “No. It’s privately owned. Not publicly traded on the stock exchange.”
“Did he ever talk about Luxembourg?”
“Luxembourg? The country? Or is it a city-state? Why would he talk about that?”
Armand sighed. “I don’t know.”
There was a pause before she spoke again, softly, almost gently. “You think this was no accident, don’t you, Armand?”
He hesitated. Considering.
Stephen Horowitz had trusted Agnes McGillicuddy with his business and personal life for decades. If anyone knew his secrets, it would be her.
If Stephen trusted her, so could he.
“I’m certain of it. Stephen knew something. We need to find out what it was. He never gave you anything, any documents, for safekeeping?”
“No.”
No, thought Armand. Even as he asked the question, he had known that Stephen would never drag her into this. Just as he hadn’t mentioned it to him, or Jean-Guy, or anyone else.
Except Monsieur Plessner, and he was dead. Confirming Stephen’s worst fears, and his need for extreme caution.
“And you have no reason to suspect he’d found something out, something extremely damaging, about a corporation?”
“No, and he’d normally crow to me if he had. He loved having a secret, and loved nothing better than knowing the shit was about to hit the fan.” She hesitated before going on. “If he didn’t tell me, that means it must be really bad. And they tried to kill him to stop him?”
“I think so. You have his business agenda?”
“I do. What do you want to know?”
“What he was doing between September eleventh and the twenty-first.”
“I don’t see anything here. But he must’ve been spending time with you.”
“Reine-Marie and I only arrived in Paris yesterday.”
There was a pause and then she said, “Oh.”
“So you have no idea what he was doing in those ten days?”
“No.” Now she was clearly confused. Something new for Mrs. McGillicuddy. “I didn’t book anything for him. No dinner reservations. No theater or opera tickets. And I don’t have the meeting next week. He might’ve made that plan since arriving in Paris.”
“Did you make a reservation for him at the George V?”
“No. I just told you. No dinner reservations.”
“Not at the restaurant. For a suite.”
“A suite? At the George V? Have you lost your mind?”
Well, that answered that, thought Gamache. He began to pace back and forth along the riverfront as they talked.
The great medieval buildings of île de la Cit
é rose behind him, while across the Seine he saw the Rive Gauche. The historic home of artists and writers.
Over the centuries, people looking out of those windows had seen far more shocking things than a man walking back and forth along the riverfront.
They’d have witnessed the Terror, for instance.
This was more like watching the Agitation.
Though if they could see his thoughts, his feelings, they’d have drawn the curtains and locked their doors.
“Do you know a man named Alexander Francis Plessner?”
“Alex Plessner? Yes.”
Armand stopped pacing. Finally, a sentence that didn’t start with “no.”
“Mr. Horowitz has lunch with him at the club whenever Mr. Plessner’s in Montréal. He lives in Toronto, I think.”
“They were friends?”
“Were? Mr. Horowitz’s still alive.” The reprimand was immediate and whip sharp. “Don’t bury him yet.”
The past tense was because of the death of Plessner, but Armand wasn’t ready to give up that piece of information.
Instead, he apologized and asked, “They know each other well?”
“They’re more like acquaintances than friends. Not especially close.”
“Can you find out if Alex Plessner ever sat on the GHS board?”
“I think so.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me about Mr. Plessner? Anything Stephen might’ve said?”
There was a pause as she thought. “I believe Mr. Plessner has a great deal of money. Mr. Horowitz said he made most of it all at once, through some speculation. I think it might’ve been venture capital.”
“Like seed money for Apple or Microsoft?”
“Something like that. Mr. Horowitz always kids Mr. Plessner about falling into a bucket of luck.”
That bucket, it seemed, had run dry yesterday, thought Gamache.
“Mrs. McGillicuddy, there’s something else I need to tell you. Alex Plessner was found murdered this morning, in Stephen’s apartment.”
There was a soft moan at the other end. The sound of a person who’d seen a lot in her long life. And had now seen too much.
Armand gave her time to absorb that news.
“What’s happening?” she whispered down the line from Montréal.
“I’m trying to find out. The apartment was ransacked. They were looking for something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. We think it might be evidence of some sort that Stephen and Plessner found. Alex Plessner had Stephen’s business card on him—”
“Well, that’s no sur—” She’d interrupted him. And now Mrs. McGillicuddy interrupted herself. “Are you saying … That’s not possible.”
“What isn’t?”
“You were going to tell me that Mr. Horowitz gave him a JSPS card.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe it. You know what that card does? Anyone with it can get into Mr. Horowitz’s bank accounts, his safety-deposit boxes. His homes. As far as I know, Mr. Horowitz only gave that card to three people. You, me, and your grandmother.”
“Zora?”
“Yes.”
“Zora?” Armand repeated. “Are you sure?”
“I was there when he gave it to her. He made sure I saw.”
“At my parents’ funeral?”
“No. When you were going away to Cambridge. He thought she might need a friend one day. He was offering to be that friend.”
“She hated him.”
“Yes. But that didn’t mean he hated her.”
Armand thought for a moment. Could the card they found on Alex Plessner have been Zora’s? But no. She’d been dead for more than twenty years. And Mr. Plessner’s card was newer. Thick, sturdy. Zora’s would have been the much older, flimsier version.
