The Madness of Crowds
- Автор: Пенни Луиза
- Серия: Chief Inspector Gamache #17
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: St. Martin's Publishing Group
- ISBN: 9781250145284
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Madness of Crowds». Краткое содержание книги:
You're a coward.
Time and again, as the New Year approaches, that charge is leveled against Armand Gamache.
It starts innocently enough.
While the residents of the Québec village of Three Pines take advantage of the deep snow to ski and toboggan, to drink hot chocolate in the bistro and share meals together, the Chief Inspector finds his holiday with his family interrupted by a simple request.
He's asked to provide security for what promises to be a non-event. A visiting professor of statistics will be giving a lecture at the nearby university.
While he is perplexed as to why the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec would be assigned this task, it sounds easy enough. That is, until Gamache starts looking into Professor Abigail Robinson and discovers an agenda so repulsive he begs the university to cancel the lecture.
They refuse, citing academic freedom, and accuse Gamache of censorship and intellectual cowardice. Before long, Professor Robinson's views start seeping into conversations. Spreading and infecting. So that truth and fact, reality and delusion, are so confused it's near impossible to tell them apart.
Discussions become debates, debates become arguments, which turn into fights. As sides are declared, a madness takes hold.
Abigail Robinson promises that if they follow her, ça va bien aller. All will be well. But not, Gamache and his team know, for everyone.
When a murder is committed, it falls to Armand Gamache, his second-in-command Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and their team to investigate the crime as well as this extraordinary popular delusion.
And the madness of crowds.
Gamache stopped, unable to go on. Overcome with the nightmare vision of what might have been.
The lines down his face became crevices. There was a noise in his throat, as he gagged on his own words, his own rage. It was almost the rattle they’d heard too often, in those about to die. And this felt to Beauvoir like a sort of death. The end of something precious and, as it turned out, fragile.
Trust.
Jean-Guy watched in dismay, knowing if trust had died, he’d murdered it.
Gamache composed himself and finally got the words out. “You made it worse.”
The words were like a slap across Beauvoir’s face. And with it he seemed to wake up. To come to. And he saw with clarity why he’d done it. It might not be enough to satisfy the Chief Inspector, but it might satisfy his father-in-law.
“Idola—” Jean-Guy began, but only got the one word out.
“Don’t you dare blame your daughter. This isn’t about her and you know it.”
And that was it. Jean-Guy exploded.
“What I know … sir, is that I’m her father. You’re only her grandfather.” All bonds had broken and he was again free from all constraint. “You’re nothing. You’ll be long dead and buried, and she’ll still be living with us. Forever. And then, one day, she’ll be Honoré’s burden. So don’t you ever, ever fucking tell me what is or is not about my daughter. Because everything is.”
By the time he finished, his snarl had turned into a shout. His hands gripped the table, and in his anger, his sudden madness, he jerked it and the lemon meringue pie bounced off and crashed to the floor.
The bistro had grown quiet as patrons stared, then looked away. As though Jean-Guy had unexpectedly stripped down to his underwear. To what normally never showed.
And then, with that one word, that too fell. Until he was as naked as the day he was born.
Burden. Burden.
Another silence enveloped them, punctured only by Jean-Guy’s small gasping cries as he struggled for breath, and fought off the tears that were taking him under.
He shoved his chair back, or tried to. Tried to get up. To get away. But he was too tightly wedged in.
And still Gamache said nothing.
About to yell at him again, to scream at Gamache to let him go, Jean-Guy looked directly at the Chief. And saw tears in his father-in-law’s eyes.
“What’s wrong with them?” asked Haniya Daoud.
She alone had continued to stare.
“Nothing,” said Clara. “They’ve had a hard day.”
“Yes.” Haniya recognized the larger, older cop, from the news reports. “Why don’t you like them? What’ve they done to you?”
“Nothing,” said Ruth.
“Well, they must’ve done something. When they came in, you did this.” Haniya held up her middle finger. “I believe it means ‘go fuck yourself.’”
Myrna’s brows shot up in surprise.
“It’s also a term of endearment,” said Ruth. “If you win the Nobel Peace Prize, you might start with that.”
