All the Devils are Here

Jean-Guy Beauvoir worked for Armand in Québec for years and has recently moved to Paris with his wife, Armand’s daughter Annie, to work for a private engineering firm. He is buoyed by the safety of his new job but insecure about how he could have managed to get such a high position in a private company after years as a detective. He is particularly uncomfortable with his colleague Séverine Arbour. His boss, Madame Gossette, encourages him to work more with Séverine.

On a flight to one of their job sights implementing new environmental equipment, Jean-Guy asks Madame Gossette how he got his job. She implies that his work as a detective is valuable to her. Because her firm is now conducting tricky humanitarian work, someone with his skills set is good for them. Jean-Guy has the ability to root out corruption and advocate for doing the right thing. So when Séverine stops by his office to try to speak with him about their upcoming Luxembourg project, Jean-Guy wants to work with her but finds her odd and distant. He leaves the office to help Annie with their son Honoré before dinner. When he is gone, Séverine sends something on her computer that she knows will put her past the point of no return.

Stephen, Armand, his wife Reine-Marie, their children, and their spouses all gather at a restaurant for dinner. Though everything is going amiably, they can all sense tension between Daniel and his father. They have had a difficult relationship since Daniel was a child, and Armand maintains to Reine-Marie that he doesn’t know what he had done to cause the fissure. Daniel and Armand’s soured further when Armand met Jean-Guy at work and the two formed a father-son bond.

Jean-Guy mentions the Luxembourg project, and Stephen asks him if he suspects anything fishy. They laugh it off and continue chatting and dining. They finish their dinner and leave the restaurant, pausing to admire the Eiffel Tower light up at 11 o’clock.

While crossing the street, Stephen is purposely struck by a delivery van that speeds away. Jean-Guy chases after the car while Reine-Marie calls for an ambulance and Armand kneels over Stephen. Reine-Marie tries to stop the traffic while Stephen lays in the street, and a car nearly hits her and Armand. Armand feels Stephen’s pulse still beating and tells him to hang on.

Armand rides in the ambulance with Stephen to the hospital. The rest of the family joins them there, as does Claude Dussault, a friend of Armand’s and the Prefect of Police in Paris. Waiting for news about Stephen’s condition, Armand is reminded of the lives lost under his direction. Claude asks Armand about what he saw, and he is surprised when he finds out that the victim is the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. A nurse steps out to inform the men that Stephen is alive, but he is in critical condition and might not survive the necessary surgery. Armand goes to the waiting room to tell his family the news and send them home. Daniel apologizes for not helping during the crisis. Annie wonders aloud if the attack was random or if the driver knew Stephen.

Reine-Marie contemplates the horror of the night’s events in the bath. She realizes that the car that stopped just inches from her would have hit Armand if she had not been there. She knows the police officers didn’t believe their claim that the attack was no accident. Meanwhile, Armand and Claude stay at the hospital waiting for more news about Stephen. They discuss Stephen’s past and how he came to know Armand’s family during World War II. Though Claude categorizes the attack as a hit-and-run, he assures Armand that he will put his second-in-command, Irena Fontaine, on the case and will treat it as attempted murder. A doctor steps through the swinging doors.

When Armand returns home from the hospital, he checks in with his family. He asks Jean-Guy if Stephen had said anything at dinner that could point to trouble. Jean-Guy said the only thing amiss was that Stephen, who doesn’t like phones at the dinner table, was constantly checking his cell phone. Armand recalls his conversation with Stephen about the city being full of devils and worries that he missed a clue.

Armand and Reine-Marie go back to the hospital to check in on Stephen. Because Armand is Stephen’s next-of-kin, the doctor informs him about Stephen’s medically induced coma and warns Armand that he may need to make the final decision about Stephen’s future. When Armand goes in to see Stephen, Reine-Marie is given Stephen’s belongings. She is reminded of his things she had picked up from the street the night he was hit and takes those items out. She notices something odd about his keys.

Reine-Marie convinces the police officer guarding Stephen’s hospital room door to let her in. Shocked by the appearance of Stephen bandaged up beyond recognition, she is reminded of a time when she saw Armand in similar danger. She tells Armand she’s found something, and together they go through Stephen’s box of belongings. The odd thing about his keys is that even though Stephen has an apartment in Paris, he was carrying a hotel room key. Armand and his wife wonder if it could be their friend and Stephen’s maybe-girlfriend Ruth Zardo who could have been staying in the hotel room.

