by Louise Penny
He wondered if that was why the great cathedral had burst into flames.
Then he placed the call he was loath to make.
“Mrs. McGillicuddy? No, he’s still with us. Holding on. Yes. But I need to know something. The terms of Stephen’s will.” He listened while she protested, then said quietly, “I agree. It’s an awful thing to ask, but I need to know. Yes. I’ll wait.”
The early evening was growing chilly as the sun set. The spires and monuments and museums were outlined against the soft shifting pinks of the sky.
“Oui, I’m still here.”
He listened. Then, thanking her, he dropped his head and sighed. Before lifting his gaze to the rose window.
* * *
Once home, Jean-Guy could see right away that Annie was stressed.
“What is it? The baby?” His voice rose on the last two words.
“No. I think someone’s watching the apartment, Jean-Guy.”
He took three quick strides over to the window. There was no one there. But it was getting dark, and the shadows between the buildings hid all sorts of things. And people.
“A cop has been assigned to protect you. It’s probably them. But I’m going to make sure.”
From the window, Annie saw her husband run across the narrow street, darting in and out of alleys and looking into doorways.
Then he looked up at her and shook his head.
“Nothing,” he confirmed when he got back. “Not even the goddamned flic.”
“Why would one be protecting us?”
“Just to be extra safe. You’re kinda important, you know.”
She smiled. “I’m sorry. I must’ve been imagining things.”
“Well, you’re not the only one,” he said, holding her close.
Her next words came to him muffled by his jacket.
“There’s something else. Something I didn’t imagine.”
CHAPTER 23
“A hostess gift?” Reine-Marie asked, eyeing the familiar hospital box Claude Dussault held. “Too kind.”
“Yes, Madame, but I need it back,” said Dussault.
“That’s the gift part,” said Monique Dussault, who was standing just behind her husband.
Armand took the box from Claude as Reine-Marie laughed.
She kissed Monique, who was carefully holding a much smaller box. This one had the familiar logo of Pâtisserie Pierre Hermé.
“Is it…?” she began.
“An Ispahan? Oui.”
Both women sighed.
“You’d have thought George Clooney was in the box,” said Claude.
“Better,” said Monique. “Oh, something smells delicious.”
The Gamaches’ small apartment, with its wooden beams, fresh white walls, and large windows, was already welcoming, but the scent of garlic and basil made it even more so.
“Just a simple pasta dinner,” said Reine-Marie. “As I said, en famille.”
“I also brought these, Madame.” The Prefect of Police pulled two wine bottles wrapped in brown paper out of his deep pockets.
“Ahhh,” said Reine-Marie. In a regal voice she pronounced, “You may stay.”
Claude laughed, then turned to his wife. “Just wait until she realizes the pastry box is empty. Sauve qui peut.”
Now it was Reine-Marie’s turn to smile. They didn’t see the Dussaults socially all that often, and now she wondered why not. She liked them. A lot. And so did Armand.
But when she leaned in to kiss Claude on both cheeks, it all came flooding back. And she remembered why they were actually there. Not as friends, but—
His scent washed over her and brought with it, on the tide, Alexander Plessner’s body.
The uninvited guest lay sprawled in front of her, as real at that moment as any of the living ones.
She struggled to keep her smile as she and Armand walked their guests into the living room.
They sat in front of the gentle fire in the grate, lit more for comfort than heat, and over drinks and dinner they talked about children and grandchildren. About books and plays. About newly discovered restaurants.
About anything other than Stephen and Monsieur Plessner, who sat at the table with them. Staring at her. Waiting for her to ask the question.
But it wasn’t time yet.
Now the conversation turned to retirement plans.
Reine-Marie, having stepped down as head of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, told them of her new passion.
“I’m a freelance researcher.”
“What does that mean?” asked Monique as she dabbed a piece of baguette into the last of her pasta sauce.
“People hire me to track down information on items, documents, photographs.”
“Like genealogy?” asked Claude.
“Non, others can do that,” she said. “Suppose a relative dies, and in sorting through their things you find something strange, unexpected. I can find out more about it.”
“And you, Monique?” asked Armand. “Any plans?”
If they’d noticed he’d changed the subject, they didn’t show it.
Monique, it turned out, was considering cutting back her hours in the clinic.
“We’ve just bought a place in Saint-Paul-de-Vence,” she said. “Our daughter is close by, and there’s an airport in Nice for Claude.”
“You’d commute?” asked Armand, pouring more wine, then bringing out the cheeses he’d picked up on rue Geoffroy l’Angevin on his way home.
“Non, non. At least, not to my current job,” said Claude, spreading creamy Pont l’Évêque onto a water biscuit. “This’s after I retire. Like Reine-Marie, I might pick up the odd private commission. Always a market for certain skills, right, Armand?”
“Are you talking about the saxophone?”
Monique laughed. As did Reine-Marie, but Armand kept his eyes on Claude. He knew exactly what skills he was talking about.
