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.
She held the button between two fingers, her hand stretched out as though the object stank. “What do I do about this?”
“Not to worry,” he said. “Easily handled. I can have a word with Professor Robinson and remind her of the email you sent. Can you forward it to me?”
“Yes. And tell her to donate any money she raised with my poetry to LaPorte,” said Ruth.
He smiled. “I’ll ask. If that doesn’t work, contact your lawyer.”
“I don’t have the money.”
“Don’t worry about that. It’ll be covered.” He bent down and whispered, “You can always sell some of your weeds.”
She laughed. “Not much of a market for dried Bishop’s weed these days.” Then she grew serious. “Merci, Armand.”
They both knew that in doing this for her, he could be accused of a conflict of interest. But sometimes, he knew, as his father had before him, that conflict was necessary.
CHAPTER 25
Like Isabelle before him, Armand went around to the back of the Auberge first, before heading inside.
He walked down the trail he’d been on many times with friends, cross-country skiing on winter afternoons through the quiet woods. Just the shhhhh shhhhh shhhhh of the long, narrow skis on the tracks. Rhythmic, meditative. The sun breaking through the bare branches overhead.
Shhhhh shhhhhh shhhhhh.
They’d follow the trail for several kilometers, before bending back and ending up at the bistro. Unclipping their skis and leaning them against the building, they’d go inside to sit, rosy-cheeked, by the open fire and drink hot chocolate, or scotch, or hot rum toddies. And tease each other about their huffing and puffing.
But today his heavy boots crushed the narrow tracks as he made his way to the tent. Sûreté officers were combing the woods for the murder weapon or other evidence easier to see in the daylight.
When they heard someone approach, the senior agent had turned and was about to warn the curiosity seeker away. But when he, then the others, saw who it was, they stood up and saluted.
“Bonjour,” said Gamache. “Bonne année. Anything?”
“Nothing yet, patron.”
He went into the tent. It was eerily quiet in there. He stood at the spot where Debbie Schneider had lost her life and looked around. Then he closed his eyes briefly, taking in what couldn’t be seen. Then he left and walked briskly back to the Auberge.
At the top of the stairs into the basement he paused and looked down. He saw not a well-lit, freshly painted stairwell but a crypt. In an instant he was propelled back to the first time he’d chased ghosts through the Old Hadley House right into that hellhole.
He saw the thick cobwebs, he saw the skeletons of rats who’d been poisoned and had crawled into a corner to die.
He smelled again the decay, the rot as he’d followed the beam of his flashlight deeper into the darkness. He felt the thick electrical cords dangling from the beams overhead. They brushed his head. His face. His shoulders.
And then they’d moved. And he’d realized the basement was infested with snakes.
Then came worse.
But, he told himself, that was in the past. This was a different time. A different place. And yet, as he descended, he felt the chill rising like floodwater up his ankles, to his knees. To his torso, his chest.
It reached his neck, then spilled over his head. And for a moment Armand felt he was drowning in a memory.
“Patron,” called Jean-Guy from what seemed like very far away.
Armand felt a hand on his arm.
“You took your time getting here,” said Jean-Guy, his voice light but his grip tight. “Isabelle thought you’d gone back to bed, but I defended you. Said you’d probably forgotten where we were.”
“Merci.”
They both knew this wasn’t genial kidding, it was a rescue. Thanks to Jean-Guy, the wraiths were shoved back into the walls. Back into memory. Where they belonged. He was once more in control of reality.
Though as he walked deeper into the basement, Armand could see the bumps in the rough stone wall, like the features of trapped creatures. Longing to get out. As monsters from the past always did.
The atmosphere in the bistro was muted. By now even those who hadn’t been at the party the night before were well aware of what had happened.
Gabri had decided not to wear his frilly pink apron, the one he put on just to annoy Olivier, who still wanted to pass as straight.
“In case his father ever drops by unannounced,” said Gabri. “Like he ever does.”
“Are you saying Olivier has never come out to his family?” asked Clara.
“Not in so many words.”
“And how does he explain…” She wagged her finger at Gabri.
“I’m a little afraid to ask.”
“What’s Olivier afraid of?” Myrna looked across the bistro to the handsome, perfectly groomed, slender man reorganizing the candy jars on the bar.
But the psychologist in her could guess.
Olivier was afraid of disapproval. He hated disapproval even more than he wanted approval. A vestige of childhood, Myrna knew. How horrible it must have been when the boy realized he was gay and destined for a lifetime of judgment.
At that moment, as though summoned by a promise of judgment, Ruth arrived.
She tossed a button onto the table, then sat on the sofa facing the huge fieldstone hearth with its blazing fire.
“What’s that?” Clara asked, picking it up. “Oh, I see. It’s a line from your poem ‘Alas.’” She closed her eyes and tilted her head back in an effort to remember. “Her voice, resigned, comes ragged from my throat / and in my heart her anger smolders still / amid the ashes—”
“Enough,” snapped Ruth. “We all know how it goes.”
“—of residual guilt,” Clara finished and opened her eyes. “A poem about your mother.”
Such a good way of putting it, thought Myrna, the ashes of residual guilt.
Though sometimes the ashes were in fact embers, waiting to leap back into flames. To do even more damage.
They all had it, residual guilt, though some were able to brush the ash off and move forward, while others were smothered by it. Like those poor souls caught in the eruption of Vesuvius. They had human form but were, in fact, hollow.
Myrna looked at the button. Or will it be, as always was, TOO LATE?
“That horrible woman is selling these,” said Ruth. “To raise money for her campaign.”
“Abigail Robinson?” asked Myrna.
“Amelia Earhart,” said Ruth. “We found her. She and Jimmy Hoffa are shacked up down the Old Stage Road. Yes, Abigail Robinson. Who else?”
Isabelle Lacoste put the mug of strong coffee down in front of Alphonse Tardif and introduced herself.
She’d made sure Édouard had seen his brother arrive. She’d watched as they resolutely refused to look at each other. The one walking between two Sûreté officers. The other behind bars.
Maître Lacombe was again there.
“Are you representing this Monsieur Tardif too?” asked Isabelle.
“Only until charges are laid, or not.”
Isabelle started off discussing conditions for snowmobile trekking in the Abitibi. She knew the area well and spoke knowledgeably. And apparently aimlessly.
She knew that the longer she took to get to the point, the more stressed the man in front of her would become. He was powerfully built, like his brother. But this Tardif was short and stocky and had the lined, puffy face and moist eyes of someone who drank too much.