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 one reached out to embrace her. And he suspected she hadn’t reached out to anyone.
“That doesn’t mean you were there,” said Gamache.
“And it doesn’t mean I was off killing the wrong person.”
“What were you doing in the minutes on either side of midnight?”
“I was watching that stupid show on the television. Then I went outside and watched the fireworks.” She paused. “I’d never seen them before. Not in person. They were…” As she searched for the word, Gamache waited for the insult. “… very beautiful. Almost sweet. The way they lit up the village below. Not pyrotechnics, but just an old man and boy setting them off in a backyard.”
She seemed tired, but also calm. “It’s good to be reminded now and then that such things exist.”
“What things?”
“Beauty. Peace.” She held his eyes. “Goodness. But they’re fragile and can so easily disappear, unless people are willing to do what’s necessary to defend them.”
“I’m not sure that goodness is all that fragile,” said Gamache.
Off in the corner the young agent looked from one to the other of them, not sure she was following this conversation in English. Were they, the Chief Inspector and a suspect, debating goodness?
“If not fragile, it’s mercurial,” said Haniya. “Good. Evil. Cruelty and kindness. Guilt and innocence. An act can be all those things at once, depending on your perspective. It’s so easy to delude ourselves, wouldn’t you say, Chief Inspector?”
“Into believing killing one person to save millions is an act of moral courage?”
“I don’t think that’s a delusion.”
“And if you kill the wrong person?”
“If I?” She smiled again. “Once again, and please pay attention this time, I did not kill that poor woman. And who knows, it might not have been a mistake.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Just a possibility. Maybe she knew something, or saw something. Or maybe there’s a maniac around. I’d start with the old woman with the duck. Personally, I think the duck is the more dangerous. Did you know people actually have attack geese? Very mean.”
Beauvoir, who’d been chased out of several farmyards by geese, and at least one malicious rabbit, nodded. He too suspected Rosa might not be all there.
“Most helpful,” said Gamache, getting to his feet. “You’re staying here tonight?”
“Yes. That artist woman invited me back to her home, but I could see it was more out of guilt than sincerity.”
“She’s a good person,” said Gamache. “A good friend. I think she was sincere.”
“You also think I committed murder tonight. You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your opinions seriously.”
“It was a question, not an opinion,” said Gamache as he walked her to the door.
But before reaching it, Haniya stopped and turned to face him. “You’ve told me why you think I’d want to kill Professor Robinson. Now, let me tell you why I would not.”
“I’m listening.”
“Because, as satisfying as killing her might be, I know that murdering a person doesn’t kill the idea. In fact, just the opposite. If you want an idea to flourish, the best fertilizer is the body of a martyr. I don’t want her ideas to flourish, but someone else might. Something to think about, Chief Inspector.”
“Merci,” said Gamache, who’d already considered exactly that, certainly when it came to the shooting in the gym. And maybe the attack that night.
He was impressed, though, that Madame Daoud had gotten there so quickly.
“I spent a lot of the evening watching Professor Robinson, and you want to know what I saw? I saw the fox.”
Gamache raised his brows.
“You’re surprised? How do you think I stayed alive when so many around me were killed? I watched, carefully. Through the rapes and beatings, mine and others, I watched and listened and learned how things worked. How human nature works. It’s why I don’t much like humans. Or nature, for that matter.”
“Doesn’t leave a lot else,” said Beauvoir.
“True.”
“But there are always fireworks,” said Gamache, and saw her smile.
“Want to know what I see when I look at you?” Haniya asked.
“Not really.”
“I see the lion.”
CHAPTER 23
Before the next guest arrived to be interviewed, Beauvoir asked, “Fox?”
“The Fable de La Fontaine, I think,” said Gamache. “‘Les Animaux Malades de la Peste.’”
The Animals Sick of the Plague.
“Oh, right. I was really only watching Honoré. He was a terrific rabbit.”
“One of the greats,” agreed Armand.
“So who was the fox?”
“The cunning one who convinces the others that someone innocent is actually guilty. Blaming the victim.”
“That does sound like the professor. At least Madame Daoud saw you as the lion.”
Gamache wasn’t so sure it was the compliment Beauvoir believed.
The lion, while nominally in charge, had actually been taken in by the fox.
He wondered who Haniya Daoud would be, in that fable.
She’d asked how he thought she’d survived the rapes and torture. He honestly didn’t know, but he did wonder if two things in particular compelled her to survive. A burning desire for revenge that incinerated despair, and her ability, her willingness, to be as brutal, when the time came, as her captors.
It was a life hard to shake once back in polite society, as many warriors knew. As the fox would know.
“Well, there is one piece of good news,” said Jean-Guy, holding up his phone. A message had just come in from the detachment in Abitibi. “They picked up Tardif’s brother, at a hunting cabin outside Val-d’Or. They’re bringing him down tomorrow morning.”
Vincent Gilbert arrived just then. He looked more than usually disheveled, with bags under his eyes, gray hair sticking out, and patchy white stubble around his chin.
Beauvoir rubbed his hand over his own face and felt the scratch. And saw his father-in-law’s salt-and-pepper growth of beard.
Then he looked at the young agent. As fresh as the moment she’d arrived at work, sixteen hours earlier. She looked over at them, bright-eyed, at 3:35 in the morning.
“Thank you for staying up,” said Gamache.
“Are you telling me I had a choice?” Gilbert sat down with a tired groan. “This’s a terrible thing to happen.”
“Yes, very sad,” said Gamache.
“Can’t be good for business,” said Dr. Gilbert, clearly not thinking of the same tragedy as Gamache. “There’s already the persistent rumor that the place is haunted. Bullshit, of course. There’s no such thing. But try to convince the great unwashed.”
Armand suddenly felt the need to shower.
At a glance from Gamache, Beauvoir took the lead and asked Dr. Gilbert about his movements just prior to, and just after, midnight.
He was a little vague. He’d been in the living room for a while. He’d been outside for a while. He’d even been in the library. For a while.
“Hiding, I’m not ashamed to say. I hate parties. Only come to this to support Marc and Dominique. People expect me here.”
He made it sound like his legion of fans expected him. It was true, though, that people knew this was just about the only time they were guaranteed to see the Asshole Saint.
Gamache wondered if Abigail knew that. She’d said Ruth Zardo was who she’d come to see, but he doubted that. She hadn’t approached the elderly poet. But she had made a beeline for Vincent Gilbert.
“When did you leave here?”