He wondered what had become of Zora’s. It hadn’t been among her belongings when she died. Perhaps his grandmother hadn’t understood the magnitude, and significance, of what Stephen was offering, and had thrown it away.
“Would you necessarily know if Mr. Plessner used his card?”
Mrs. McGillicuddy thought. “If he used it to get into one of Mr. Horowitz’s accounts, or homes, or business, yes. But you know that card can be used for so much more. In the international business world, it’s pretty much a laissez-passer.”
That was a good way of putting it, Armand thought. The Just Some Poor Schmuck card, as silly as it might sound, was anything but. It was akin to a travel document issued by rulers and despots of old, guaranteeing safe passage.
Within the international business community, Stephen Horowitz’s JSPS card had become legendary. Mythical.
“You don’t know, then, if Mr. Plessner ever actually used it?”
“No.”
“You still have yours?”
“Of course.”
“I have a colleague, Isabelle Lacoste. She’s the acting head of homicide for the Sûreté. She’s going to need to get into Stephen’s home and work. Into his safety-deposit boxes at the bank, to make sure they haven’t been searched in the last day or so, and to search them herself.”
“Tell her to call me. I’ll make sure she gets in.”
“If she needs the JSPS card, can you give her yours?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Mr. Horowitz trusted me with it. I’ll help her with whatever she wants, but I need to be there when she uses it.”
“Agreed. There is something else I need you to do,” said Armand.
“Please. Anything.”
“I found a scrap of paper in Stephen’s agenda,” said Armand. “With dates that seem to be in reference to Monsieur Plessner. I’m wondering if they’re meetings the two of them had, either in person or on the phone. If I email them to you, can you cross-check with Stephen’s old agendas? See what he was doing on those days? Some go back a number of years.”
“I can do that.”
Armand paused before speaking again. “Can you think of anyone who might want Stephen dead?”
“I can think of any number of people.”
Armand gave a small laugh. “True. Merci, Mrs. McGillicuddy.”
“You’ll let me know—”
“I will.”
“I didn’t mean to blame you, Armand. It’s just that…”
“Oui. It is … that.”
CHAPTER 15
Reine-Marie looked at her watch as she left their apartment. It was two o’clock. She had one hour to do what she needed, and then get to Daniel and Roslyn’s in time for the meeting with Commander Fontaine.
She walked rapidly down rue des Archives, stopping to drop her clothes at the dry cleaner before continuing on.
How the neighborhood had changed since Zora bought the apartment in the 1970s.
As much as Reine-Marie loved history, she had no desire to live in it. A city, a quartier, a street, a person needed to evolve. Though the fact she was walking in Zora’s footsteps always comforted her. She was retracing a route the elderly woman had taken almost every day of her life in Paris. Both before and after the war, Zora would have come along this same sidewalk, with her familiar string bag, to get to the kosher deli, the butcher, the boulangerie, the seamstress, and, finally, the Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville, or BHV. The huge department store on rue de Rivoli had been there, in one form or another, since the mid-1850s.
Reine-Marie walked up the steps and into the store.
When she came out again, she had in her purse a small blue-and-gold box. Containing a cologne.
* * *
Jean-Guy sat at his desk and was about to log in to his computer when he paused. Considering the options and the consequences. But not for long. It was already just after two, and he needed to meet Annie and the others in less than an hour.
Making up his mind, Beauvoir walked next door into Séverine Arbour’s office. He looked around. As far as he knew, there were no cameras here. Though he couldn’t be sure.
It was a risk he
had to take.
Sitting down, he first rifled her desk, or tried to. The drawers were locked, and all he succeeded in doing was rattling them.
Then he turned to her computer. It, too, was locked, but as head of the department he knew her code.
Her computer sprang to life. There was a document already up. The Patagonia project. He’d managed to rattle her after all.
Minimizing it, he began typing, and up came the file on Luxembourg.
Beauvoir knew that their cybersecurity unit could find out who had accessed which files, and on which terminal.
If anyone wanted to know who was snooping around the Luxembourg dossier, on a Saturday, all they’d see was Séverine Arbour. Not him.
He couldn’t get into her emails, he’d need her password for that, but he could get into the main files and bring up internal reports.
Which is what he did.
He was just about to send it to himself when he stopped. That would be a fatal error. Instead, he hit print.
Out in the main office, over by the wall, a large industrial printer sprang to life.
Now he needed to find the emails between the engineer on-site and the executive overseeing the project. Scanning the file, he found the name of the engineer.
And the name of the executive.
Carole Gossette.
He sat back, staring at the name. Madame Gossette. Head of operations. His boss. His mentor.
Now why would such a senior executive be overseeing such an apparently minor project? Because, he thought, it wasn’t such a minor project after all.
There was a soft ding.
“Merde,” he whispered, his heart leaping in his chest. He recognized that sound.
The elevator door at the end of the hallway opened. Without glancing up, Beauvoir tried to stop the printer, but it wouldn’t be put on pause. Hitting the button several times, Beauvoir eventually gave up and put the screen to sleep.
Across the large open room, the Luxembourg file was still printing out. And the guard was getting closer.
There was no way to get to the printer before the guard arrived. Instead, Jean-Guy quickly left Arbour’s office and ducked into his own, leaving the door open.
In the background, he could hear the large machine making what now sounded like a racket.