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.
“Beautiful area. Do you still live there?”
Yes.
Lacoste’s questions continued.
While neither had children, and both were single, Debbie was divorced and Abby had never married. They’d eventually drifted apart, their lives taking them in different directions.
“You know she went to Oxford?” said Debbie. “While the rest of us were mooning over boys, she was reading about the curriculum, years before she was old enough to even go.” Debbie turned to the Chancellor. “That’s how you two met, right?”
The Chancellor nodded. She, like Gamache, had been sitting back. Observing.
“I knew Abigail’s father, Paul. He was a good friend and a great mathematician. Almost as gifted as his daughter.”
Abigail smiled. “Merci.”
“He died in Abby’s first year,” said Debbie. “We reconnected at the funeral.”
“I wonder what he’d make of what’s happening now,” said Abigail.
“I think we know,” said Debbie. “After all he did for you, he’d be very proud with what you’ve done with your life. And he’d be proud of your study. He felt strongly that the truth, no matter how awful, must come out. And sometimes, it’s pretty awful.”
Abigail stared at her friend and colored. She gave a curt nod and turned to the fire.
“I agree,” said the Chancellor. “He’d be proud of you for having the courage to speak up. He was a kind man, a brave man. A believer in mercy, in all its forms.”
Gamache tipped his head back so that he was looking at the support beams above his head. Giving himself that gap between thought and action. So that he didn’t speak his mind.
Merciful. Had Colette really just equated what Abigail Robinson was promoting with an act of mercy?
But he did have an answer to one of his questions. He lowered his head and looked at the Chancellor, who seemed to agree with Abigail Robinson after all.
“You two work together now,” Lacoste was saying to Debbie and Abigail.
“That’s a nice way of putting it,” said Debbie. “I work for Abby, yes. Though it doesn’t actually feel like work.”
“What do you do?”
“Everything,” said Abigail. “Debbie does everything.”
“Except the research, the writing, the meetings, the lectures. But yes,” Debbie said with a smile, “besides that, I do everything.”
“She finds the flights,” said Abigail, “books hotels, pays the bills, fixes the laptops, finds the chimney sweep, organizes the winter tires, the lawn mowing, the—”
“Social media?” asked Gamache.
“Yes.”
“You post videos of the events?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Debbie. “You wouldn’t believe how popular they’ve become.”
Gamache, who’d been watching the likes tick up, would.
“The videos seem to be getting better,” said Lacoste. “More professional.”
“They are. At first the footage was from what people sent in,” Debbie explained, “but we needed something easier to watch, so now I hire local videographers.”
“And yesterday? Was the event recorded?”
“If it had been, Inspector, we’d have given you the tape,” said Debbie. “It was too last-minute to find anyone.”
“I saw the recording of your event before Christmas,” said Gamache, his voice casual.
“Yes, well, most of that was taken by people in the audience,” said Debbie. “We decided not to put up the one we had.”
“Because of the violence?”
There was silence.
“It seems you pick and choose which truth you’re going to tell,” said the Chief Inspector.
“Don’t we all?” asked Professor Robinson. “I can’t imagine you’re telling us everything you know. For instance, how did that man get into the gym with a gun? I saw your people at the door. They were checking everyone as they went in.”
Gamache looked at the Chancellor, to see if she’d told them about the suspected accomplice, but it seemed Abigail Robinson had figured this out on her own.
“We’re looking into it. There is a chance he wasn’t alone.”
The only sound was the crackling of the fire.
“So someone’s still out there?” said Debbie, her wide eyes going to the French doors and the garden beyond.
“We have Sûreté agents watching this house,” said Gamache. “And we’re doing all we can to find the accomplice. If there is one.”
“You don’t even know that? How can you find someone you’re not even sure exists?” demanded Debbie, her voice rising.
“It’s all right,” said Colette. “They’re very good at their jobs.”
“Like they were yesterday, when a gunman got in?” demanded Debbie.
Abigail placed a hand over her friend’s. Debbie took a deep, calming breath and squeezed Abigail’s hand.
One thing was becoming clear to Gamache. Abigail Robinson and Debbie Schneider were a couple, as surely as any lovers. Perhaps even more than most. Having sex did not define an intimate relationship, any more than not having sex prevented one.
“Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt you?” Lacoste asked. “Colleagues? Former partners, anyone who might hold some grudge?”
“Well, there’s half of Canada, it seems,” said Abigail.
“I mean personally.”
“I can’t think I hurt anyone so badly they’d want to kill me. Can you?” she asked Debbie, who also shook her head.
“You work at the University of Western Canada, is that right?” Lacoste asked.
“UWC, that’s right. I actually took over my father’s old job.”
Isabelle considered all the dynamics that suggested. It felt Shakespearean. Greek even. But was it a tragedy, or kindly Fate bestowing a gift on a gifted child?
“He must’ve been relatively young when he died,” said Lacoste.
“He was. Stroke.”
“And you were in Oxford when it happened?”
“She was,” said the Chancellor. “I got the call and had to tell her.”
“The hospital called you?” said Gamache.
“Oui. Paul put me down as the person to be notified. If anything happened, he didn’t want Abigail to hear any news like that on her own.”
“He sounds like a careful man,” said Gamache.
“He was a loving father,” said Colette. “Preparing for the unpredictable.”
“Practicing probability theory?” asked Gamache.
“You’d know, Chief Inspector,” said Abigail. “Don’t you generate theories, based on probability, and then eliminate them as facts come in? Isn’t that how you find killers?”
“Very true. But we also have to consider emotions. How we feel about things influences how we see them.”
“Bit of a wild card,” said Colette.
“Oh, you’d be surprised how clearly the heart can see. What I do know is that how we feel drives what we think, and that determines what we do. Our actions leave behind evidence, those facts you mention. But it all starts with an emotion.”
“Fortunately, numbers don’t have feelings,” said Abigail.
“No, but the mathematician, the statistician, does. Can’t help but. As do homicide investigators. We can make mistakes. Overinterpret evidence. Even manipulate some facts to suit a convenient theory. We try not to, but we’re human and it’s tempting. Fortunately, if we do misinterpret facts and arrest the wrong person, the case is dismissed.”
“But not always,” said Chancellor Roberge. “Innocent people are sometimes convicted. And the guilty are freed.”
“My point exactly,” said the Chief Inspector. “The same set of facts can lead us to different conclusions. Our interpretation of facts can depend on our experiences. Even our upbringing. On what we want the facts to say.”
“Lies, damned lies, and statistics?” asked Abigail.