All the Devils Are Here (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #16) - Louise Penny Page 0,42
Beauvoir blanched. “Oh, God, it is possible, isn’t it? It could be GHS’s finances, but it could also be the design. Oh, merde.”
They looked at each other.
Elevators. They were where both men’s fears intersected.
Heights for Gamache. Tight spaces for Beauvoir.
The thought of being stuck in a malfunctioning elevator, many stories up, made them both light-headed. The thought of it, of hundreds, thousands, plummeting, made them sick.
Gamache took a long, slow, deep breath. “We need those plans.”
“I’ll get them. You think maybe what Stephen found wasn’t a financial swindle, but some engineering flaw?”
“Maybe. But if he did, I doubt he’d bring it up at the board.”
“Why not?”
“If he somehow came across a serious flaw in a design, he’d go straight to the head of the company. He’d want to tell someone who could stop the projects and have the flaw fixed. Who’s the head of GHS?”
“Eugénie Roquebrune. Should I try to get a meeting?”
“Non, not yet. We need more information. If she’s behind the cover-up, she’ll deny it, and without hard evidence we’re just exposing ourselves.”
“Maybe that’s exactly what Stephen did,” said Jean-Guy. “And maybe that’s what triggered the attacks.”
“Do you know if GHS is owned by anyone else? Whether it’s a subsidiary of another corporation?”
“Not that I know of. GHS is massive. That would make the parent company the equivalent of ”—he hesitated—“something really big.”
“You were going to say the Death Star, weren’t you.”
“Well, yes. If you can quote poetry, I can reference Star Wars. But it’s not a bad analogy.”
No, thought Gamache. It wasn’t.
He stared out of the Joséphine, onto the crowded sidewalk, and warned himself that they were manufacturing motives. Almost certainly with serious flaws.
“We’ve been through Stephen’s agenda,” said Jean-Guy, flipping the pages. “There’s no meeting with Roquebrune noted. Nothing at all about GHS until the board meeting.”
“True. But the one undeniable fact is that someone tried to kill Stephen, and someone succeeded in killing Alexander Plessner. Three days before the board meeting. The timing must be more than a coincidence.”
Whoever had killed Plessner had ripped Stephen’s apartment apart, searching for something. Whoever ordered the hits had the advantage of knowing what that was.
They did not. But Gamache knew he had perhaps an even greater advantage. He knew Stephen.
It was now a race.
“We need to figure out what Stephen’s been doing for ten days,” he said.
One person who might be able to help was Agnes McGillicuddy. Armand checked his phone, but there was still no message from her.
The other thing Armand really wanted to know, with increasing importance, was what Stephen had done for those four missing hours, between leaving the Lutetia and meeting them for dinner.
A rogue thought appeared. Was it possible he went up to his apartment? Was it possible Stephen killed Plessner? Is that what the AFP notation was about?
But no.
But …
Who knew what Stephen Horowitz was really capable of? What he’d done in his youth, with the Resistance. When there was so much at stake.
What he’d do in his extreme old age? When there was very little left to lose.
But what could possibly drive Stephen to murder?
He looked over at Beauvoir, to see if he was thinking along the same lines. Connecting phantom dots to form a monster.
Jean-Guy was watching him closely, but didn’t say anything.
Gamache shifted under the gaze. Then, putting his reading glasses back on, he flipped to the back of the agenda, where people often made random notes. They’d already looked, and there was nothing there.
He tipped the page up to the sunlight, to see if there was the imprint of something written there and torn out.
Nothing.
But …
Something had slipped out from under the back flap of the booklet. The corner of a tiny scrap of paper. Shoved there. Hidden there?
He pulled it out.
“What’s that?” asked Jean-Guy as he leaned closer.
There were numbers and letters on the paper. Not JSPS this time.
In his cramped, clear hand, Stephen Horowitz had written AFP.
“Alexander Francis Plessner,” said Jean-Guy. “And the numbers must be the dates they met.”
Just then Jean-Guy’s phone rang. It was Lacoste, from the Sûreté in Montréal.
He answered it, listened, thanked her, and after hanging up he turned to Gamache.
“Alexander Francis Plessner is, was, an engineer.”
“Is this it?”
The sales clerk had pulled out a Tom Ford bottle and spritzed it on Reine-Marie.
No.
Then Versace’s Eros.
Definitely not.
Then Yves Saint Laurent—
“No, those are all pretty common,” she said. “It’s something I’ve never smelled before.”
“Are you sure it was a cologne?” he asked. “Not something you stepped in? Some do smell like that.”