All the Devils are Here

Armand and Jean-Guy discuss the possibility that Claude is involved in the murder of Alexander. Armand tells Jean-Guy two more suspicions against Claude. The first is that a stranger who would have killed Alexander for being in the way should not have hesitated to also kill Reine-Marie and Armand, but a friend like Claude would have spared them. Secondly, as Armand chased the sounds of footsteps from the apartment, he heard a phone ring just as Reine-Marie would have been calling Claude for help. Jean-Guy tells Armand that the only suspicious thing going on at work (relevant now that he knows Stephen is somehow deeply involved with Jean-Guy’s firm) was Séverine Arbour’s insistence that Jean-Guy review the Luxembourg project.

Startled, Armand tells Jean-Guy that Stephen had accidentally called the location of Armand and Reine-Marie’s engagement as the Garden of Luxembourg. Though it could be a coincidence, it is notable to the men that Stephen had Luxembourg on his mind. Armand proposes that Séverine, an excellent engineer according to Jean-Guy’s boss, could be on his team to find engineering mistakes, or to cover them up. A slip of paper falls from Stephen’s agenda; a business card with Alexander Francis Plessner’s initials. Armand receives a call from his office in Montreal; his colleague Lacoste has looked into Plessner and tells Armand that he was an engineer.

Reine-Marie is unsuccessful finding the cologne. She rejoins her husband and son-in-law. As they leave the restaurant, Armand notices a floor mosaic of a terrible storm and a shipwreck that reminds him of The Tempest.

As Armand approaches the building that houses Claude’s office, Jean-Guy heads back to his own office to reinvestigate the Luxembourg project. Armand receives a phone call from Mrs. McGillicuddy, Stephen’s long-time secretary. Armand tells her about Stephen’s critical condition. He asks her about board meetings for GHS Engineering, and she replies that Stephen isn’t on any boards because of his age.

They talk about Stephen’s agenda, and Mrs. McGillicuddy confirms that Stephen and Alex Plessner were friends. When Armand tells her he found Stephen’s JSPS business card on Alex’s body, she is shocked—she didn’t think they were that close. Mrs. McGillicuddy agrees to look through Stephen’s old agendas to cross-reference meetings with Alex, and she agrees to work with Armand’s colleagues in Montreal to look into Stephen’s finances.

Reine-Marie visits another department store; this time she leaves with a bottle of cologne. Meanwhile, Jean-Guy is at his office, empty for the weekend. He opens Séverine’s computer but can’t access her email. He finds the file on the Luxembourg project and notices that Carole Gossette, his boss, is the executive overseeing the project—a little strange, given how minor the Luxembourg project is classified. He prints the file for later when he hears the ding of the elevator. He blacks out the screen on the computer and makes it to his office just before a security guard, Loiselle, walks in.

Loiselle asks him what he’s doing in the office, and Jean-Guy is surprised. He had worked weekends before and a security guard had never been bothered to check in on him, nor ask about his business. As he tries to distract Loiselle from the printer with conversation, he notices that Séverine’s computer lights back up, and her files and emails begin rapidly appearing and disappearing. When Loiselle finally leaves, Jean-Guy records the messages as they appear before they delete themselves.

Armand meets with Claude in his office. He tells Claude about Alex being an engineer and the men discuss the coroner’s report. The bullet to Alex’s back had been a perfect hit on the spine, the work of a professional. Claude, the Prefect of Paris Police, is also secretly part of the GIGN, a security organization that trains their agents to shoot perfectly. Claude tells Armand that his police found the van that struck Stephen, but it was wiped clean of evidence (also indicative of the work of a professional). Claude realizes with some alarm that Armand has become more tightly polite with him, a tell-tale sign of Armand’s anger.

Claude tells Armand that the camera footage around Stephen’s apartment and the footage at the sight of the van dumping revealed nothing important. Armand decides that his suspicions of Claude are too vague to not attempt to trust him. He asks him if Luxembourg rings any bells and tells Claude about Jean-Guy’s suspicions of the GHS project there. As Armand prepares to leave for a visit with Stephen, Claude asks Armand about his time with Joint Task Force Two, an elite Canadian command. Surprised that Claude would know this information about him, Armand realizes that just as he suspected Claude, Claude may also suspect him (Armand was, after all, at the scene of both crimes and came away from a confrontation with an intruder unhurt).

