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.
“Then,” Gilbert continued, “one morning the hundredth monkey, by the scientists’ count, picked up a sweet potato and washed it. And that did it. Something broke. By nightfall all the monkeys on the island were washing their potatoes.”
“Are we sure that’s not a euphemism?” asked Ruth. “They are monkeys after all.”
“Why?” asked Armand, ignoring her, but unable to suppress a smile. “Was that monkey an alpha? A leader?”
“No, nothing special at all about her,” said Gilbert. “Interesting, isn’t it? Why it should suddenly take off like that. What difference that one monkey, the hundredth, made. What’s even more interesting is that they then discovered monkeys on other islands doing the same thing. None of them had washed their sweet potatoes before, but now they all were.”
“Oh, come on,” said Ruth. “That’s not possible. Are you saying the monkeys had ESP? They communicated by, what? Brain waves?”
Rosa snorted.
“I’m not saying it,” said Gilbert. “The anthropologists just reported it. They were as baffled as anyone else. It’s become known as the hundredth monkey effect. Whether it was a hundred monkeys or not, the point was that when a tipping point is reached, when a certain number of monkeys—”
“—or people,” said Stephen.
“—start doing the same thing—”
“—or believing the same thing,” said Stephen.
“Exactly,” said Vincent. “The idea explodes.”
“It takes on a life of its own,” said Armand, glancing at Abigail.
He wondered if, thanks to the event at the gym and the errant gunshots, that hundredth monkey had been reached. He also wondered if that had been the purpose of the shots.
He was deep in thought when Honoré, still wearing his bunny ears and dragging his toboggan, came up to him.
“Papa—” he began, but that was as far as he got.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Explosions filled the room.
Armand pulled Honoré to him, swiftly turning his back on the shots, bending over and enveloping the boy with his body.
Across the room, Jean-Guy grabbed Annie and Idola while Haniya Daoud dropped to her knees, bending over, covering her head with her hands. Making herself as small as possible.
Seconds later the shots stopped and, keeping Honoré behind him, Armand swung round. His sharp eyes scanned the room. Body tense, prepared to act, even as his mind said—
“They’re firecrackers, Armand.” Stephen was looking with concern at his godson. Reaching out a bony hand, he placed it on Armand’s chest. “It’s all right.”
Honoré was looking at his grandfather in shock. His bunny ears askew. His lower lip trembling.
“Oh, no.” Armand dropped to his knee, to be at eye level with the child. “No, no. It’s all right. I just…” Just what?
Just thought it was gunfire. But he didn’t say that.
The day before, at the event, he’d immediately recognized the firecrackers, but then he’d been alert and prepared for something to happen. Here, now, he’d been taken by surprise.
He held out his arms, and Honoré walked into them.
Across the room, he saw Jean-Guy looking shaken. Then his gaze went to Haniya Daoud being helped to her feet by Roslyn and Clara, and shaking off their hands.
No one else had reacted to the noise. Just them. Everyone else heard firecrackers. While they’d heard gunshots.
As he held his grandson, Armand Gamache wondered how deep their wounds really went. How much damage had been done.
And if they’d ever really heal.
CHAPTER 19
“Désolé,” Félix called as Jean-Guy and Armand stepped outside.
“The little shit’s not sorry at all,” said Jean-Guy.
It was clear now that the firecrackers had been thrown onto the bonfire by Monsieur Béliveau’s eleven-year-old assistant.
“You can’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing, Jean-Guy, when you were his age. Fireworks? A bonfire? You’d have thrown the whole damn box into the flames.”
Jean-Guy grinned. It was true. Pinwheels. Roman candles. Those whistling rockets. All would have gone up in one glorious demonstration of his impotence.
Monsieur Béliveau joined them, his boots crunching on the hard-packed snow. “Désolé. I’ll handle this. My fireworks. My fault.”
Monsieur Béliveau looked across the flames at Félix, who was inching toward the big open box of fireworks.
“Eh, garçon. Non.” His voice was firm, but when he turned back to Armand and Jean-Guy, he was amused. “Kids.”
Though dour and childless himself, the grocer was unfailingly kind and patient with children. As though instead of having none, he had them all.
While Monsieur Béliveau went to speak to Félix, Armand and Jean-Guy warmed themselves by the bonfire, holding their bare hands to the flames. It was a crisp, clear winter night, though the wind was picking up.
“Weather’s closing in,” said Jean-Guy, looking up at the stars. Instinctively finding the Big Dipper.
Just in sweaters, they got as close to the fire as they dared.
There was a familiar scratching as ice crystals, picked up by a gust, slid across the surface of the snow. The same gust caught smoke and embers from the bonfire and blew it toward them.
Armand and Jean-Guy closed their eyes and turned away. When it had passed, Armand asked, “Everything okay?”
Jean-Guy smiled. “It’s smoke. I think I’ll survive.”
“I meant Professor Robinson.”
“She saw Idola,” said Jean-Guy. Armand was silent, staring into the crackling bonfire, knowing there was more. “I tried to stop her, Armand. I think Annie thought it was because I wanted to protect Idola, and it was mostly that. But…”
Armand waited.
“… but a small part of me didn’t want her to see.”
In the wavering light of the flames Armand saw, for the first time, lines on Jean-Guy’s face. Had so many years really passed, Armand thought, since they first met? So many lines produced.
And now he noticed too the beginning of gray in Jean-Guy’s dark hair.
“But you let her,” Armand said.
“Only because of Annie. She said it would be all right.”
“And is it? All right?”
Jean-Guy gave a short laugh, and Armand saw that the deepest lines actually ran from the corners of his son-in-law’s eyes. Laugh lines. “It’s getting there.”
Beauvoir glanced into the room behind them. A television had been positioned by the fireplace and tuned to the annual Radio Canada year-end special, Bye Bye.
Chairs were being pulled forward and guests were wandering over, plates and drinks in hand.
“Come in,” Reine-Marie called from the door. “It’s almost time.”
“Wind’s picking up,” said Monsieur Béliveau. “I’ll stay outside and watch the fire.” He turned to Félix. “You go in too. Get a hot chocolate and get warm.”
“No,” said the boy. “I want to stay with you. Fire needs watching.”
“Come along,” Armand said to Jean-Guy. “We’ll see this year out together.”
“You’re not going to kiss me at midnight, are you? By the way, you’re on fire.”
Armand looked down. Sure enough, embers had landed on his sweater.
Jean-Guy pulled the sleeves of his own sweater over his hands and batted the embers out.
Once inside they got two hot chocolates and took them out to the grocer and his apprentice, then joined the others around the television.
Reine-Marie put her arm through Armand’s and leaned into him. “You’re smoking.”
“Smoking hot?” he asked with a grin.
“No, no, just smoking.”