All the Devils Are Here (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #16) - Louise Penny Page 0,22

Armand explained, holding it up. “Since then he’s had his tailor put in the hidden pocket. He keeps his important things in there.”

Armand brought out one more thing. A slender agenda.

He then went through the things in the box. All predictable.

Except. His brow furrowed.

There, lying amid the other items, was a key. Not an apartment key, but a room key.

“Hotel George V,” he read.

“Yes,” said Reine-Marie. “That’s what I wanted to show you. It was on the pavement. I picked it up last night along with his glasses and put them into my purse. I forgot they were there until just now. Why would he have that? He’s staying in his apartment, isn’t he?”

“Yes. I walked him there yesterday afternoon. And here’s the key to his apartment.”

Armand held it up, then went back to the hotel key.

“Do you think someone else is staying at the hotel?” she suggested. “Could it be …”

“A lover?” asked Armand.

“Ruth?” said Reine-Marie.

Armand felt a frisson. That might explain the “here, here.” The devil was in the George V.

He smiled at the thought. Ruth Zardo, Stephen’s friend, was also their close friend and neighbor in their Québec village of Three Pines.

An elderly poet, she was embittered, often drunk. Definitely nuts. And brilliant.

You were a moth

brushing against my cheek

in the dark

I killed you

not knowing you were only a moth,

with no sting.

She and Stephen had proven a good match and fast friends. And while often angry, she was no devil. Perhaps, he’d often thought, just the opposite.

Armand could still see her, waving goodbye with one raised finger.

So who was in room 815 at the George V?

“I guess it’s possible the key was already there,” said Reine-Marie. “That someone dropped it and I picked it up by mistake.”

“Possible.” Armand pocketed the key and put the rest back in the box. With the exception of Stephen’s agenda, which he also slipped into his pocket. “Let’s find out.”

The taxi pulled into the entrance to the luxury hotel.

A man in livery opened the door and escorted them in. Armand gave him a twenty-euro note, and the man bowed and backed away.

The marble lobby was chock-full of fresh flowers, in banks and sprays, reaching almost to the twenty-foot ceiling. It was like stepping into a forest of blooms.

“Keep walking,” Armand whispered to Reine-Marie, their feet echoing on the marble floor. “Look like we belong.”

She smiled at him, then caught the eye of a uniformed bellhop, and, nodding, she swept right by her, with a casual “Bonjour,” as though she was a habituée.

Armand still carried the cardboard box from the hospital, but walked with such authority no one challenged them.

Mercifully, they had the elevator to themselves and could relax.

But Reine-Marie suddenly turned to Armand. “Have you told Mrs. McGillicuddy?”

“Not yet. I’ve emailed and asked her to call me when she can.”

“She’s going to be devastated.”

Agnes McGillicuddy had been Stephen’s private secretary for fiftysix years. Now in her mid-eighties, she’d refused to be rebranded an assistant, and lorded it over the outer office like a Hound of Hell.

She was married to Mr. McGillicuddy, he of no fixed first name. Sometimes Stephen called him Jeremiah. Sometimes Josephat. Sometimes Brian.

Armand was never sure if he did it because he really didn’t know Mr. McGillicuddy’s name, or to annoy Mrs. McGillicuddy. Though she refused to rise to it.

They had no children, and despite the fact Stephen was actually older than she, she treated him like a son.

The Gamaches knew her well, though neither had ever actually seen her away from her desk.

When they got to room 815, Reine-Marie knocked once. Then again.

A chambermaid came down the hall, looked at them, then walked right by.

Armand quickly unlocked the door, saying, “Hurry. She’s going to call security. We don’t have much time.”

“Allô?” Reine-Marie called once the door closed behind them. Silence.

This was no normal hotel room. It wasn’t even a normal suite. It was practically a castle within a castle.

“You take down here,” he said. “I’ll go upstairs. Hurry. They’ll be here soon.”

“There’s an upstairs?”

But Armand was already halfway up the curving stairway.

While vast, the main floor didn’t take long to explore. It was essentially one palatial room, with a sitting area in front of a fireplace and a long, polished dining table under a Murano glass chandelier. A powder room was just off the entrance, and a kitchenette tucked away at the back.

In case the billionaire wanted to make his own dinner, she thought. The only “cooking” she’d seen Stephen do was open a tin of cashews. And even