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.
“Yes…?”
This was it. He’d tell her about disobeying orders and abandoning his post. He’d tell her how he felt, sometimes, about their daughter. About their decision.
He’d tell Annie everything.
And that’s when he told her.
About Haniya Daoud.
“News?” Jean-Guy asked when he arrived in the kitchen with Idola.
He’d put her into a pretty little onesie, a Christmas gift from Stephen. It was covered in cavorting pink mice, each holding what looked like a wedge of cheese, or lemon meringue pie.
“Non. Nothing,” said Armand, kissing Idola’s head. “She smells nice. New powder?”
“It’s the bacon, Dad,” said Annie, and turned to Roslyn. “Men.”
“I know. For years Daniel thought our children smelled of croissants.”
“They don’t?” asked Daniel, and looked cross-eyed at Zora, who laughed.
“I’ve spoken to Isabelle,” said Jean-Guy, pouring himself a coffee. “We’re set to interrogate Tardif later this morning. His lawyer will be there, of course.”
“Of course.”
Idola sat on Armand’s knee as he listened to Zora, Florence, and Honoré describe the day ahead.
Just then there was a flurry of dings, pings as texts arrived for Annie, Roslyn, and Reine-Marie. All with the same message from Clara, inviting them over for breakfast with Haniya Daoud. It seemed slightly more than an invitation, Reine-Marie noticed. More like a plea.
Roslyn composed an excited reply.
Yes, plenty. So exited. Can I binge the girds? Mercury.
Not her best composition, but Clara understood and immediately sent back a text saying, best not to bring the grills.
“I wonder why not,” said Roslyn.
“Too scary,” said Jean-Guy, catching Armand’s eye.
“You’re right,” said Annie. “We don’t want to overwhelm Haniya. She must be a little fragile.”
Reine-Marie, who’d declined the invitation with regret, saying she had work to do, walked over to her husband.
“I saw that look. What’s up?”
“I’ll tell you later,” he whispered.
The breakfast dishes were cleared away so that Annie and Roslyn could go and have their second breakfast with the honored visitor.
Stephen was up by then and dressed as always in a crisp shirt, sweater, and gray flannels. Ready for a board meeting, should one arise.
“Still finding monkeys?” he asked Reine-Marie, after getting a mug of coffee.
She was now sitting by the woodstove at the far end of the kitchen and bending over a large cardboard box. “Oui.”
“What’s the count?” he asked, joining her.
“Fifty-seven, so far.”
“What a weird person, collecting monkeys,” said Stephen, cradling Gracie, his ratmunk.
“Wish I could say it’s the strangest thing I’ve found going through people’s things.”
Having risen to chief archivist in Québec, Reine-Marie had recently decided to retire and take on consulting work.
This was a commission from a local family to go through their mother’s things. The matriarch had recently died, leaving them far less wealth than expected, a rambling old house, and boxes and boxes of clothes, papers, knickknacks, and a completely unexpected collection of monkey dolls, monkey postcards, stuffed, painted, and illustrated monkeys. All in boxes in the attic.
Though by far the largest collection of monkeys were hand-drawn on all sorts of documents.
It was a puzzle, and one Reine-Marie hoped to solve.
“Any of them valuable?” asked the old financier.
“Not that I know of,” she said, holding a moth-eaten monkey doll by an ear.
Armand had joined them, carrying a dossier.
“All right,” said Reine-Marie. “Before you lose yourself in work, what did that look between you and Jean-Guy mean, when we were talking about Haniya Daoud?”
“It’s just that if Annie and Roslyn are expecting a saint, they’re going to be disappointed.”
“Why? What’s she like?”
When he didn’t answer, her eyes grew serious and she understood.
“It’s a miracle she survived at all,” said Reine-Marie, “and that she turned her own pain into doing so much good. Not surprising she’d be…” What was the right word? “Difficult.”
“Oui,” said Armand. “And then some. Certainly wounded, maybe even unbalanced, in that she sees quite clearly what’s wrong with the world but can’t seem to see what’s right.”
Though Haniya Daoud had certainly seen into him. If not his head, then she’d seen through the cracks, into his broken heart.
And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Armand wondered if Florence understood that line from The Little Prince.
He hadn’t, as a child. It was only as he got older that he knew it to be true. And now he thought about Haniya Daoud, and what she had seen. With her own broken heart.
“An Asshole Saint,” said Stephen. “Not the first. I think most were, weren’t they? In fact, she wouldn’t even be the first around here.”
“You’re not talking about yourself, are you, Stephen?” asked Reine-Marie. “Because, at least according to Ruth, only one of those words applies to you.”
“Really? You’d take the word of a madwoman who carries around a duck? Treats that thing like it’s her child, isn’t that right, Gracie?” He kissed the ratmunk on her whiskered nose.
But both Reine-Marie and Armand knew who Stephen meant. Their resident Asshole Saint lived in a cabin in the woods, preferring his own company to that of anyone else on earth.
Everyone else on earth felt the same way.
They’d grown so used to calling him that, and he even introduced himself as the Asshole Saint, that the villagers had almost forgotten who he really was.
“I haven’t met him yet,” said Stephen. “So what makes him an asshole?”
“If he’s there tonight, you’ll probably see,” said Reine-Marie. “The saint part is a little more hidden.”
Armand smiled. That was true. But it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. The man had actually devoted much of his life to improving conditions for the vulnerable. For the forgotten and dismissed. Though whether he actually liked those people was a matter of debate.
“Well, now I’m really curious,” said Stephen. “Do you think he’ll be at the party tonight?”
“Probably,” said Reine-Marie. “It’s at his son’s place.”
“The Auberge,” said Stephen. “Will you be going?”
The question was directed at Armand.
“I hope to. Have to see.”
Actually, he hoped not to. Not that he didn’t want to be there. But he hoped he’d be arresting and interrogating a suspect. The accomplice. And closing this case.
“Isabelle just called,” said Jean-Guy, leaning against the doorway into the kitchen. “She’ll be at the University auditorium in twenty minutes.”
“Bon.” Gamache got up and looked at the clock. “I’ll come with you. The President and Chancellor have asked to meet with me.”
“In the principal’s office, Armand?” asked Stephen.
“Feels a bit like that.”
CHAPTER 11
“Explain yourself,” said Haniya Daoud, staring at Roslyn, whose eyes were wide and getting wider. “You spend your days designing clothing for rich people?”
“Explain yourself,” said the President of the Université de l’Estrie, staring at Gamache.