All the Devils Are Here (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #16)

by Louise Penny

“Hell is empty, Armand,” said Stephen Horowitz. “You’ve mentioned that. And all the devils are here?” asked Armand Gamache. “Well, maybe not here, here”—Stephen spread his expressive hands—“exactly.”

But then, Armand Gamache thought, where else would you find darkness but right up against the light? What greater triumph for evil than to ruin a garden?

It was their best-loved place in all of Paris. The garden on the grounds of the Musée Rodin.

Stephen put his hand on the boy’s arm and said, “Patience. Patience. With patience comes choice, and with choice comes power.”

Life can be cruel, as you know. But it can also be kind. Filled with wonders.

Don’t believe everything you think.

That phrase was as powerful as any weapon they’d be handed.

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.

Stephen Horowitz. And after the name exactly the same four letters. Written longhand. JSPS. “It’s something my grandmother Zora always called him,” Armand explained. “But what does it mean?” asked Dussault. “‘JSPS’ stands for ‘Just Some Poor Schmuck.’”

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” quoted Monsieur Horowitz. He’d turned his clear, clear crystal-blue eyes on the puzzled busboy. “And sometimes nightmares, eh, young man?” He gazed around before returning to Jacques. “Who knows where we’re going to find the devil?”

And can you tell him, Fluctuat nec mergitur?” “What does it mean?” Jean-Guy asked. “‘Beaten by the waves,’” said the maître d’. “‘But never sinks.’”

“More like a memory lapse. He said that he’d convinced me to propose to Reine-Marie in the jardin du Luxembourg. But that was wrong. He’d actually suggested a small garden in the Marais, just off rue des Rosiers.”

Armand realized the mosaic looked like a scene from The Tempest. Shakespeare’s play opened with a terrible storm, and a ship in peril. As a young man leaped from a sinking ship to almost certain death, he screamed, “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.” Armand raised his head and looked around.

Gamache smiled. “Humility leads to Enlightenment, Grasshopper.”

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.

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.

“Hell is the truth seen too late,” said Reine-Marie as she poured out more coffee. “Thomas Hobbes.”

“The Helm of Awe,” Reine-Marie read, “is an ancient Norse symbol of protection and overwhelming might.”

After a hushed conversation with the nurse and the doctor on duty, Armand kissed Stephen on the forehead, told him he was kind and strong. Brave and loved. “And I know that you always told the truth,” he whispered.

“I used to believe that, too,” Loiselle said. “That what I did was important. That it mattered. But I don’t anymore. That’s why the video is watched over and over by ex–special forces. It reminds us of what we once were. What we once had.” “And what’s that?” “Self-respect.”

Now he understood that his father wasn’t afraid of him. He was afraid for him.

What Daniel saw was a senior investigator, with a clear mind and a quiet, but complete, authority. This was, Daniel thought, someone he could get behind. He had no beef with Chief Inspector Gamache.

Both sweaty and ice-cold, Jean-Guy followed. Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears.

Daniel stared at Jean-Guy in open and undisguised amazement. Even as his heart sank. What this man and his father had went so far beyond the bounds of camaraderie and friendship. Beyond even blood. Daniel now knew he could never, ever compete. Once, maybe, but not now. It was far too late. He’d ceded his place to Jean-Guy Beauvoir.

“Yes,” said Madame Arbour. “People are being murdered in an epic battle for control of the fridge magnet empire.

S. Lewis wrote that we can create situations in which we are happy, but we cannot create joy. It just happens.

We just don’t know. The key is to keep going. Joy might be just around the corner.