Armand and Reine-Marie go to the Hotel George V and use Stephen’s key to enter his room. A maid in the hallway sees them so they know they don’t have much time. The room is an enormous luxury suite, and when they find food and Stephen’s belongings in the rooms, they can confirm that he’s been staying here instead of his apartment—but they also find another man’s belongings in a carry-on suitcase in a second bedroom.

There is a knock at the door, and Reine-Marie stalls the hotel manager while Armand swipes the contents of Stephen’s desk, including his laptop, into the hospital box of belongings. He re-seals the box, and when questioned by the hotel manager, he refuses to unseal the box per hospital policy. Reine-Marie and Armand pay 10% of Stephen’s bill, an enormous sum of money.

Armand and Reine-Marie move on to search Stephen’s apartment. The minute they enter, they know something is wrong. Furniture, lamps, and artwork are strewn about, and a man is dead on the floor. Armand notices two gunshot wounds, one in the man’s head and one in his back. Reine-Marie and Armand smell cologne in the air, a sign that the killer is still in the apartment. Armand has Reine-Marie leave the building while he tries to lock the doors to corner the intruder. He hears a slam and realizes the intruder has escaped down the fire escape. Armand pursues the intruder, and by the sound of his steps Armand can tell that it’s an older man. Armand chases him to the street, but to no avail. He loses him before he can see him.

Claude Dussault arrives at the apartment with police officers. He and Armand tour the apartment, debating preliminary theories. It is possible that the intruder killed the stranger in the living room for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, interrupting his search. It is also possible that the search in the apartment and the attempted murder of Stephen are unrelated. Of note is that nothing was stolen; Stephen’s priceless artworks are strewn around but not taken. It becomes clear to the two detectives that at some point, the intruder began to panic. Every room in the apartment is destroyed: mattresses ripped open, even cereal littered around the kitchen. Irena Fontaine arrives at the crime scene, and Armand tells her and Claude about the hotel room. Mystified, the detectives are at least all in agreement that Stephen intentionally struck by the van, as Armand always insisted. The coroner arrives.

The coroner examines the body at the scene. She decides that the man had been killed between twelve and twenty-four hours ago. Jean-Guy arrives to help, annoying Fontaine. Armand finds the man’s wallet in a hidden pocket in his jacket. They find his passport and discover that his name is Alexander Francis Plessner, from Ontario. They also find a business card with Stephen’s name on it, but the business card is actually a secret code for Stephen’s most intimate acquaintances. There is no phone number or address on the card, but when Stephen wants someone to have unfettered access to him, he gives them the card with his name on it and writes out JSPS. Armand explains that JSPS stands for “Just Some Poor Schmuck,” something his grandmother Zora would call Stephen.

Armand gives the brief version of his family history in order to help the others understand. Zora had been sent to Auschwitz during World War II and was one of three people on her train of 1,000 to have survived. Zora met Armand’s father when he was helping resettle refugees from the Holocaust in Montreal. When Armand’s parents died, Zora and Stephen were forced together even though Zora didn’t like Stephen. Stephen kept her name for him as an inside joke, something he could use to differentiate between superficial friends and truly loved ones. As the detectives all continue investigating the apartment, Claude privately advises Armand to keep Jean-Guy away from the crime scenes. Jean-Guy is treading on the toes of Paris’s finest, and Claude tells Armand that he knows Jean-Guy is no longer on the force in Québec anyway. Claude also tells Armand that he read about Jean-Guy’s alcoholism and drug addiction, but Armand rebukes Claude, reminding him that the danger of their job drives many good people to bad poisons.

Reine-Marie waits for Armand at the Hotel Lutetia. She can’t stop thinking about the dead body in the apartment. As a librarian and archivist, Reine-Marie is good at connecting seemingly disparate facts together. But this mystery is in the present and poses a threat. Armand finally joins her with Claude and Jean-Guy. Armand tells Claude and Jean-Guy about the Hotel George V, and they all go through Stephen’s belongings in the sealed box, searching for a clue. Armand has hidden Stephen’s agenda, but everything else is in the box. They puzzle over two nickels glued together, the shattered telephone, and a laptop they don’t know the password to. Then, Jean-Guy finds a document with the logo of GHS Engineering, his new firm. Armand admits that he had asked Stephen to help set Jean-Guy up with this new job. The two men go into another room to talk. Jean-Guy feels manipulated and lied to. Armand explains that he just wanted Jean-Guy in a new, safe space. Jean-Guy relaxes and accepts Armand’s apology. Then, Armand tells him about the scent of cologne in the air when he and Reine-Marie had first entered Stephen’s apartment. He tells Jean-Guy that the cologne is the same scent that Claude is wearing.