All the Devils Are Here(33)

Where others might see facts, Madame Gamache could see the relationship between them. She could connect two, three, many apparently disparate events.

Between the aboriginal name for “the Stargazer,” an account of a dinner party in 1820 with the geologist Bigsby, and a pauper’s grave in Montréal.

She’d put all that together and come up with David Thompson. An explorer and mapmaker who turned out to be possibly the greatest cartographer who ever lived. An extraordinary human who’d disappeared into history.

Until the librarian and archivist Madame Gamache had found him.

And now she was presented with a whole different set of facts, of events. Not safely residing in history, these had a pulse. And blood all over them.

She pulled the box closer and narrowed her eyes. Trying to see …

“Hello?”

Reine-Marie was jolted back to the Joséphine and looked up into her husband’s smiling face.

“Désolé,” he said, bending to kiss her. “I didn’t mean to startle you. You were a million miles away.”

“Actually, not that far.” She kissed him back and heard him whisper, “Don’t react.”

She kept the smile on her face and tried not to betray any confusion.

He stepped aside and revealed Claude Dussault.

“Claude,” she said.

But she was confused. What had Armand meant? Was she not supposed to recognize this man she knew well?

Had seen the night before in the hospital?

But as the Prefect bent to kiss her on both cheeks, with an exaggerated politesse that had become a joke between them, she understood.

She tried not to react, but she feared she might have, momentarily, given it away. In the slight widening of her eyes. In surprise.

She was pleased to see Jean-Guy and focused her surprise on him.

Everyone got settled in the banquette and ordered drinks as Armand brought Reine-Marie up to speed.

She listened, asked a few questions that had no answers, then fell silent.

But her mind was racing. So quickly she actually felt it was spinning. Kicking up dust. Obscuring what should have been clear.

Jean-Guy pointed to her brioche. “Are you … ?”

She pushed it toward her son-in-law, who was always, it seemed, ravenous.

“One big question is whether Monsieur Plessner was mistaken for Monsieur Horowitz, or whether the attack on him was deliberate,” said Claude Dussault. “What’ve you got there?”

He gestured toward the box, where Reine-Marie’s hand still rested, protectively.

“Oh, yes,” said Armand. “We wanted to show you.” He looked around and caught the ma?tre d’s eye.

“Jacques.”

“Oui, Monsieur Armand?”

The two men went way back. Jacques had been a busboy when Stephen first brought Armand, at the age of nine, to the Lutetia. They were a decade apart in age, and while they’d known each other for almost half a century, there remained a formality between the two. A good ma?tre d’h?tel was never overly familiar with guests. And Jacques was among the best.

“Is there somewhere we can go to talk privately?”

“Of course. I will find you a room.”

A few minutes later they found themselves in the presidential suite.

“I was expecting some basement storage closet,” said Dussault, looking around with amusement. “You clearly have some pull here, Armand.”

“As do you at the George V.”

Dussault laughed. “I wish. I haven’t been there in years.”

“My mistake. I thought you said you had.”

“No. You’re thinking of the flophouse around the corner from the Quai des Orfèvres.”

“Right. The Gigi V,” said Armand.

As Dussault laughed, Armand caught Reine-Marie’s eyes, with another warning. But he could see it was no longer necessary.

Claude Dussault sat on the deep sofa and, putting the box on his knees, he opened it with all the anticipation of a child on Christmas morning.

“Let’s see what we have here. This’s a hospital container, non? Monsieur Horowitz’s belongings. Sealed. You haven’t opened it? But I thought—”

“We opened it,” said Armand. “And resealed it.”

He explained for Dussault and Jean-Guy what had happened at the George V.

“Bon,” said Dussault. “Good thinking. So everything’s in here? Laptop, phone, clothing?”

“Everything that Stephen had on him last night, and that I could find in his study.”

Dussault paused, his hand hanging into the box and a perplexed expression on his slender face. “It’s so strange, that he’d be staying at the hotel. You have no idea why?”

“None.”

Dussault brought out the laptop. “I don’t suppose you know his password for this?”

“No. Nor the phone. Though it’s smashed.”

“The SIM card?” Dussault asked.

“Broken.”

He sighed. “That’s a shame.”

“Oui.”

“What’s this?” Dussault asked.

“Looks like an Allen wrench,” said Reine-Marie.

She’d assembled enough big-box furniture for Daniel and Annie when they’d gone away to university to know an Allen wrench.