by Louise Penny
“There’s a slight scent in the air. Can you smell it?” he whispered.
She took a deep breath and shook her head. Then she caught it. Hardly there. Elusive. More a suggestion than a scent.
“Try to remember it.” His voice was urgent. His eyes sharp. His whole being alert.
Slightly citrusy, she thought. And sort of muddy. Not a perfume, a cologne. Definitely masculine. Not pleasant.
It was disappearing, even as she tried to grasp it.
“Is it his?” she whispered, not looking at the man again.
“I don’t think so. And it’s not Stephen’s.”
So it was someone else’s, and Reine-Marie immediately followed Armand’s thoughts. And understood his extreme alertness.
Colognes, eaux de toilette, didn’t hang around for long. They might cling to clothes, but did not float in the air. Certainly not for hours. Which meant someone had been there recently. Very recently.
And might still be in the apartment.
Instinctively, Armand moved Reine-Marie behind him and took a step back. Away from the body. Toward the door. His mind working rapidly.
“Armand, if there’s someone here, someone who did that…” She looked toward the corpse. “Will he…”
“Hurt us? Non,” he whispered. “He’d just want to get away.”
He could hear her breathing. Short. Rapid. Her hand on his back was trembling. And with good reason. Despite what he’d said, they were almost certainly still in an apartment with an armed murderer.
And while he didn’t say it, Gamache knew that the surest way for the killer to get out was to kill anyone in his way.
Armand said, loudly, “Stay behind me. We’re leaving.”
As they backed away, he brought out his phone and took several quick photographs.
Once at the door, he gave her his phone, then stooped and picked up the box.
“Take this,” he whispered, so softly she could barely hear. “Go to the Hôtel Lutetia. Call Claude. Send him one of the photographs.”
“You?”
But he’d already closed the door. She heard the double lock turn as she stood in the hall, holding the box.
Not waiting for the elevator, Reine-Marie took the stairs two at a time.
* * *
Armand leaned against the door, using his body to muffle the sound of the key turning in the lock. Then he replaced it in his pocket.
The intruder couldn’t leave without the key. There was a possibility he had one, but Gamache had to take that risk.
The other risk he was taking was locking himself in with someone who was almost certainly armed. He’d have disciplined any of his agents who did what he was doing. But whoever murdered this man was probably also responsible for the attempt on Stephen’s life. And Armand was not going to just let them go.
But there was another problem. Armand knew the apartment and knew there was another way out. He just hoped the intruder didn’t know.
Finding the killer was no longer his goal. Just the opposite, really.
What he needed to do was get to the kitchen, and the back stairwell. If he could lock that door from the outside, the intruder would be trapped.
He could see the kitchen, at the far end of what now seemed a very long and very narrow hallway. With nowhere to hide. Exactly the environment he taught cadets at the academy to never, ever enter.
The scent of cologne was slightly stronger now.
Bringing the keys out, he made a fist around them, the individual keys between his fingers, like brass knuckles. Not much of a defense. More psychological than practical.
He was halfway down the long hall when he heard a bang. He flinched, even as he realized it wasn’t a shot.
It was a door slamming.
“Damn.”
Racing into the kitchen, he yanked open the fire escape door and heard feet on the concrete stairs. He followed them down, taking the steps two, three at a time.
As he ran, he thought he heard a familiar sound. Muffled. A phone ringing. But not his. His was with Reine-Marie.
The sound of the intruder’s feet echoed in the enclosed stairwell. The person he was chasing was not young, Armand unconsciously noted.
But still, whoever this was, they had a head start and were moving quickly. Desperate to get away.
And it looked like they would.
If he could just catch a glimpse …
A door banged open, and he saw sunlight a few flights down. Then it disappeared as the door swung shut.
When he got to the bottom, Armand threw himself against it and staggered out onto a busy Paris sidewalk. Surprised pedestrians leaped out of the way as Armand swung around, looking this way, then that.
Nothing. Just men and women walking, some gawking. No one running.
He’d lost him.
Walking rapidly toward the Lutetia, Armand turned the corner and saw Reine-Marie hugging the cardboard box. Staring at the front door to Stephen’s building.
Willing Armand to appear.
He called to her, and she turned. Her relief was accompanied by the familiar wail of a police siren quickly approaching.
CHAPTER 9
“What the hell’s going on, Armand?”
Claude Dussault and Armand Gamache were standing side by side, looking down at the body while members of the brigade criminelle fanned out in a semicircle, waiting for the Prefect to give them the go-ahead.
Since he didn’t know what the hell was going on, Gamache remained silent.
“Do you know him?”
“I don’t think so,” said Gamache. “But we’ll get a better look when he’s turned over.”
What he could see was that the man was older, perhaps mid-seventies. Caucasian. Slender. In casual but expensive clothes.
Armand lifted his eyes from the body and gazed at the shambles around him. Furniture overturned. Books taken from shelves and splayed on the floor. Drawers pulled out and tossed. Even the art had been taken from the walls, the brown paper at the back of them slashed.
Thankfully none of the art itself appeared to have been destroyed.
Dussault nodded, and the brigade went to work while the two senior officers walked from room to room. Armand hadn’t had a chance to look at the rest of Stephen’s apartment, but now he did.
“Horowitz’s bedroom?” Dussault asked.
“Oui.”
The bed had been taken apart, the mattress thrown to the floor. The doors of the huge armoire were open, and clothing lay in heaps.