When the cheese course was finished, Reine-Marie suggested they take a break. The others rose as she got up.
“We can have coffee and dessert in the living room.” She spoke as though it was a whole separate room, where, in fact, the round dining table shared space with the comfortable sofa and armchairs in front of the muttering fire.
They helped clear the table. Then Reine-Marie ushered the men out. “Go. Have your cigars and plan the storming of the Bastille.”
“We will do as we’re told,” said Claude, “though it’s possible, Madame, you have spent a little too much time in archives. Now, Armand,” they heard him say as the men took their drinks and left the kitchen. “Which side of the barricades would you be on, if we were at the storming of the Bastille?”
“Need you ask?” said Armand.
While Claude’s tone was light, his eyes were sharp, searching. It seemed more than just a silly question.
And Armand had the uncomfortable impression the two old friends would, in fact, find themselves on opposite sides. Not a problem when it was simply a political disagreement. It became a big problem when it meant trying to kill each other.
Once back in the living room, he refreshed Claude’s glass, but left his as it was. He’d had enough and needed to remain as clearheaded as his weary brain would allow.
When he’d gotten home with the provisions, he’d gone to take off his coat, only to remember at the last minute that he had something in his pocket.
“This’s for you,” he said, handing Reine-Marie the wax paper filled with pain au citron crumbs. “From Madame Faubourg.”
She took it with a smile.
He longed to talk with her. To just be with her, quietly. To sink into an armchair, with a cup of tea, and go over the events of their day since he’d last seen her. To hear about her day and tell her about his.
About the edited security video.
The mounting evidence that Stephen had discovered something about GHS and its funicular project in Luxembourg.
And then there were the records and photograph Commander
Fontaine had produced, throwing suspicion on Stephen during the war.
But he only had time for a quick shower and change of clothes before the Dussaults arrived.
If anyone could get at the truth of those documents from the archives, it was Reine-Marie. Which was why he’d cut off discussion of her particular skill set. Better if the Prefect didn’t realize just how good Reine-Marie really was.
He hoped that Claude, his old friend, wasn’t involved. But if ever there was a time for caution, it was now.
For her part, Reine-Marie was equally anxious to tell Armand what she’d heard from Annie. And about the box hidden in their dresser drawer.
But first, she had to know if she was right.
* * *
Annie had gone to bed, and Honoré was tucked in and fast asleep.
Jean-Guy lingered in the doorway, looking at the boy sleeping so soundly.
Then his eyes drifted to the crib. With the mobile over it that he’d installed. Winged unicorns and stars and rainbows would dance over his daughter’s head, while it played Brahms’s Lullaby.
There was the comfortable chair in the corner, for Annie to nurse. And where Jean-Guy imagined holding their daughter and singing the songs his own mother had sung to him.
Les berceuses québécoises.
“It snows on the wood and on the river,” Jean-Guy sang softly to the empty crib. “A little one, just like you, we will deliver. It is a mystery.”
He left the bedroom door open a crack and returned to the living room. Imagining the soft snow that would soon be falling on the forests and the near-frozen rivers. Back home.
It is a mystery, he hummed.
What Annie had told him was deeply disturbing, though he tried not to overinterpret.
Instead, after checking out the window yet again and muttering, “Fucking flics,” he sat at his computer. There was a message from Isabelle Lacoste, back in Montréal.
They were cleaning up the blurry video, in hopes of making more sense of the emails he’d recorded.
She’d also sent the plans for the Luxembourg funicular to their contact at the École polytechnique, to see if anything was off.
Beauvoir couldn’t bring himself to believe that Carole Gossette was involved. Nor did he really believe that GHS was the culprit. It still looked to him like they were being set up.
But he was also beginning to realize that he might not know as much about GHS as he’d thought.
He started a search. Finally, after digging and digging and finding nothing beyond what he already knew about his company, he changed course and tried something else.
And there, in an article by Agence France-Presse, he found it.
Printed in an obscure American paramilitary magazine several years earlier was a small piece not on GHS Engineering, but on its president, Eugénie Roquebrune.
Accompanying the item was a studio photo of an elegant middle-aged woman. The telling detail about the woman wasn’t her intelligent eyes or her warm smile. It was her hair. It was gray, almost white.
Beauvoir was beginning to understand that this was the ultimate power move by a female executive in Paris.
It signaled she did not need to impress anyone. Eugénie Roquebrune could be, would be, herself.
The article said that she ran a corporation with engineering projects around the world. But the point of the article was that, because of global unrest, they’d just bought a boutique security and intelligence firm. Which was recruiting.
SecurForte.
His eyes widened. Wasn’t that the one George V used? And the one that cop mentioned?
Jean-Guy stared at the insignia on the screen. He recognized the design. He’d seen it on the uniform of the guard Loiselle.
The emblem was unmistakable because it was unusual. It was delicate, even pretty, and looked like a snowflake.
It wasn’t the sort of macho, aggressive insignia you’d expect with a private security contractor. Screaming eagles. Pouncing panthers. A death’s-head skull.