Reine-Marie calls Claude’s wife, a pediatrician named Monique, for dinner at the apartment with their husbands. Monique accepts and Reine-Marie hides the bottle of cologne. Jean-Guy leaves the office with the printed papers. Once in the Metro, he believes himself safe enough to review his new information, but then he sees Loiselle on the train car with him, staring at him. Armand arrives at the hospital to read to Stephen. He holds his cold hand and prays over him.

Irena Fontaine and her second-in-command visit Armand and his family at Daniel’s apartment to interview them about what they witnessed the night Stephen was hit. While asking Daniel about his time in Paris, the whole family is surprised to hear that his children will go to school at the most expensive private school in France, and Daniel and his family will move to a new apartment in a nicer neighborhood so the girls can go to the school. The family (and Fontaine) wonder how Daniel can afford to buy a nicer apartment and send his children to a fancy private school.

Fontaine asks Annie and Daniel about Alex Plessner. Annie insists that she’s never heard of him, but Fontaine persists. In responding to questions about Alex’s career as a venture capitalist, Daniel unwittingly begins to make himself seem guilty of helping private companies avoid financial regulators. His father intervenes with his own questioning, subtly saving his son from Fontaine’s further scrutiny, but Daniel sees his pushiness as an attempt at humiliation. Fontaine, directed by Claude to find out everything Armand might know, continues to press his family. She asks them who in the family would gain from Stephen’s death. Most are appalled by her accusation that they could have had something to do with the murder, but only Daniel embarrasses himself by speculating openly about the potential contents of Stephen’s last will and testament.

The interview concludes, and most of the family goes out to the park to play with the children who are with their sitter. Jean-Guy and Armand stay back in the apartment, eager to talk to one another. However, Fontaine and her second-in-command stay back as well. Fontaine reveals to Armand that, according to documents she has access to, Stephen’s family was not part of the Resistance in World War II. She claims that Stephen’s father and uncle were killed by the Russians for being senior Gestapo officers who had sent thousands of people to concentration camps. Armand is incredulous until Fontaine produces a photograph for him. In the picture, Heinrich Himmler, Head of the Gestapo, father of the Holocaust, sits at a table at the Hotel Lutetia. Resting on his shoulder is the hand of a young and smiling Stephen Horowitz. Fontaine acknowledges that it is possible that Stephen had gotten a job at the Lutetia to spy on the Nazis and provide information to the Resistance. However, she suggests that a boy who grew up with Nazis would likely have been one himself; that Stephen Horowitz has always been a traitor. 

Armand attempts to invite Daniel for a private beer later in the day, but Daniel refuses. Reine-Marie tells Armand that Claude and Monique will come over for dinner later that evening and that she believes she found his cologne. Jean-Guy confesses to Armand that he is desperately worried about Honoré and nervous about bringing another child into the world. Armand comforts him, and Daniel notices their intimacy.

Armand points out to Jean-Guy that it is odd that Fontaine would already have such a secretive dossier on Stephen at this point in the investigation. Everyone in the family goes their separate ways home, except for Jean-Guy and Armand who go to the Lutetia to talk privately about what Jean-Guy uncovered at work. Fontaine calls Claude and tells him that she didn’t find anything out from Armand during questioning, but that it’s clear to her that he also suspects something deeper amiss.

In the taxi, Armand and Jean-Guy review the recording of the deleted messages and the file on the Luxembourg project. Armand acknowledges that it’s possible GHS is involved in something like arms trafficking, but the Luxembourg project looks like what it is: a small funicular project in a small and peaceful country. The men wonder about Séverine Arbour’s participation in this. Were the messages programmed to delete from her computer because a software recognized that she’s not involved, or did it happen because Jean-Guy was caught on security camera?

