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.
The new buttons supporters were wearing had a more dire quote. One he also recognized. It was a line from a nutty, though brilliant, old poet. With a demented duck.
Or will it be, as always was, TOO LATE? The “TOO LATE” was in caps, bold. Like a shout. A shriek. A warning and an accusation.
In a few short months a research project had become a movement. An obscure academician had become a prophet.
And hope had turned to outrage, as two clear sides solidified and clashed. There were those who saw what Professor Robinson was proposing as the only way forward. As a merciful and practical solution. And those who saw it as an outrage. A shameful violation of all they held sacred.
As the din in the auditorium rose, Armand Gamache looked behind him at the middle-aged woman waiting to go on, and wondered if the prophet was about to become a messiah. Or a martyr.
CHAPTER 3
The night before the event, when the children had been bathed and put to bed, when the home had fallen silent, Jean-Guy Beauvoir had joined his father-in-law in his study.
He’d actually been on his way to the kitchen for the last mince tart when he spotted the light under the study door.
Hesitating for just a moment, Jean-Guy made up his mind, and knocked.
“Entrez.”
Jean-Guy’s dark hair had some gray now, and a few lines had appeared on his handsome face. His complexion was rosy after a day in the bright sun and gusty wind. Though he’d made it clear he preferred “rugged” to “rosy.”
Now he looked down at the plate he was holding. A dollop of hard sauce was melting on top of the fragrant mince tart, which Jean-Guy had warmed in the microwave.
He swallowed some saliva, then put the plate down in front of his father-in-law.
“Here. Myrna dropped it over this afternoon when we were building the snow fort and you were napping.”
Jean-Guy smiled. He knew perfectly well his father-in-law had been out working. He’d offered to go along, but in this rare instance, Armand had said he should enjoy his vacation. And in this rare instance, Beauvoir had not insisted.
Jean-Guy and his family had moved back to Montréal from Paris, and he’d recently rejoined the Sûreté, sharing second-in-command duties with Isabelle Lacoste.
After the rigors, the horrors, of the pandemic, this Christmas vacation in Three Pines was a welcome respite. A relief.
Once home, the children had gotten into warm dry clothes and sat on the sofa with a hot chocolate while the dogs, Henri and old Fred, slept by the hearth along with little Gracie. Who might, or might not, be a dog. Or a ferret.
The smart money among the villagers was on the tiny creature being a chipmunk. Though Stephen Horowitz, Armand’s godfather, who now lived with them, took pleasure in insisting Gracie was a rat.
“They’re very intelligent, you know,” the ninety-three-year-old told the children when they crawled onto the sofa beside the former financier.
“How do you know?” Zora, the serious one, asked.
“Because I used to be one.”
“You were a rat?” Florence asked.
“Yes. A big fat one, with a long, long silky tail.”
Their eyes widened as he regaled them with tales of his adventures as a rat on Wall Street and Bay Street. On rue Saint-Jacques in Montréal and at the Bourse in Paris.
That was in the afternoon. They were all in bed now. Asleep.
Though one was still stirring.
Armand hit pause on his screen and looked up. He heard the familiar creaks and cracks as the temperature dropped and frost settled into the bones of the old home. There was something profoundly peaceful about knowing his family was safe in their beds.
“Merci.” Armand nodded toward the tart and smiled his thanks to Jean-Guy.
Then he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“This the person you’re protecting?” Jean-Guy asked, taking a seat and gesturing toward the computer.
“Oui.”
Armand’s answers were unusually curt, and now Jean-Guy paid more attention to the image on the screen.
It showed a middle-aged woman at a podium, smiling. It was a pleasant smile. Not a sneer. There was no malice, no guile. It was neither smug nor maniacal. She looked nice.
“Something wrong?”
Jean-Guy looked at his father-in-law and what he saw was a man deeply unsettled.
Armand tossed his glasses onto the desk and nodded toward the screen. “This’s a recording made at Abigail Robinson’s last event just before Christmas. After I watched it this afternoon, I called the President of the University to ask that the event tomorrow be called off.”
“Really? What did he say?”
“That I was overreacting.”
Armand had wanted to believe the President. He wanted to roll up the blueprints, close his notebook, put on his parka and join his family.
He wanted to sit with his grandchildren, a heavy rug covering their legs, and watch Gloria’s swaying tail as the horse pulled the big red sleigh up the north road out of the village.
Instead he’d gotten in his car and driven over to North Hatley to see the Chancellor.
CHAPTER 4
Chief Inspector Gamache took off his parka and boots and followed the Chancellor into her living room.
“S’il vous plaît, Armand.” She indicated a comfortable armchair by the fireplace.
The room was lined with books, and above the mantel there hung an A. Y. Jackson. Gamache glanced at it but kept walking to the French doors at the end of the gracious room. Standing in front of them, his hands clasped behind his back, he looked out over Lac Massawippi. The large lake, surrounded by thick forest, was frozen over. A great field of sparkling white. Except. Right in front of the house, just offshore, a rectangle had been cleared, and flooded, and frozen again so that it formed an ice rink.
A hockey match was under way, though how they could tell who was on which team he didn’t know. They all wore Montreal Canadiens, Habs, sweaters.
“Family?” he asked as she joined him.
“And some neighboring kids, but yes, mostly grandchildren. You and Reine-Marie have a couple now too.”
“Four.”
“Four? Not quite enough for a hockey team, but close.”
“They’ve just started skating,” he said, returning to the armchairs. “If only hockey could be played on hands and knees.”
The room was warm, inviting. It reflected the Chancellor perfectly.
Colette Roberge had held the mainly ceremonial post at the University for two years. Before that she’d retired as Dean of the mathematics department and been made a Professor Emeritus.
He considered her a friend, though not a close one.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“Non, merci.”
“Tea?”
“Nothing for me, thank you, Colette.” He smiled and waited for her to sit before taking his own seat. “How’s Jean-Paul? I’d like to say hello.”
“He’s at the lake, refereeing the game. Your family? All got through the pandemic?”
“Yes, thriving, thank you.”
“And Stephen? After what happened in Paris?”
“His old self.”
“That can’t be good,” she said with a smile.
In her mid-seventies now, Chancellor Roberge was a tireless champion for the University, and an accomplished academic. And now, in the midst of her own holidays with her family, she’d made time for him, greeting him as though he’d been expected.
And maybe, he thought, he had been.
“What can I do for you, Armand?”
“It’s about Abigail Robinson.”
The shaped brows rose very slightly. Her manicured hands folded one on top of the other, and he noticed a slight squeeze. But her expression remained pleasant.