All the Devils Are Here (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #16) - Louise Penny Page 0,58

far worse than anything he could have expected or imagined. Or steeled himself against.

It was so great a lie, it staggered him.

And then an image exploded in his mind. Of his grandmother. Zora. Looking at Stephen, as though the devil himself had entered the house.

Did she know something? Sense something?

But no. That wasn’t possible. This wasn’t possible.

With a jolt, like a man coming up for air, he was back in the peaceful dining room of his son’s apartment in Paris. Diffused light came in through the sheer curtains, giving it an ethereal quality.

“That’s not true,” he finally managed to say.

“I can show you the documents.”

He nodded. Knowing he had to see them, but not wanting to. He wanted to crawl back to an hour ago, when things were just terrible, not monstrous.

“Even if it is true, about his father and uncle, that doesn’t mean Stephen was part of it. He still escaped to France. Still fought in the Resistance.”

“Did he?” asked Fontaine. “Are you so sure? If he lied about his family, maybe he lied about that, too.”

“What he told us is the truth.” Gamache’s grip was slipping. The horses straining. “The man is ninety-three, fighting for his life in a hospital bed after being attacked, and now you … you … attack him again? With wild accusations that are impossible to prove, or disprove? Jesus Christ.”

The stamping horses had broken loose.

Beside him, Jean-Guy jerked. He’d rarely heard Armand Gamache shout, and never, ever heard him swear. Not with those words anyway. Never.

And now the Chief was literally trembling with rage.

Across the table, Irena Fontaine smiled. She’d hit a nerve, just as Dussault had predicted. And not just hit but shattered a nerve.

Gamache had managed to remain calm, contained, when she’d accused his children of murder. But this accusation against Horowitz had made him lose it. Why?

Because, she thought, he’s afraid it might actually be true.

“What I know,” she said, “is that the Allies had their doubts. The leaders of the Resistance had their doubts.”

“But not enough to prosecute.”

“That’s hardly a measure of innocence, as we all know.”

She opened the slender folder and produced a grainy black-and-white photograph.

It showed German officers laughing and raising glasses. Among them a thin-lipped, humorless man who looked like a failed accountant. Heinrich Himmler. Head of the Gestapo and father of the Holocaust.

Food and drink were in front of them. A celebration in progress.

And behind Himmler, a slender hand resting comfortably on the Nazi leader’s shoulder, was a young man with a familiar grin, looking straight into the camera.

Armand felt light-headed and thought he might be sick. It was the same hand he’d gripped as a child. He’d gripped that morning in the hospital.

Stephen. Impossibly young. Happy. Joining in the fun. Joining in the joke.

Armand recognized the fresco behind them.

The photo was taken in the Hôtel Lutetia after it had been commandeered as the headquarters of the Abwehr, the Nazi counterespionage unit, in occupied Paris.

Gamache had sat at that same table with Stephen. Eating ice cream as a child, sipping scotch as an adult. Perhaps the very same drink, from the same glasses, in the very same chair, as that creature.

“After the war, when questioned, Horowitz claimed to have taken a job at the Lutetia to spy on the Germans and pass the information on to his comrades in the Resistance,” said Fontaine.

“That makes sense,” said Armand, struggling to regain his equilibrium.

In the photo Stephen was in uniform, but not that of the Abwehr, or any German unit. It was the crisp uniform of a Lutetia waiter.

“It’s what every collaborator claimed, monsieur, as you must know.”

“And it’s what members of the Resistance actually did. How else would they get information except to cozy up to the Nazis? And Stephen, being German, would be in a perfect position to get information. He was telling the truth. The man I know wouldn’t do what you’re suggesting.”

“Help the Nazis? He was one.”

“He was German. There’s a huge difference.”

“I agree. I meant that he was raised in a house that supported the Nazi party. His family were members. Senior officers. They rounded up men, women, children and sent them to camps. Death camps this man”—she thrust a finger onto Himmler’s face—“created.”

“And that’s why Stephen escaped to France and fought the Nazis,” said Armand, raising his voice again, before pulling it back so far he was almost whispering. “Because he couldn’t support that.”

Even to his own ears, he’d begun to sound like an upset child insisting on something that might