“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 Sûreté 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.”
Claude Dussault sighed. “People coming and going. Mistaken identity. We appear to be looking at two different mises-en-scène. I’m seeing an Émile Zola tragedy, while you see a farce straight out of Molière.”
It was not unlike what Gamache himself had been thinking a few moments earlier. Though Dussault’s description, while said with humor, held an implied criticism. And some mocking.
“Could be,” said Armand, with equanimity. “Fortunately, truth is on the march and nothing will stop it.”
Dussault laughed and clapped Armand on the arm. Clearly recognizing the Zola quote.
“Touché, mon ami.”
Dussault turned and they continued down the hall.
“Is this the way you came, following the intruder?”
“Yes.”
“He obviously knew there was a back stairway through the kitchen,” said Dussault.
“Exactly. He’d had plenty of time to get to know the apartment. It’s unfortunate. I thought I’d trapped him.”
“How did you even know there was someone else here?” asked Dussault.
“We heard a sound.”
Dussault was shaking his head. “And what would you do, Armand, if one of your agents, unarmed, chased a murderer with a gun down a narrow hallway?”
Armand gave a small laugh. “I’d have them on the carpet for sure.”
“You’d probably be scraping them off the carpet. Not very smart of you. He could’ve shot you, too.”
“Interesting that he didn’t. Though I am grateful.”
“As am I,” said Dussault, with a smile. “But I am also a little surprised.”
They were standing in the kitchen. Like most older apartments in Paris, it was small. Not much more than a galley, though there was a large window that looked out over the rooftops.
Cereal, sugar, coffee had been shaken out. The cupboards emptied.
It had become obvious, as they’d moved deeper into the apartment, that a methodical search had turned to panic, had turned into a sort of frenzy.
The back door was ajar, untouched from when Armand had followed the intruder through it less than half an hour earlier.
Once it was clear the killer had been swallowed by the Saturday morning crowd, Armand had joined Reine-Marie and waited for Claude Dussault and the rest of the gendarmes.
When they arrived just minutes later, Reine-Marie had taken the box of Stephen’s things into bar Joséphine, where she was now waiting.
“I’ll show you where he went,” said Armand, opening the back door with a gloved hand. “Let’s go down.”
Just as they stepped into the stairwell, a voice called from the apartment, “Patron?”
“Here, Irena,” said Dussault, stepping back into the kitchen. “What is it?”
Irena Fontaine stood beside the Prefect. As she’d stood beside and slightly behind him for years. Since she was a junior agent.
When Claude Dussault had been promoted to Prefect after the death of his predecessor, he’d elevated her to head the brigade criminelle.
At thirty-eight, she was the youngest to do so. And only the second woman.
From there, when his longtime second-in-command left the Préfecture, Dussault had promoted her to his number two.
And now, once again, she took her natural place beside him. Tall, blond hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, she emanated competence. The sort of person, Gamache thought, you’d want piloting any plane you were flying in.
“The coroner’s here. We’re ready to turn him over.” She looked from the Prefect to his companion.
“I’m sorry, I haven’t introduced you. Commander Irena Fontaine is my second-in-command. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is the head of homicide with the Sûreté du Québec. He’s a friend and trusted colleague.”
They shook hands, and Fontaine said, “Québec?”
The slight condescension in the tone had long since stopped bothering Gamache. Her attitude was, after all, not his problem.
“Oui.”
“What’ve you found?” Dussault asked as they walked back down the corridor.
“Shot twice, once in his back, once in the head. Looks like a robbery. The victim
returned home, surprised the intruder, and was shot.”
“And yet,” said Gamache, a step behind, “nothing was taken.”
Fontaine stopped and turned. “How do you know that?”
“You can see. The artwork alone is worth a fortune. The intruder took the time to take it off the walls, even tearing the framing paper, but didn’t then cut the paintings out.”
“He was looking for ready cash, jewelry,” said Fontaine. “The victim’s wallet is missing.”
“A little early to come to that conclusion, surely,” said Gamache. “With all this mess, it could be anywhere. It looks more like a search than a robbery, non?”
While annoyed at being contradicted by this stranger, Irena Fontaine couldn’t quite suppress a smile. The Québécois accent always amused her. It was like talking to a bumpkin.
“Non,” she said. “It looks to me like a robbery. Not everyone, monsieur, wants to wander the streets with oil paintings under their arms, trying to fence them.”
“There’s something I’ve failed to tell you, Irena,” said Dussault. “Monsieur Gamache isn’t here in his professional capacity, though that is helpful.” He gave her a stern look. Of reproach, Gamache wondered, or warning? “He knows the owner of this apartment. He and his wife found the body.”
Fontaine turned more interested eyes on Gamache. “You know the dead man. Why didn’t you say so?”
“Because the victim isn’t the owner of the apartment. I have no idea who the dead man is, but the owner of the apartment is my godfather. Stephen Horowitz.”
“And where is he?”
“In a coma at the Hôtel-Dieu. He was hit by a van last night in an attempt on his life.”
Fontaine’s eyes widened, and she looked at the Prefect. “That’s the case you passed along to me.”
“Yes.”
“And he owns this apartment?”
“Yes,” said Gamache.
“The two attacks have to be connected,” she said. “There can’t be any doubt now about the hit-and-run last night.”
So there had been doubt, thought Gamache. That might explain why the police hadn’t come to Stephen’s apartment themselves. It was one of the first things you’d expect in an attempted homicide investigation.
