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.
“You know, don’t you,” Armand said, “that almost every parent feels like you do at some stage. Wishes they could go back to a carefree life. I can’t tell you how often Reine-Marie and I looked at Daniel and Annie throwing tantrums and wished they were someone else’s children. How many times we preferred the dogs to the kids.”
For some reason, hearing that made Jean-Guy want to weep. With relief.
“There’s a difference between what you just said about struggling to decide whether to keep Idola,” said Armand, his voice steady, certain, “and the mandatory abortion of any fetus that isn’t perfect. That’s what Professor Robinson is moving toward, what she’s now hinting at. It’s couched in different language, but it’s still a form of eugenics. Can you imagine the people we’d lose?”
Armand could feel his rage threatening to become outrage.
And what Abigail Robinson was advocating went far beyond that.
After studying the statistics on who died in the pandemic, and doing the cost-benefit analysis, she’d concluded there was a way to kill two birds with one stone. And Abigail Robinson was, in her pleasant way, happy to throw that stone.
What if those in unimaginable and uncontrollable pain, the dying, those left bedridden and vegetative by strokes, the frail and sick, what if they could be helped? Their suffering eased? With an injection. They’d be spared suffering, and society would be spared the expense. The burden.
Though that word was never actually used, it was understood. That was the code.
If what had happened by mistake in the pandemic, the wholesale deaths of hundreds of thousands of elderly men and women, were to become policy, wouldn’t that be a mercy? A kindness? Humane even?
After all, don’t they put down suffering animals? Wasn’t that considered an act of love? What could be the difference?
The Royal Commission, when given Robinson’s report, had refused to hear it. To legitimize any such suggestion.
But …
But then she’d gone on tour, put up her graphs and shown in her calm, measured way the surprisingly clear correlation between money saved and money needed for rebuilding after the economic ruin of the coronavirus.
If they did what her findings suggested, all would be well.
And wasn’t assisted suicide already legal in Canada? This was just one step further.
Of course, if Professor Robinson’s findings were implemented, it meant the right to die became the obligation to die, but sacrifices needed to be made. In a free society.
And recently, emboldened by growing support, Professor Robinson was delicately turning her attention to the other end of life. Babies. With birth defects.
And how their suffering might be relieved.
It felt now to Gamache as though they were locked in a sort of passion play, the outcome of which would decide their direction for generations to come.
Though there was one way to stop it. If the person leading, legitimizing, the campaign were to …
“I’ve written my report about the events this afternoon,” said Gamache, interrupting his own thoughts. “There’ll be an inquiry, of course.”
“I’ll—” Jean-Guy was about to say,… have my letter of resignation to you in the morning. But was interrupted.
“How?” Gamache asked, leaning forward, his arms on the table, his hands clasped lightly together. “How did the firecrackers get in? And the gun? How did it get into the shooter’s hands? Tell me honestly, at what stage did you leave the front door?”
“Not until everyone was in, and the doors had been closed. No one came in behind me, patron. And everyone who did get in was thoroughly searched. I know that.”
Gamache believed him. “Then someone must’ve planted it there. Someone who had access to the building beforehand.”
“Tardif’s brother.”
“Yes. Probably. But we need to look further afield. To someone who knew early on that the event was going to happen and could get into the old gym.”
“The caretaker?”
“Possibly.” Gamache didn’t want to think that Éric Viau could be involved, but knew it was a legitimate question.
Unfortunately, security cameras had never been installed in the old gym. Too expensive for a building rarely used and not particularly valuable. But Beauvoir had a thought.
“The video we were watching from her talk a few weeks ago. It was too clear, too professional to be some random audience member with a phone. I bet she hires someone to record her events.”
“You might be right. Though the camera would be trained on the stage, not the audience. But you never know. Any luck with the videos taken by spectators?”
“Not yet. Like you said, the phones were aimed at the stage. Then, when the firecrackers went off, everything goes nuts. Too shaky to see anything. You think the two are related? The firecrackers were set off to cause panic and cover the shots? Make sure no one noticed the shooter in the stampede?”
As he replayed it in his mind, Gamache slowly shook his head. “I don’t know. It seems a stretch that it could be a coincidence, but if it was planned, it didn’t work. The shots were fired thirty-two seconds after the firecrackers went off. By then people had begun to calm down. You’d have thought they were meant to happen together.”
“Maybe it was a coincidence, and when Tardif heard the firecrackers, he saw his chance and scrambled to get a shot off. But in his hurry he missed Robinson.”
“Could be.” Gamache paused in thought. “The manager of the gun club said Tardif is an excellent shot, didn’t he? And yet he missed. Twice.”
“The stress of battle. We’ve all missed. With the panic around him, his arm might’ve been jostled. And he didn’t miss by much, patron.”
“That is true.” He was still picking bits of the podium out of his jacket. “If the point was to not just kill Robinson, but cause complete mayhem, then maybe it was executed perfectly. First the firecrackers to shatter nerves, then the shots to guarantee a riot.”
To guarantee a stampede for the doors. And the subsequent crush. The injuries and deaths of men, women, and children. What sort of monster, Beauvoir wondered, was this Tardif?
“So even if Professor Robinson survived,” he said, “the deaths in the crowd would forever be associated with her campaign. It would kill her movement, if not her.”
“But would it?” Gamache asked. “Think about it. A riot with tens, maybe hundreds of injuries and deaths, would be news worldwide. She’d get publicity no amount of money could create. She wouldn’t be blamed. In fact, she’d be a victim, narrowly escaping assassination. It’s already happening. In the news tonight she had her reaction pretty perfect. Almost as though she’d prepared.”
“Wait a minute.” Jean-Guy held up his hand, trying to catch up to the Chief’s rapid train of thought. “You think she’s behind it?”
“Tardif’s an expert shot who missed,” said Gamache. “Twice.”
“Barely,” Beauvoir repeated. He also knew, but didn’t say, that had he been Tardif, he’d have taken the shot and not missed.
He brought out his notebook and made a note to see if there could have been any contact between Tardif and Professor Robinson or her assistant.
Then he stopped and looked at Gamache.
“You’re not fired,” said the Chief, understanding the look. “In the reports I sent off tonight, I didn’t mention you.”
“You lied?”
“The sin of omission. I couldn’t see the benefit to the Sûreté, or the public, if an exceptional officer was fired for a one-off event that did not actually hurt anyone.”
“If it comes out, you’ll be fired,” Beauvoir said.
“I’ve been fired before,” said Gamache. “I suspect by now they’re tired of changing the name on the door. Look, Jean-Guy, the fault was mine. While I was protecting a stranger, you were protecting your daughter. You said it last night. You warned me. And you were right. She needs protecting. That’s your life’s work. The one that matters.”