All the Devils Are Here(73)

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.

But why was she there, and why had she been erased? Could she have been the one Stephen was meeting before dinner Friday night?

He got up and walked around the living room, unable to settle. What could this mean?

Had Stephen sat across from her, looked her in the eyes, and told the president of GHS Engineering that he’d found out about their industrial espionage?

Was that what he was going to announce at the board meeting on Monday?

Is that why they tried to have him killed? That might explain the lack of finesse in both attacks. They were ordered at the last minute.

But something wasn’t quite right.

For a man who’d survived the war as a member of the Resistance. Who’d been cunning then and throughout his long life. Why would he make such a foolish strategic error now? Effectively signing his own death warrant.

Presumably he was in the George V to hide. Why invite over the very person he was hiding from?

After another circuit of the small living room, Jean-Guy sat back down and went through the video again. The lobby. The hallway to the elevator. The elevators, including the service elevators.

Nothing. Eugénie Roquebrune had disappeared.

He broadened the search.

And that’s where he found her. In the reflection of a waiter’s large silver tray. Polished and gleaming. It showed, for 2.7 seconds, three guests at a private corner table in the Galerie lounge.

The head of GHS Engineering sat with two male companions. Stephen Horowitz and Alexander Plessner?

Back and forth Jean-Guy went, over and over the footage. Until he was certain that he recognized one of the men at the table.

Just hours before the attacks, Claude Dussault, the Prefect of Police, was having tea with Eugénie Roquebrune.

Beauvoir got to his feet. It was almost ten thirty. He could call, but …

Dussault was at the Gamaches’. He didn’t want to say anything that might be overheard.

A man naturally given to action, Jean-Guy had come late to the value of pausing.

“It is solved by walking,” Gamache had often said.

In the middle of a stressful case, the Chief would leave his office, and instead of doing something, he’d go for a walk. Often just up and down the corridors of S?reté headquarters, hands clasped behind his back, occasionally muttering, while Beauvoir, figuratively, danced Tigger-like around him.

Gamache had patiently explained, over and over, over the years, that he was doing something.

He was thinking.

It had taken Beauvoir years to see the power of pausing. And of patience. Of taking a breath to consider all options, all angles, and not simply acting on the most obvious.