All the Devils Are Here(63)

“Well, you know Stephen,” said Armand. “Indestructible.”

“So he’ll be all right?” asked Madame.

“I hope so.” That at least was true.

“What happened, Armand?” asked Monsieur Faubourg. “First he’s hit by a car, and now a man’s killed in his apartment. We don’t understand.”

“It can’t be a coincidence, can it?” asked Madame Faubourg.

“Non,” said Jean-Guy. “We think what happened to Monsieur Horowitz wasn’t an accident.”

“Voilà,” said Madame, while Monsieur crossed himself. “That’s what I said.”

“But why would someone do this?”

“That’s what we want to know,” said Jean-Guy. “When did you last see him?”

“Monsieur Horowitz?” Madame looked at Monsieur. “Was it June? July?”

“Not since then?” asked Jean-Guy. “Not in the last couple of days?”

“Days? No,” said Monsieur. “We only knew he was in Paris when we heard about the accident, this morning. We thought he must’ve just arrived. We haven’t seen him here.”

Madame’s hand was shaking as she reached for the teapot.

“Here,” said Jean-Guy, gently taking the heavy pot from her. “Let me be mother.”

“Pardon?” asked Monsieur.

“Désolé,” said Beauvoir, reddening. “Just something a friend back home says when pouring tea.”

Damn Gabri, he thought, remembering the large man in the intentionally frilly apron, pouring the Red Rose from the Brown Betty teapot.

Oh, dear God, thought Beauvoir. Why do I know these things?

Madame closed her hands into fists to stop the trembling. “We’ve known Monsieur Horowitz for so long. We knew one day … but not like this.”

Armand had no idea what their first names were. They only ever called each other Madame and Monsieur. Childless, they’d adopted the residents of the building as their family. As their children, their aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters.

Stephen was somewhere between an uncle and an older brother.

When in Paris, his godfather almost always had Sunday lunch with Madame and Monsieur. And as a child, young Armand had joined them around this kitchen table for roast chicken, or fish pie. The food provided by Stephen, the cooking by the apron-clad Madame. The men would drink beer in the courtyard while Armand helped in the kitchen.

This kitchen, this home, had not changed. Though he had. From child to adult. Father and grandfather now. From boy with flour on his hands to man with blood on them.

Still, he’d always be “the boy” to them. And they’d always be Madame and Monsieur to him.

Monsieur watched as Armand took a long sip of beer, coming away with a slight foam mustache, which he wiped away.

“Délicieux.”

And it was. Monsieur had obviously had long practice making beer.

Madame Faubourg, back in control of her movements, cut thick slabs of pain au citron and put out a ceramic tub of whipped butter.

“You want to ask us about what happened,” she said, shifting the point of the knife from one to the other. “Well, we didn’t see anything, and thank God for that.”

“Wish we had.”

“Don’t say that, Monsieur. They’d have killed us, too.” She put down the knife and touched his hand, in an act as sacred as the sign of the cross.

“Monsieur Horowitz has the whole top floor, as you know. And you can’t see his windows from here,” said Monsieur. “He looks out over the street, not into the courtyard.”

“The police are still up there going over things,” said Madame. “We expect they’ll want to talk to us eventually.”

“They haven’t yet?” asked Beauvoir, glancing at Gamache.

“No.”

“And you saw no stranger cross the courtyard yesterday?” asked Armand. “No one rang you?”

“Do murderers normally ring the concierge for admittance?” asked Madame, and Jean-Guy smiled.

“Non,” admitted Armand.

The apartment building was fairly typical of the quartier. The large wooden door from the sidewalk opened onto a private courtyard. The residents walked across it to access another door that led to the elevator, though most took the stairs if they could.

The elevator was the cage type, tiny, old, rickety.

“And this morning?” asked Gamache. “Did you see anyone arrive?”

“I saw you and Madame Gamache,” said Monsieur. “That was mid-morning. I came out to say bonjour, but you’d already gone into the building. You found the body?”

“Oui.”

“Pauvre Madame Gamache,” said Madame. “You must give her some cake.”

Gamache considered declining, but realized it would just hurt her feelings. He accepted the slab of warm pain au citron wrapped in wax paper and put it in his pocket.

“You saw no one else?” asked Beauvoir.

“No strangers,” said Monsieur. “The children of the family on the third floor came in from Provence for the weekend, but we know them well. And the woman on the second floor had a delivery from Le Bon Marché. We know the deliveryman. See him often. He came and left right away.”