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.
“I was a baby,” said Susan. “I have no idea if something happened. Maybe she went to a zoo and fell in love with monkeys.”
Reine-Marie considered the woman in front of her, just slightly older, she thought, than herself. “Did your mother ever read Curious George to you?”
“What? No. It’s a book?”
Reine-Marie brought out the book with its yellow cover and happy little monkey. It was unopened and unread.
“Now why would your mother buy this but not read it to you?”
Reine-Marie turned it upside down and shook. She’d found quite a few things hidden between the pages of books donated to the Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec. Documents. Letters. Even money.
Both women watched, but nothing fell out.
Putting the book down again, Reine-Marie said, “It looks to me like your mother hid all this from you. Can you think why?”
“Sorry. This’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Do you mind if I have a little look around?”
While surprised, Susan said, “Knock yourself out. I need to keep packing.”
Twenty-five minutes later, after going through the rest of the house, Reine-Marie stood next to Enid Horton’s bed. Her deathbed, as it turned out.
Glancing around to make sure no one was looking, she got onto it, rolled on her side, and lifted her arm.
Her hand, finger out like a pencil, touched a rough patch in the rosebud wallpaper. It wasn’t a flaw. It was a scratch.
“What’re you doing?” came a man’s angry voice from the door.
CHAPTER 26
Judging by the dark circles under their eyes, and the lethargy, neither Abigail Robinson nor Colette Roberge had slept the night before. Both looked stunned, shell-shocked.
But that didn’t mean one of them wasn’t the killer. It seemed to Gamache that whoever murdered Debbie Schneider hadn’t started the day, or even the evening, planning to kill.
It was probably as much a shock to him, or her, as to everyone else.
The three of them sat, once again, around the fireplace in the kitchen. All very much aware of the empty chair.
“Any progress, Armand?” Colette asked.
“We’re gathering evidence, information. And I need more information from you, Professor Robinson.”
“Yes. Anything.”
“Why did you really come here?” It felt like the hundredth time he’d asked that.
Abigail Robinson had been expecting some question about Debbie Schneider, and was momentarily stumped.
“I told you already. It was to see Ruth Zardo.”
“And yet you didn’t speak to her at all last night.”
He placed the button on the table between them, then sat back and watched as color returned to Professor Robinson’s face.
“Yes, exactly. I came to thank her for letting us use that line from her poem.”
“‘Alas,’” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s the name of the poem.”
“Yes.” Abigail smiled. “Sorry. I’m tired. Debbie had read in some bio of Madame Zardo that she lives in a village called Three Pines. That’s why we went to the party. Hoping she’d be there. But she didn’t look at all interested in being approached, so I didn’t.”
“You travel thousands of miles just to thank her, then when you’re feet away you stop?”
“Yes.”
He lifted his phone. “This was Ruth’s reply one month ago to Debbie Schneider’s request to use that line from her poem.”
No fucking way. Sincerely, Ruth Zardo.
Abigail looked at him. “She didn’t agree?”
“Seems pretty clear she did not. Was Madame Schneider in the habit of not sharing important information with you?”
“No, not at all. At least I didn’t think so. But Debbie might not have wanted to upset or disappoint me. She might’ve thought that, once here, she could convince Madame Zardo to let us use her quote.”
“And yet she didn’t approach Ruth either. Just so I’m clear about this. Madame Schneider lied to you.”
Beside him, Chancellor Roberge shifted and seemed about to say something when Gamache’s sharp look stopped her.
“No. Well, yes, but you have to know Debbie,” said Abigail, flustered now. “She’d never do it to hurt, she’d do it thinking she was helping. Protecting me even.”
“If Madame Schneider misled you about the quote, are there other things she could have lied about?”
“Like what?”
“Well, like the meetings with the Premier. Like the income from sales of merchandise. It seems Madame Schneider was very involved in the day-to-day details of your campaign.”
“Not just the campaign. My life. Maybe, I guess. I’ll have to check.”
She looked around. For Debbie Schneider. To help her check on Debbie Schneider.
“I’d like access to all your papers,” said Gamache. “Documents, finances, everything. To see what she might have been up to.”
“Is that necessary?”
He looked at her with some sympathy now. “A murder investigation is, by nature, invasive, and I’m genuinely sorry about that. By the time this’s over we’ll know far more about you, about everyone involved, than we should. But I can promise you, if the information isn’t pertinent, it will be forgotten.”
“Really? You have that ability, Chief Inspector? To just forget? Lucky you.”
They held each other’s eyes. No one with gray in their hair got there without things they’d prefer to forget. But could not.
Armand finally broke the silence. “Madame Zardo asks that you stop using her poetry, and certainly stop selling the buttons.”
“Of course, I’ll get…” Abigail’s voice petered out. Get who? “I’ll make sure it’s done.”
“And she wants any proceeds already collected to go to LaPorte.”
“Where?”
He looked at the Chancellor, who had no reaction. Gamache chose to say nothing either, except “Perhaps the Chancellor here can help with that.” Then he turned back to Abigail. “Who’s Maria?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Debbie called you Abby Maria. But your middle name’s Elizabeth, not Maria. So where does that come from?”
“It’s a nickname. From childhood. My God, you’re never going to find out who did this to Debbie if these are the questions you’re asking.”
Her eyes shifted, quickly, briefly, to Colette. She must’ve given her some subtle signal because Abigail exhaled in an exasperated sigh.
“You’ll find out soon enough. I had a sister. Maria. Younger than me. She was born severely disabled. She died when she was nine.”
“Abby Maria,” he said and glanced at Colette Roberge.
She knew. And yet Gamache remembered, when he’d asked her directly if Abigail was an only child, she didn’t disagree.
“My mother used to call us that, from the moment they brought her home. I knew what it meant.”
“What?”
“That we were linked. Not two individuals but one person. Abby Maria. Dr. Gilbert was right last night. It was a reference to Ave Maria. A play on words. An attempt to make it seem a good thing. A gift from God.”
“It wasn’t?”
Abigail didn’t answer. Instead she looked down at her fingers, twisted together in her lap. Not two separate hands, but one mass. Impossible to tell which fingers belonged to which hand. Where one ended and the other began. Not stronger for being pressed together. The one held the other so tightly both were useless.
Armand knew that the “Ave,” in “Ave Maria,” translated into “Hail.” Though it could also mean “Be well.”
But all had not been well.
Alas.
It was just a split second. So quick Beauvoir only caught it the third time through the video.