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.
“No, not really. After Oxford she went back to BC, and Jean-Paul and I returned to Québec.”
“And there was no one else? No brother or sister?”
“She had Debbie. That seemed to be enough.” She smiled. “What’s that suspicious mind of yours conjuring?”
Creases appeared at the corners of his eyes and ran deep down his face as he too smiled. “Nothing. An occupational hazard. Seeing specters where none exist.”
“And accomplices?”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure they exist.”
He got up and, walking over to the bookcase, pulled out a volume he’d noticed as he’d entered the study.
He looked at the cover, then turned it around to show her. The Chancellor laughed.
“That was a gift from my husband when we got engaged.” She took it and looked down at it as though at a beloved face.
The book was called How to Lie with Statistics.
From the kitchen he could hear the kids making noise again, and knew the interview must be over. Bringing out his phone, Armand checked Abigail Robinson’s social media account and saw the numbers clicking, churning, sweeping upward. As fast, he thought, as the American national debt meter he’d seen in New York City. And now he watched with the same alarm as Professor Robinson’s numbers flew up. A barometer of a moral deficit.
Armand pocketed his phone and walked to the door of the study. Down the hall he could see Inspector Lacoste standing with Abigail and Debbie. He caught her eye and nodded.
They were leaving.
He turned to the Chancellor. “Please don’t let them go off the property. Not until we catch the accomplice.”
“Suppose you never do?”
“You have a big house…”
She laughed. “I’ll do my best. Bonne année, Armand. Let’s hope the new year starts better than the old year has ended.”
“Inshallah. Bonne année, Colette.”
As Lacoste turned the car out of the driveway, she asked, “What do you make of the Chancellor? Do you think she’s involved?”
“Oh, she’s involved. I just don’t know how.”
Jean-Guy stood on the threshold and rang the bell. This was where the sound tech lived.
He’d already interviewed the lighting tech, who’d said he spent the event dozing off in a booth at the back of the auditorium.
He spoke no English and had been out drinking with buddies the night before. The English lecture on statistics held absolutely no interest for him.
The young man was a theater major at the University and did the lighting part-time, to make money.
Since the old cop had told them to keep the lights up the whole time, there wasn’t much to do, he told Beauvoir. So he slept. Only waking up when the firecrackers went off.
No, he didn’t see who did it. By the time he was fully awake, they’d stopped and the crowd was beginning to panic. Then there were the shots.
“Scared the shit outta me. Ostie.”
“Did you record any of it?”
“I do lighting, not audio.”
“I realize that,” Beauvoir said, his voice and patience strained. “But you can see everything from that booth. It’s right at the back of the auditorium and up high. If someone wanted to record an event, that would be the perfect spot. Right?”
“I guess. But why would I want a recording?”
“You wouldn’t, but someone else might.” He gave the kid a shrewd look. “Did someone ask you to record it? Maybe even pay you?”
“To record an event? Without signed permission of the principals? That’s against the law.”
“Merci,” said Beauvoir. “Now, I’ll ask you again, because I like you and I don’t want you to get into even bigger trouble by obstructing justice in an attempted murder inquiry. Are you sure you didn’t record the event?”
“Look, the job’s easy and pay’s decent, so I’m not gonna fuck it up by illegally recording something. I’m asked all the time, especially by kids who want to bootleg a concert. Like you said, I have a great view of the stage. But I don’t do it. Anyone watching the video would know where it was shot from and I’d be in shit.”
“Have you been to the building in the last week?”
“No, why would I?”
“Did anyone give you anything to bring in?”
“Like firecrackers?” When the Inspector didn’t say anything, the boy’s eyes widened. “You mean the gun? I wish.”
The Chief’s wrong, thought Beauvoir, as he got back into his car. That kid’s not a ferret. He’s a wolverine.
Next was the sound tech. He parked in the driveway of her home, where a huge Père Noël on the roof waved at him. From the car, Jean-Guy considered the herd of reindeer on the front lawn, all with blinking red noses. It was ridiculous.
He kinda liked it.
A text came in from Isabelle saying they were on their way to the local detachment to interview the gunman, Édouard Tardif.
Join you soon, he replied, then walked up the front steps and rang the bell.
“What’ve you found out?” Gamache asked, half an hour later.
The head of detachment had given them his office. It was a space they knew well from previous investigations.
“I spoke to the sound and lighting techs,” said Beauvoir. “Both are theater students at the University.”
He didn’t bring out his notes. Didn’t have to. There wasn’t much to remember.
“Lighting guy says he slept through until the firecrackers went off. He says he didn’t record the lecture for anyone, but he’s a bit of a shit. I doubt he follows rules.”
Gamache suppressed a smile. It was almost word for word what the station chief had said about Agent Beauvoir when they’d first met.
“The student doing sound?” asked Isabelle. “Did she see anything?”
“No. She only got the call that morning to go in. She showed up an hour before Robinson went on and hadn’t been to the auditorium since the Christmas break. She stayed backstage the whole time. She’s still pretty shaken. I’ve set up an appointment for her with our psychologist.”
Gamache nodded. This was the Jean-Guy he’d met years ago. A kind man in shit’s clothing.
There was a knock on the door and an agent put his head in.
“The lawyer’s here, Chief Inspector.”
“Merci. Can you show her into the interview room, please? Then wait ten minutes and bring Monsieur Tardif.”
“Entendu.”
“Fine way to spend New Year’s Eve, Armand,” said Maître Lacombe as she placed a notepad and her phone on the metal table. She nodded to Beauvoir and Lacoste. “The holy trinity? That’s a lot of firepower for a case that’s over.”
“Is it?” asked Gamache, taking a seat.
“Over? I think so. My client had no priors. He’s cooperating. Didn’t resist arrest and it was clearly not a serious attempt.”
“Well, that’s quite a list of lies and half-truths,” said Isabelle. “My people had to wrestle the gun from him, he took shots in a crowded enclosed place almost causing a riot, and it was only because the Chief Inspector shoved Professor Robinson aside that she wasn’t killed.”
“Perception, Inspector.” She leaned forward. “Listen, Édouard Tardif’s a decent, if deluded, man. He’s gotten it into his head that what Professor Robinson is saying is somehow a threat. He’s been wound up by a hostile media. By fake news. He took a wild shot—”
“Two,” said Beauvoir. “That barely missed.”
“But they did miss. And who’s to say he didn’t intend to miss all along? He’s an expert shot. Had he wanted to kill her, he would have.”
At a nod from Gamache, Édouard Tardif was brought in.