Haniya Daoud smiled, but her eyes were hard as she stared at the elderly woman. Then over to the two Sûreté officers.
“They’re angry. Unstable. And no doubt armed.” She looked around. “I don’t think I like it here.”
CHAPTER 9
Jean-Guy dropped his head and covered his face, his hands muffling the sobs.
Armand remained quiet, though the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes were filled with tears.
He brought out a clean handkerchief and pushed it across the table, then used a napkin on his own face.
Finally, after wiping his face and blowing his nose, Idola’s father looked at her grandfather.
But before Jean-Guy could speak, Armand said, “I’m sorry. You’re right. Everything in your life now is about Idola and Honoré. I should have known that. Forgive me. I should never have put you in that position. It was wrong of me.”
What was it about this situation, about Abigail Robinson, that brought out the worst in people? Though Gamache now faced his own uncomfortable truth.
Professor Robinson was revealing, not creating, the anger. The fear. And yes, perhaps even the cowardice they kept hidden away. She was like some genetic mutation awakening illnesses that would have normally lain dormant.
She was the catalyst. But the potential, the sickness, was already there.
And now Abigail Robinson was moving across the country, around the world on the internet, triggering, with her dry statistics, people’s deepest fears and resentments. Their desperation and hopes.
Jean-Guy had dropped his gaze to the floor and was staring as though comatose at the wreckage of lemon meringue pie.
“What is it?” whispered Armand, sensing there was more. “You can tell me.”
“Burden. I called my own daughter a burden.” He raised his gaze to Armand’s bloodshot eyes. “And…”
Armand waited.
“… and I meant it.” Each word had dropped in volume until the last one was barely more than mouthed.
His eyes held a plea now. A watery cry for help. Armand reached across the table and grasped Jean-Guy’s arm.
“It’s okay,” he said softly. “Go on.”
Jean-Guy, his mouth open, his breathing rapid, said nothing.
Armand waited. Keeping his hand on Jean-Guy’s sweater.
“I…” Jean-Guy began and paused to gather himself. “I’m afraid that part of me agrees with her. About aborting … I hate her.”
It came out in a rush, and he looked up to see how that was greeted. The eyes that met his were thoughtful. And sad.
“Go on,” said Armand, quietly.
“She’s saying what I’ve felt. Feel. There’re times I wish someone, a doctor, had told us we had to abort. That we had no choice. So that Annie and I wouldn’t feel guilty about doing it. So that we wouldn’t have … her. So that life could be … normal. Oh, God.” Jean-Guy lifted his hands to his face again. “Help me.”
Only when Jean-Guy lowered his hands did Armand speak.
“Why didn’t you?”
“What?”
“Abort. You found out the fetus had Down syndrome early enough in the pregnancy. You could have.”
Far from being afraid of this question, this conversation, Jean-Guy felt nearly overwhelming relief. The dark thing curled around his heart was exposed. And far from reeling away from him in disgust, Armand was behaving as though all this was painful but perfectly natural.
And maybe, Jean-Guy began to think, it was.
“Annie and I talked about it. Were going to. We had the appointment. But just couldn’t. It wasn’t religious. You know we don’t belong to any church or religion. It just didn’t feel right. We decided that if the fetus developed normally in every other way, we’d—”
What, thought Jean-Guy, keep her? It made their daughter sound like a puppy.
But that had been the decision, and the wording they’d used.
“—keep her.” Jean-Guy hesitated. “I’m so afraid.”
“Of what?”
“That I won’t love her enough, that I won’t be a good father. That I’m not up to this.”
Armand took a deep, long breath, but remained quiet. Letting Jean-Guy get it all out.
“I look at her, Armand, and I don’t see Annie, or me. Or you, or Reine-Marie. My parents. I can’t see anyone in the family. There’re times I think I can’t live without her, and there are times she feels like a stranger.”
Armand nodded. “She fell far from the tree.”
It took Jean-Guy a moment to understand the reference, and then he smiled a little and looked out the frosted window. At the village green. At the three huge pines.
“But maybe not so far,” he said quietly, and felt lighter than he had in a long time. Perhaps, he thought, the burden wasn’t Idola. It was the shame.