This was the logo equivalent of the CEO’s hair. The message being, SecurForte was too powerful to need to impress.
Besides, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, who’d grown up in Québec winters, knew that a snowflake might look harmless, but it was a harbinger, a warning, of worse to come. The snowflake-like emblem of SecurForte was in fact quietly terrifying. Mostly because it wasn’t trying to terrify.
Was GHS using its security company to gain access to competitors’ files and projects?
What corporations, what hotels, restaurants, clubs, might it work for? What information could it collect, both professional and personal?
Is that what Stephen and Plessner had discovered? A vast network of industrial espionage? Even blackmail?
Jean-Guy leaned forward and began digging again. Digging deeper.
* * *
Armand picked up the screw, examined it, then replaced it in the box.
“Those were in the desk, I imagine,” said Claude, watching his host.
“On the desk, yes. Thank you for bringing the box. Have you found anything?”
“No, though the password for this”—Claude held up Stephen’s laptop—“would help.”
“And I happen to have it.” Armand retrieved his notebook, and, writing the word down, he ripped the page off and gave it to Claude, who read it with surprise but without comment.
Lutetia.
“Merci.” Claude Dussault put the paper in his pocket.
“Aren’t you going to try it?” asked Armand.
“Non. It’ll take hours to go through the laptop and analyze what’s on it. I’ll hand this over to Fontaine.”
Armand went back to the box and brought out the GHS annual report. The first page had a greeting accompanied by a photo of the president, Eugénie Roquebrune, as she nursed peregrine falcon chicks. And another of her releasing baby sea turtles into the ocean.
Madame Roquebrune, even in these rustic surroundings, managed to look elegant, with her perfect, and lightly applied, makeup, and her beautifully done gray hair. Not unlike, he thought, Reine-Marie.
Though these photos were filled with artifice. Reine-Marie had none of that.
Then he turned to the list of board members and raised his brows. “Impressive.”
“Incredibly so, oui,” agreed Claude. “Do you mind?”
He indicated his jacket, and Armand said no. It was indeed quite warm in the apartment.
Armand scanned the rest of the report while Claude got up and took off his jacket, then wandered the room, examining the paintings on the wall and the books on the shelves. He drifted, apparently aimlessly, over to the tall windows and, pulling aside the lace curtains, looked down onto the street below.
The annual report was upbeat in its broad statements about the financial success of the past year. It described the engineering giant’s ongoing commitment to the environment. To improving lives in developing nations. To equality. Sustainability. And to profit.
But there was precious little hard information. And no list of its actual projects or holdings.
When he’d finished, Armand took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“Not much here. I wonder why Stephen was interested in it. I’ve read a few annual reports in my time, and most are far more informative.”
As Claude returned to his seat, Armand noticed a small stain on his shirt, on the inside of his left elbow.
A bloodstain. Plessner’s blood?
“It’s probably just the corporate culture,” said Claude. “Secretive.”
“But that begs the question—”
“What’re they hiding?” asked Dussault.
“Yes.”
* * *
“You must be excited about the baby,” said Monique.
“We are.” Reine-Marie plugged in the old percolator.
She was suddenly exhausted, and just wanted them to go home so that she and Armand could talk, then go to bed. Bed. Bed.
But there was too much s
till to do before that could happen.
The aroma of coffee filled the tiny kitchen, and she watched as Monique sliced the bright pink Ispahan cake. The sharp knife cut through the layers of macaron and rose and raspberry cream.
Alexander Plessner stood at the doorway, watching her. Reine-Marie nodded acknowledgment and, taking a deep breath, she turned to Monique.
“Our anniversary is coming up, and I’m looking for a gift for Armand. Please, please don’t tell him, or Claude, that I asked, but I noticed Claude’s cologne and really like it.”
“You do? I think it smells like bark. And mud. I like Armand’s. A lot. What is it?”
“Sandalwood.”
“You’re not thinking of having him switch, are you?”
“Well, it’s just that sometimes it’s nice to have a choice. What is Claude’s cologne?”
“Something his second-in-command gave him a few years ago after they’d been to a conference in Cologne together. His number two bought a bottle for each of them when they toured the factory where it’s made. Have you ever been to Cologne? Beautiful city. Or at least once was. All but destroyed in the war.”
This conversation was hardly linear, and Reine-Marie wondered if she could continue to steer it back to a stinky cologne when there were other more interesting topics on the table.
One more try.
“He and his second-in-command wear the same scent?”
She knew the Prefect’s second-in-command was a woman, Irena Fontaine, the investigator who met them at Daniel’s apartment.
She was a protégé of the Prefect. They were obviously close, professionally, but this sharing of scents seemed a little beyond that.
“Oh, yes. Claude doesn’t wear it all the time, thankfully. Only when they’re going to meet.”
Reine-Marie stared at Monique. Didn’t she see how convenient this was? If Claude came home after this “meeting” smelling like his younger, female second-in-command, there would be no suspicion.