It occurs to Jean-Guy and Armand that, maybe, it’s not the Luxembourg project that has secrets, but that someone (like GHS) is trying to keep Jean-Guy and Armand away from the real problem by distracting them with the Luxembourg project. To understand the complex paperwork that breaks down GHS projects, they would need a financier and an engineer, the same team as Stephen and Alex Plessner. While still in the taxi, Armand receives a phone call from Mrs. McGillicuddy as Jean-Guy hears from Lacoste. They both report that Stephen’s house and office have been broken into.

Still thinking about Fontaine’s accusation against Stephen, Armand pauses at the door of the Lutetia and goes across the street instead to Stephen’s building. He and Jean-Guy meet with Monsieur and Madame Faubourg, Stephen’s neighbors, and long-time friends. They ask the couple who they had seen enter the building the day Plessner was killed in the apartment. When it’s clear that the Faubourg’s have nothing to share, Armand and Jean-Guy walk out to the building’s courtyard. Armand proposes another theory. Far from being an intruder, whoever shot Plessner had been invited in as part of whatever Stephen and Plessner had been up to. The most trusted person to let inside your apartment is a police officer. Jean-Guy recaps their understanding of the case so far. He says, “’There might or might not be something wrong with the Luxembourg project, GHS might or might not be involved, Alexander Plessner might or might not have been working with Stephen to expose some wrongdoing. And the Prefect of Police might or might not be involved’” (194). Then, as they leave the courtyard, Armand comes up with another theory: Stephen had come home to find Plessner ransacking his place and killed him himself.

Annie tries to explain to Daniel as if he had been waiting for Stephen to die so he could buy a new apartment and send his kids to an expensive private school in front of Inspector Fontaine. Meanwhile, Armand and Jean-Guy meet another Parisian inspector tasked with searching Stephen’s apartment. The inspector lets Armand and Jean-Guy inside to help with the search. Though they find nothing particularly useful, Armand and Jean-Guy later establish with one another that the priceless works of art, slashed on the back but preserved on the front, scattered around the apartment, important in figuring out what whoever did this had been looking for. Later, Annie is on her own with Honoré at home when she spots a man from her balcony, looking up at her. She’s already seen this man stop and observe her home, but when she tries to take a picture of him, he walks away.

Armand and Jean-Guy comb over Stephen’s bill from the Hotel George V looking for clues. They see that he mostly ate alone but on the day he was attacked, he had a beer with another person. They go through the security footage from that afternoon and find Stephen entering the lobby and elevator. They watch as Plessner enters the hotel, and they also watch him depart from Stephen, who appears to tell him to text him when he has it. The manager of the hotel discovers that the tape has been tampered with, albeit expertly. She admits it’s possible that the private security the hotel hires (from such elite organizations as SecurForte) have access to the tapes and the skill to delete seconds from the record. After Jean-Guy and Armand depart and separate, Armand calls Mrs. McGillicuddy to ask about the contents of Stephen’s will.

Meanwhile, Claude packs everything back into Stephen’s box of belongings, surprising Fontaine. Claude says he couldn’t find anything relevant in the box, but that Armand might be able to. Annie discovers that her law firm had conducted business with Alex Plessner.

Claude and his wife Monique go to the Gamache’s apartment for dinner. The dinner is pleasant, though both Reine-Marie and Armand are eager to be alone to go over the clues each have discovered. As the women prepare post-dinner coffee in the kitchen, Claude gives Armand the box of Stephen’s belongings and Armand gives Claude the password to Stephen’s laptop. In the kitchen, Reine-Marie asks Monique about Claude’s cologne, pretending she wants to buy the same scent for Armand. Monique tells her the cologne had been a gift from his second-in-command and that he only wears it when he meets with her. The cologne Monique names is the same one Reine-Marie found and brought home. Reine-Marie wonders if it could have been Fontaine who had been in the apartment with Plessner before she and Armand had entered.

Jean-Guy researches GHS Engineering. He finds an obscure American paramilitary article on the president of the company, Eugénie Roquebrune. The article mentions GHS Engineering recruitment of SecurForte, and when he looks more into that elite security squad, he realizes that their emblem was on Loiselle’s uniform. Now he knows that both the Hotel George V and GHS Engineering hire exquisitely trained security. He reviews the tapes from the Hotel George V and discovers the unmistakable Eugénie Roquebrune sitting with Claude Dussault.