All the Devils Are Here(26)

“Someone’s done a number on this place,” said the Prefect.

Even Stephen’s bathroom had been searched, the medicine cabinet’s contents in the sink and on the floor.

They walked down the long corridor, glancing into the other bedroom, the bathroom, the dining room.

“Coming?” Dussault asked.

He’d noticed that Armand had stopped.

“What is it?”

“Nothing, really. Désolé.” He looked away, into the second bedroom.

“What?”

Armand turned back to the Prefect, his colleague and friend, and said with a very small, almost sad smile, “Just a memory.”

“Did you stay here as a child?”

“Yes.”

“Hard to see this,” said Dussault. “It must be quite something when not …”

“It is.”

Stephen Horowitz’s Paris apartment spoke of untold wealth and unusual restraint.

The financier preferred the simplicity of the Louis Philippe style, with its warm wood grain and soft, simple lines. Each piece, searched out in auction houses and even flea markets, had a purpose. Each was actually used. The armoires, the bedsteads, the dressers and lamps.

As a result, the place felt more like a home than a museum.

But right now, it could pass as a dump.

“Robbery gone wrong or professional hit?” Dussault asked.

Armand shook his head. “Whoever did this was searching for something. Had Stephen not been attacked last night, I’d have said a robbery gone wrong, but—”

“But it can’t be a coincidence,” agreed Dussault. “The two must be connected. The simplest explanation is that the killer came here knowing Stephen was at dinner, and the apartment would be empty. He could search it without fear of interruption. When he arrived and discovered this fellow, he killed him. Then continued the search. Poor guy was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Gamache raised his hands. He had no idea if that was true. It was just one scenario.

What he did know was that while it was necessary to go through various scenarios, there was folly, there was danger in landing too heavily on one particular theory early in an investigation. Too often the investigators became invested in that theory and began interpreting evidence to fit.

That could lead to a murderer going free, or, worse, it could lead to the conviction of an innocent person.

Don’t believe everything you think.

Chief Inspector Gamache wrote that on the board for the incoming cadets at the start of every year at the S?reté academy, and it stayed there all year.

At first the students in the class he taught laughed. It sounded clever but silly. Little by little most got it. And those who didn’t did not progress further.

That phrase was as powerful as any weapon they’d be handed.

No. Right now there were any number of theories, all equally valid. But only one was correct.

“Why was the killer still here this morning?” asked Dussault. “They don’t normally hang around.”

“Or why did he return? The only explanation I can think of is that he hadn’t found what he was looking for.”

“Okay, here’s a thought,” said Dussault. “The original plan was to search the apartment while Monsieur Horowitz was at dinner. When he found what he wanted, the intruder would head over to the restaurant and kill Horowitz, hoping it would look like a hit-and-run. No one would suspect anything other than a terrible accident. Clean. Simple. Fini.”

Armand considered that. It could be true. Except …

“The place is a mess,” said Armand. “If he really wanted Stephen’s death to look like an accident, wouldn’t he leave the apartment as he’d found it?”

“Yes, that would’ve been the plan, but it went south as soon as he discovered this man and killed him,” said Dussault. “Then there was no need to be careful. In fact, he was in a hurry. He had to find whatever he needed, fast. Then get to the restaurant in time to run down Horowitz.”

“By then, why not just shoot Stephen?” asked Armand. “If what you say is true, there was no longer any need to make it look like an accident. We’d find the body in his apartment and realize it was deliberate.”

“He needed to buy time,” said Dussault. “If Horowitz had been shot, the brigade criminelle would’ve come here right away.”

As they should have anyway, thought Gamache.

The only constant in these theories was that the dead man was killed unexpectedly. One of several big mistakes made that night by the intruder.

Murdering the wrong man, failing to kill the right one, and apparently not even finding what he was looking for. If he had, he wouldn’t have still been hanging around when they’d arrived.

“Aaach,” said the Prefect. “My head is beginning to hurt.”

Gamache didn’t believe that. This was the sort of puzzle that people like Dussault, like him, were good at. Trying to unravel what appeared to be a Gordian knot.

But were they working on the same knot?

“It is possible,” said Armand, looking at Dussault to see his reaction to what he was about to say, “that it wasn’t the killer Reine-Marie and I interrupted, but someone else.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”