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.
“But does she really care that much? Would she kill her best friend?” asked Jean-Guy. “If she wanted publicity, wouldn’t she be more likely to kill the Chancellor? Remember what Myrna said last night? Abigail Robinson wants to be liked. So the last person she’d kill is the only person who genuinely likes, even loves, her.”
“True,” said Gamache, sitting back again.
“There’s something I found strange in your report, patron,” said Isabelle.
“Oh, no. What did I write? It was late. Probably a typo.”
She smiled. “Could be. You mention in passing that Debbie Schneider called the professor Abby Maria.”
“Yes.”
“It probably doesn’t mean anything, but her middle name’s Elizabeth, not Maria.”
“It was just a nickname,” said Jean-Guy. “Maybe an inside joke.”
“Like ‘numbnuts’?” said Isabelle, and saw Jean-Guy’s eyes narrow. “Your nuts aren’t actually numb.”
“They were last night.”
“Let’s divide up tasks,” said Gamache, before this went too far.
Beauvoir would follow up with Debbie Schneider’s parents and the university. Lacoste would go to the arraignment of the Tardifs and see what more she could find on that front.
Armand would speak to Abigail Robinson and Colette Roberge again.
Reine-Marie looked down at the pile of monkeys.
Most were cartoonlike figures drawn on documents, but some were stuffed dolls. There were two porcelain figurines and one children’s book, Curious George.
Oddly, there was no record by the Monkees.
Humming “Last Train to Clarksville,” she put the loose papers into an archival box, then called Enid Horton’s daughter and drove to the home two villages over.
Édouard Tardif was formally charged with attempted murder, for which he pleaded not guilty, then was arraigned for trial.
His brother, Alphonse, was charged with being an accessory.
Once again, the two brothers didn’t speak. And while Édouard tried to catch Alphonse’s eye, the younger brother resolutely looked away.
What did come out was that Édouard and Alphonse Tardif’s elderly mother was in a nursing home, having been severely disabled by a stroke. Her mind was clear, but her body was crippled.
The elderly woman, having survived the pandemic, would not survive Abigail Robinson’s “mercy.”
Love, as much as hate, had pulled the trigger. And luck had intervened.
As Édouard was being led away, Lacoste said to him, “There was another attempt on Abigail Robinson’s life last night at the Auberge in Three Pines.”
“The Inn and Spa?” he asked. “What happened?”
“The wrong woman was killed.”
“Killed?”
She saw his surprise. But it went beyond that. Édouard Tardif was terrified.
“Do you know who did it?” he asked.
“No. Do you?”
Tardif shook his head, and was led off.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir found the caretaker, Éric Viau, in the basement of the old gym wiping everything down with disinfectant.
“I’m sorry,” said Beauvoir. “Did we leave a mess?”
“No. Habit.”
“I need your help with something. What can you tell me about Chancellor Roberge?”
“The Chancellor?” Viau stopped what he was doing. “I don’t know her, not well. I’ve seen her at big University events, like convocation.”
“Is she liked?”
“Yes, very. She always has a kind word, always seems cheerful. Never heard anything against her. But you do know she’s not really involved in University life. Not day-to-day stuff.” He paused. “I heard about what happened at the party last night. Terrible.”
“Out of interest’s sake, where were you last night?”
“We always have a fondue on New Year’s Eve. The kids stayed up for midnight, but my wife and I were in bed by ten.”
Thanking Monsieur Viau, Beauvoir walked across the campus to the pretty little fieldstone building where he’d arranged a meeting with the President of the University.
“Chancellor Roberge?” said Otto Pascal, as though he’d never heard of her before. Then, dragging his head out of ancient Mesopotamia, he said, “No, we have no grievances filed against her. Her role is ceremonial. She doesn’t have much contact with professors or students, though she does give two lectures a year, to first-year mathematics students. A sort of introduction to statistics. I’ve been to some. Quite fun, really.”
That seemed unlikely to Beauvoir, and unhelpful. As he left, he paused in the entrance to check the alert that had just come in on his phone.
A new video from the event at the gym had been posted online. Not, he noticed, sent to them, but put up on YouTube. With commercials. So far it had more than five thousand hits.
He almost didn’t watch it since the gunman had been arrested and charged, as had his accomplice. But Beauvoir was in no hurry to plunge back into the cold, gray winter day. He found a chair and clicked play.
He could see from the first few frames that this video would be different.
“Little shit,” he muttered.
It was taken from the back balcony of the auditorium. Recorded, Beauvoir knew, by the lighting technician who’d sworn he’d done no such thing.
Armand turned off the engine and sat in his warm car in the driveway of Colette Roberge’s home.
Light flurries were just beginning. They drifted, nonchalant, from the clouds, landed on his windshield, and lived there for just a moment before melting.
Bringing out his phone, he read messages, replied, then made his way to the front door.
Reine-Marie placed the archival box on the living room floor.
Most of the furniture had been removed. Cardboard boxes sat on the worn carpet, some taped up, some waiting to be filled.
Susan Horton dragged her sleeve across her face, pushing loose hair back from her forehead.
“Did you hear the news?” she asked Reine-Marie.
“No, what?”
“About the murder, over in Three Pines. Mom used to go there, to the church.”
Reine-Marie did not say that she lived in the village and had been at the party.
“I found something among your mother’s things,” she said instead. She heard moving about below them, in the basement.
“Something valuable?” There was no mistaking the hope in the weary voice.
“Well, no, not really. More puzzling.”
“Puzzling how?”
“Can we sit down?”
They found two boxes of books, sturdy enough to sit on, then Reine-Marie took the lid off the box she’d brought.
Susan looked in, then leaned back. “Dolls?”
“Monkeys. Lots of them.” Maybe a hundred, she thought but didn’t say. “Do you have any idea why your mother might have so many?”
“Monkeys? Well, she probably liked them. People collect things all the time.”
“This wasn’t a hobby.” Reine-Marie brought some papers out of the box and showed the daughter. “You see? She didn’t just collect monkeys, she drew them.”
Susan seemed genuinely perplexed. “Does it matter?”
“Probably not, but you did ask me to go through her things and try to bring some order to them. This is something that seemed important to your mother.”
“Maybe. It is strange, but she did get strange in the end.”
“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. This didn’t start in old age, it started when she was quite a young woman. So far, the earliest I’ve found is from the mid-sixties. She’d have been quite young. It was on a bill for a hotel in Montréal. Did something happen around about then?”