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.
He looked down. Seemed Jean-Guy hadn’t quite got all the embers.
Reine-Marie patted him down. “This sweater was a Christmas gift, monsieur. You’ve had it a week.”
“Mrs. Claus is going to be disappointed.”
“Mrs. Claus understands that sometimes men set themselves on fire, for no particular reason.”
He laughed. “Thank you for saving my life.”
“I saved the sweater. You happen to be in it.” She hugged him tighter, smelling the wood smoke and singed wool mingling with sandalwood and rose. It was earthy and strangely pleasant.
“Shhhhh,” Ruth hissed. “It’s almost midnight.”
They leaned forward, toward the unblemished new year, as numbers appeared on the screen.
“… sept, six, cinq…,” they counted down. “… trois, deux, un! Bonne année!” they shouted, laughing and hugging.
Reine-Marie and Armand embraced and kissed, as did other couples. Stephen tilted his head at Ruth, who closed her eyes and leaned toward him before Rosa popped up between them and he ended up kissing the duck.
A Roman candle lit the sky above the Inn and Spa. Monsieur Béliveau had also found silent fireworks, so as not to upset the animals. Which somehow made the display all the more magical.
Armand sought out Daniel, and gave him a hug. “I’m so glad you’re home.”
“Moi aussi,” said Daniel. Together they went outside to watch the fireworks.
The cold was forgotten as ooohs and aaahs filled the air. The crowd pointed and exclaimed. Pinwheels spun and skyrockets twisted and dragon’s eggs appeared overhead, lighting up their faces and the village of Three Pines below.
Sparklers were handed out to the kids. Félix showed Honoré how to dip the tip into the bonfire until a fountain of tiny stars burst from the end. Then he showed him how to write his name in the night. Soon all the kids were doing it.
“Little monkeys,” said Vincent Gilbert, coming up beside Armand and Reine-Marie, just as the display was ending. Gilbert was the only one smart enough to have put on a coat.
When all the fireworks were exhausted, they ran back inside to the fireplace, shivering and laughing.
Another year done. Another begun.
Billy Williams, left outside to tamp down the fire, smiled as he shoveled snow onto the flames and relived those moments to midnight. He’d positioned himself next to Myrna.
“… deux, un! Bonne année!!”
He’d turned to her and asked above the cheers and laughter, “May I?”
When she’d nodded, he’d leaned in and kissed her, lightly, briefly. On the lips.
He’d felt her hand on his arm. Not to stop him, but to keep him there. And he’d kissed her again. Kissed her longer.
Now he paused, leaning on the shovel. Reliving that moment, so long longed for. Then a glow caught his eye as the bonfire leaped to life.
Another gust had revived it, he thought, as he thrust the shovel into a drift.
A few minutes later, just as he was about to go back inside, Billy noticed a commotion. He looked off to his right, into the darkness. One of the teens had stumbled out of the woods and was calling to his friends.
They’d be sixteen, seventeen years old, Billy guessed. He knew them all. Seen them grow up. Not yet of drinking age, he knew, but that didn’t stop them. Just as it hadn’t stopped him when he’d been their age. He still couldn’t smell cider without feeling sick.
Smiling, he threw one last load of snow onto the fire and heard the dying embers hiss at him. Now there were more shouts. Something in the tone made Billy pause. He stepped further into the darkness.
Then, out of the woods, first one, then another and another stumbled. Their eyes, caught in the light from the living room windows, were wide, wild.
Billy Williams dropped the shovel and moved forward.
Tired and happy, Armand and Reine-Marie were just about to head down the hallway to their coats when Armand stopped.
Turned.
And looked back.
CHAPTER 20
Armand slid to a halt and dropped to his knees beside the body facedown in the snow.
He was about to grab the coat and turn them over, when he drew back.
Jean-Guy fell to his knees on the other side of the body and also reached out.
“Don’t.”
With his bare hand Gamache carefully burrowed under the person’s scarf, to feel for a pulse he knew he wouldn’t find. Then he looked up, and across the body, at Beauvoir.
When the alarm had gone up, Armand’s heart had recoiled. Hearing the terror in the cries, he’d immediately thought some teenager had been found passed out drunk and frozen to death in some snowdrift.
He’d rushed out so quickly he’d left his coat and boots behind. Others had also started for the doors, but Jean-Guy had headed them off with a curt “We’ll let you know.”
The temperature had plummeted, and the wind was picking up, moaning through the trees, lifting the top layer of snow and swirling it about.
Armand tapped Jean-Guy’s arm and pointed. “Be careful.”
Beauvoir looked at the ground beside him and saw dark marks in the white snow, by the dead woman’s head.
It was a woman. And she was dead. That much was obvious. As was one more thing.
The dark marks were blood. Her head had been bludgeoned. This was no case of hypothermia. No sad accident.
Bringing out his phone, Beauvoir switched on the light and the video, recording, capturing the scene. It went beyond standard procedure. The weather was closing in. Even now, fingers of snow were drifting across the body, as though some great hand had reached up out of the earth and was trying to drag her down.
With every passing moment evidence was being lost. Even now, the bloodstains were being buried.
“Go back inside,” Gamache shouted, having to raise his voice over the now howling wind. “Parents will be worried. Just say there’s been an accident, and we’re tending to it. They need to stay in the Auberge. No one leaves.”
“Right.” Jean-Guy was on his feet, running for the Inn.
“And bring our coats,” Gamache shouted after him.
Drawing his shoulders in, and praying Beauvoir had heard, Gamache hunched over, trying to protect his core. He knew it didn’t take long for frostbite, then hypothermia, to take hold. Bringing out his phone, and pressing video, he continued to record while placing two calls. First to the coroner, then the officer on duty at Sûreté headquarters. In homicide. Through chattering teeth, he told him to send the Scene of Crime unit.
As he spoke, he moved so that he acted as a windbreak, protecting the body. Protecting whatever evidence he could before the elements swallowed it all up.
The body was that of a grown woman, not a teen. That much was clear, though her face was completely buried. Her neck was cold, near frozen, to the touch. She felt like marble, as though a statue had toppled off the path.
Her arms were at her sides. She’d made no attempt to break her fall.
Unconscious as she fell, he thought as he leaned closer to the wound on the back of her head, or already dead. Even with his flashlight, he couldn’t see much except the dark stain on her dark tuque. And the drops of blood still visible on the snow.
Gamache looked at his watch. It was seventeen minutes past twelve. She’d been dead, he figured, at least twenty minutes.
A gust hit him, then moved on, taking his breath and much of his body heat with it.
His face was growing numb, and his bare hands shook as he slowly, slowly moved his camera over the scene, recording and describing what he saw. Though he suspected the words were next to unintelligible as his lips and cheeks froze. A shiver, more a shudder, passed through him just as he heard a crunch on the snow behind him.