All the Devils Are Here (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #16) - Louise Penny Page 0,114
them to the one Stephen might have approached.
“You?” he asked the others.
From their terminals scattered down the long tables of the reading room, he heard mumbled, “Non. Nothing yet.”
And more tapping.
“I’m going to look up the dates from Stephen’s notes,” said Jean-Guy. “Maybe there’s something there.”
“What notes?” Allida Lenoir was sitting across from him and glanced at the piece of paper. “Agence France-Presse stories?”
Beauvoir smiled. “Non. AFP are the initials of the dead man. Alexander Francis Plessner.”
“Are you sure?” said the head archivist.
“Pretty sure, but if you want to try Agence France-Presse, be my guest.”
A few minutes later Madame Lenoir sighed. “Nothing. I put the dates into the wire service site and nothing unusual came up. A protest in Washington. European Union in turmoil. And the usual series of tragedies. Refugees fleeing brutal regimes and being turned back. A plane crash in the Urals. A bridge collapse in Spain. Shootings in two American cities.”
“No mention of GHS?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“No stories out of Patagonia or Luxembourg?”
“No.”
“Let me see that.”
Madame de la Granger had wandered over, and without waiting for him to give it to her, she snatched the scrap from his hand.
Bet she could catch a fly with chopsticks, thought Jean-Guy.
He got up and walked over to his mother-in-law. “Anything?”
“Not yet. No scandals to do with the board members,” said Reine-Marie. “No bankruptcies. No obvious need for money. No sudden big purchases. But I haven’t finished yet. You?”
But she already knew the answer. Then a thought occurred to her.
“Are there any board members with the initials AFP?” she asked, reaching for the report.
They began putting the names into the searches. Sure enough Annette Poppy, a former British Foreign Secretary, turned out to be Annette Forrester Poppy.
Jean-Guy looked at his watch. It was ten past seven.
“I know this man,” came the voice of the Chief Librarian over Jean-Guy’s shoulder.
Madame de la Granger was pointing to a member of the GHS Engineering board. “He’s the son of an old family friend. We were at the Sorbonne together.”
She moved her finger so they could read his name. Alain Pinot.
Alain Flaubert Pinot.
They stared at the photo of the middle-aged man. Thinning hair and fleshy face.
“His father owned newspapers,” said Madame de la Granger. “He asked if I’d tutor his son. As a favor, I agreed. What a waste of time.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Reine-Marie.
“Because Alain Pinot was as dumb as they come,” said the Chief Librarian. “If stupid was sand, he’d be half the Sahara.”
They looked at her.
“What? It’s true. This guy’s father knew I was into research. He hoped I could teach the kid how to track down information. Prepare him for a job at the newspapers. But all he was interested in was partying. And yet …”
They waited, as Madame de la Granger cast her mind back.
“I quite liked him. He was a couple of years younger than me, spoiled, entitled, thick but harmless. He had a poor brain but a good heart.” She looked again at the photo. “Just before he flunked out of the Sorbonne, his father had him transferred to another university, and I lost track of him.”
“Where to?” asked Beauvoir.
“I have no idea. Far away from the distractions of Paris is all I know.”
“Université de Montréal?” said Reine-Marie, looking at Jean-Guy. She entered Alain Flaubert Pinot’s name into the archive database, and up came his biography. “Yes. Says here he studied in Montréal. But not at UdeM. McGill.”
Reine-Marie and Jean-Guy stared at each other.
An unruly young man sent far from home to study? It seemed more than likely his father would contact a friend in Montréal to watch over his idiot son.
Was Stephen Horowitz that family friend? Was this the connection?
They called up more information on this A. F. Pinot.
Married with three children.
Father died of cancer fifteen years ago.
Son took over the company and, against the wishes of his board, immediately expanded into cable, telecom, tech companies.
He’d bought low, after the tech bubble burst, and turned hundreds of millions into billions.
“Jesus, maybe the guy’s an idiot savant,” said Madame de la Granger. “Though I saw no evidence of the savant part.”
“There,” said Allida Lenoir, pointing to her screen. “Six years ago. Pinot’s company bought a controlling interest in—”
“Agence France-Presse,” said Reine-Marie, triumphant. “That must be it.”
Jean-Guy was shaking his head. “We still don’t have a connection between this guy and Stephen. We don’t know whether AFP in his notes means Alain Pinot, or Agence France-Presse, or Plessner, or someone else.”
“Something’s missing,” said Madame de la Granger. “Some