Even Rosa looked startled, but then ducks often did.
“Ahh,” said Reine-Marie and looked at the fire, while Armand raised his eyes to the ceiling, suddenly finding the plaster fascinating.
Ruth hooted with delight, and Stephen said, “Attaboy, Ray-Ray. You tell ’em.”
Armand dropped his eyes and looked at his godfather. “Nice. Merci.”
“Only you, my dear boy, could have a grandson whose greatest influence is a mallard.”
“Is she a mallard?” Clara asked Ruth, who shrugged and took a long swig of Stephen’s drink.
“Okay, off we go,” said Annie while Honoré, in her arms and noticing the reaction his first word got, wailed it all the way down the hall.
“Good God,” sighed Reine-Marie.
“Good lungs,” said Stephen.
Beauvoir tried not to notice the tightly pressed lips of Clara, Myrna, Gabri, and Olivier. Even Armand and Reine-Marie looked amused.
“You have some questions, sir?” Jean-Guy asked Stephen.
It had been a day since the arrests of Bernard Shaeffer and Hugo Baumgartner. One for embezzlement, one for murder.
“Hugo. What happened? I can follow the scheme,” said Stephen. “But I don’t know the details. He wasn’t just my employee. A senior vice president. I trusted him. I must be getting old.”
“You’re already there,” said Ruth.
“I can tell you most of what happened,” said Jean-Guy.
Everyone leaned forward.
Even Myrna, who already knew. Armand had told her. And she, in confidence, had told Clara. Who had told Gabri in confidence, who immediately told Olivier, swearing him to secrecy. Who then spilled it to Ruth in exchange for the crystal water jug she’d also lifted on New Year’s Eve.
“Yes,” said Clara. “Please, tell us.”
“The idea started when Anthony turned Shaeffer in. Shaeffer was fired, and Anthony Baumgartner had his license to trade taken away,” said Jean-Guy.
“The original embezzlement,” said Stephen.
“Yes. Hugo knew Anthony wasn’t to blame, but he also knew his reputation had been damaged. The street, as you call it, believed Anthony Baumgartner was also in on it and that only his senior position in the firm had saved him. They believed he was as dirty as Shaeffer. Hugo saw his opportunity. He approached Bernard Shaeffer, who was clearly a crook, and offered to get him a job in the Caisse Populaire, in exchange for certain favors.”
“Hugo was the one who wrote the letter of recommendation to the Caisse,” said Myrna. “Not his brother.”
“And what were the favors?” asked Olivier. They knew the broad outlines of the crime, but not the details.
“Shaeffer would use the facilities and connections of the bank to set up an account in Anthony’s name.”
“Don’t you mean Hugo’s name?” asked Clara.
“No, that was the brilliance of what Hugo did. He was setting Anthony up. If anyone clued in to what was happening, they’d only find Anthony’s name, on a numbered account in Lebanon.”
“They put seven million into it,” said Stephen. He was listening closely. So far this wasn’t anything he didn’t already know.
“Merde,” said Olivier. “Wish he’d incriminated me.”
“That was nothing,” said Beauvoir. “The real money was going into a numbered account in Singapore. Not even Shaeffer knew about that. He had no idea of the scope of the embezzlement.”
He looked at Gamache, inviting him to join in. Armand leaned forward, his glass of scotch between his hands.
“It worked well for a few years,” said Armand. “As with most things, it started small. A little money from one or two. But when Hugo realized they weren’t questioning, as long as they got their dividend checks, he increased the amounts and the number of clients.”
“He got greedy,” said Clara.
“Greed, yes. But I’ve seen this sort of thing before,” said Stephen. “It becomes a game. A thrill. A sort of addiction. They have to keep increasing the hit. No one needs three hundred million. He could’ve stopped at fifty and been safe and comfortable for the rest of his life. No, there was something else at work. And I didn’t see it.”
He looked not just upset but drained.
Despite her kidding, Reine-Marie knew perfectly well why Armand had invited his godfather out for a few days. And introduced him to Ruth.
It was so he wouldn’t be alone with his thoughts. With his wounds.
Things were pretty dire when Ruth was the healing agent.
“So what went wrong?” asked Gabri.
“Anthony ran into one of the so-called clients on the street last summer,” said Beauvoir. “The man thanked Anthony for the great job he was doing. Baumgartner didn’t think much of it until he started going through his client list and realized this fellow wasn’t on it. He contacted the man and asked for the financial statement.”
“So he knew someone was stealing, and using his name,” said Stephen. “I got that. But how did he figure out it was his brother?”
Ruth, sitting between Gabri and Stephen, had fallen asleep and was snoring softly. Her head lolling on Stephen’s shoulder. A bit of spittle landing on his cashmere sweater.
But he didn’t push her away.
“He didn’t. Not at first,” said Beauvoir. “When we got into his laptop and uncovered his search history, we found that he seemed to be searching for something. At first we assumed he was looking around for places to put the money, but then we checked the timelines and realized it wasn’t that.”
“He was trying to retrace someone’s steps,” said Armand. “To figure out who was responsible.”
“He started with his own company,” said Jean-Guy. “With Madame Ogilvy, in fact. Then spread it out. When all else failed, he began looking further afield.”
“Or closer to home, really,” said Armand. And not, he thought, in a field but in a garden. Apparently healthy but actually choked with bindweed.
He tried to imagine Anthony Baumgartner’s shock when he realized who was stealing. And setting him up.
Matthew 10:36.
Armand sometimes wished he’d never paused on that piece of Scripture. And he certainly wished he didn’t know the truth it contained.
“What I don’t understand is how Anthony Baumgartner even found that trail,” said Stephen. “Hugo would’ve hidden it well.”
“Let me ask you this,” said Armand. “If you were going to embezzle, would you use your own computer?”
Stephen’s face opened, and he gave a small grunt. “No. I’d use someone else’s and take the opportunity to implicate them while I’m at it, in case it’s ever caught. Smart Hugo.”
“Smart Hugo,” said Beauvoir. “He and Anthony got together once a week for meals. While Tony cooked, Hugo used his brother’s laptop, supposedly to get caught up on the markets.”
“But actually to transfer money,” said Stephen.
“But wouldn’t it be obvious?” asked Olivier. “I do our accounting online, and it’s all right there.”
“Not hard to bury it,” said Beauvoir. “Especially if you want to. And Hugo wanted to. But not too deep. He also wanted people to be able to find it, if need be. And we eventually did. And yes, it made it look like Anthony was the one doing it. Why wouldn’t it? Without the password for the numbered account in Singapore, there’d be no proof it was anyone other than Anthony.”
“But Anthony found it?” said Clara.
“Oui,” Beauvoir continued. “We found Anthony’s searches. He’d made no attempt to hide those. They were more and more frantic, it seems. And then, in September of last year, they stopped.”
“He had what he was looking for,” said Armand.
“He knew then, months ago, that Hugo was stealing?” said Stephen. “Why didn’t he stop it then? Why wait until now to say something? Denial?”
“Maybe,” said Armand. “But I think it might’ve been something else.”
“His mother,” said Clara. “He waited until his mother died.”
“Yes,” said Armand.
“I can see why Hugo would need someone else to blame, but why not use Shaeffer for that too?” asked Olivier. “Why drag his own brother into it?”