All the Devils Are Here (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #16) - Louise Penny Page 0,75
looking for a gift for Armand. Please, please don’t tell him, or Claude, that I asked, but I noticed Claude’s cologne and really like it.”
“You do? I think it smells like bark. And mud. I like Armand’s. A lot. What is it?”
“Sandalwood.”
“You’re not thinking of having him switch, are you?”
“Well, it’s just that sometimes it’s nice to have a choice. What is Claude’s cologne?”
“Something his second-in-command gave him a few years ago after they’d been to a conference in Cologne together. His number two bought a bottle for each of them when they toured the factory where it’s made. Have you ever been to Cologne? Beautiful city. Or at least once was. All but destroyed in the war.”
This conversation was hardly linear, and Reine-Marie wondered if she could continue to steer it back to a stinky cologne when there were other more interesting topics on the table.
One more try.
“He and his second-in-command wear the same scent?”
She knew the Prefect’s second-in-command was a woman, Irena Fontaine, the investigator who met them at Daniel’s apartment.
She was a protégé of the Prefect. They were obviously close, professionally, but this sharing of scents seemed a little beyond that.
“Oh, yes. Claude doesn’t wear it all the time, thankfully. Only when they’re going to meet.”
Reine-Marie stared at Monique. Didn’t she see how convenient this was? If Claude came home after this “meeting” smelling like his younger, female second-in-command, there would be no suspicion.
But this wasn’t her business. And maybe there was nothing there.
After all, Armand’s new number two was also a young woman. Isabelle Lacoste. She’d become a close family friend. A cherished and valued colleague. He’d brought her into homicide and mentored her. Isabelle had repaid Armand by saving his life, at a terrible personal cost to herself.
They were like father and daughter. There was never any suspicion of more between them.
But then, Reine-Marie didn’t know Monique’s husband as well as she knew her own.
“Do you know the name of the cologne?” Reine-Marie asked again, casually.
“No, but I can tell you the bottle looks more like booze than scent. It’s quite ornate. Attractive, actually. The only thing I do like about it. Oh, wait. It’s not a name, it’s a number. Made me laugh. I thought it said 112 at first. Seemed appropriate.”
Yes, thought Reine-Marie as she put the coffeepot on the tray. 112 was the French emergency number. Alarms should be going off for Monique Dussault.
“Maybe we can find it,” said Reine-Marie, reaching for her iPhone on the counter.
She put in cologne from Cologne and up popped the image of a blue-and-gold box.
“Yes, that’s it,” said Monique. “It’s called 4711. I knew it was a number. Says here it’s the first cologne ever made. Ha, probably why Claude wears it. He loves history. As does Armand. Something they have in common.”
“Oui,” said Reine-Marie.
As she closed the phone, she thought it might be the only thing the two men had in common.
The cologne was exactly the same as the one hidden in their bedroom. She’d confirmed the scent. But in doing that, she’d uncovered another, more important question.
Was it Claude Dussault they’d surprised in Stephen’s apartment or Irena Fontaine?
Jean-Guy got up from his laptop and went to the open window. He scanned the dark street below and breathed in the fresh night air. Trying to clear his mind. To get the clutter out and to see more clearly the connections that were appearing.
SecurForte was the link.
The security firm owned by GHS Engineering. It looked after security at the George V and almost certainly the Lutetia.
And where else?
He looked at his watch. Almost ten. He’d call the Gamaches at ten thirty. By then their guests might be gone.
Returning to his laptop he clicked on the link the GM of the George V had sent, to access the tapes from the hotel cameras. They’d been edited, almost certainly by SecurForte. To hide something or someone.
But it had to have been done quickly, and something might have been missed.
And sure enough, after twenty-five minutes of going back and forth, he found something. Someone.
Not Stephen. Not Alexander Francis Plessner.
What he found was a grainy image of a gray-haired, elegant woman.
She was just emerging from behind a huge floral arrangement in the lobby. It was a split second of tape they’d failed to erase.
There was no mistaking Eugénie Roquebrune, the president of GHS, entering the George V yesterday afternoon. She was there one moment, then the next there was no trace of her on the video. She’d disappeared.