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 agree,” said Myrna. “If you can find where she drew the first monkey, that might help understand where it came from.”
When asked if she’d go to McGill with him, Reine-Marie said she was more than happy to. She liked the Osler. It was a hidden treasure, considered by those in the know as the finest medical library and archive in North America. And just about completely unknown by everyone else.
To be polite, Jean-Guy asked Myrna if she’d like to come along. Dr. Landers was, as it turned out, very familiar with the library, having spent hours there as an undergrad.
And so the little party set off.
Armand spotted Vincent Gilbert in the living room of the Auberge, sitting in front of the fire, reading. All evidence of the party the night before had been cleared away.
“Bonjour, Vincent,” said Armand. “I’m looking for a lunch companion. Would you join me?”
“On you?”
“On the Sûreté.”
“That means you’ll be grilling me?”
“At least,” said Armand, as they made their way across the hall. “Maybe even puréeing.”
Vincent smiled.
They passed Isabelle, who was at the front desk asking after Haniya Daoud.
“Last I heard she was in the stables,” said the front desk clerk.
“Merci.” Inspector Lacoste hesitated, then asked, “Are Marc or Dominique Gilbert around?”
“The owners?” the young man said. “Madame Gilbert’s in the office. Would you like to see her?”
“I’ll just go in,” she said, before the clerk could stop her. Though to be fair, he showed absolutely no desire to try.
CHAPTER 29
“The langoustines are excellent,” said Vincent Gilbert, as they took their seats by the window.
On a clear day there was a splendid view of the village below and the hills beyond, rolling into Vermont. But the falling snow both obscured and softened it, giving the landscape a dreamlike quality.
To Dr. Gilbert, looking at the vista behind his companion, it was like something out of a storybook. Peaceful, calm.
But Gamache was looking in the opposite direction, and had a very different view. He saw the Sûreté agents, and the tent in the woods, and the crime scene tape.
To him it looked like something out of Grimms’ Fairy Tales, or one of the darker fables of La Fontaine.
How closely the two perspectives existed, coexisted, he thought. Side by side. The border between Heaven and Hell a sliver. Murder and mercy. Kindness and cruelty. And how very difficult it was, sometimes, to tell them apart. Or to know on which side of the border you stood.
“They brush them with garlic butter, then grill them over coals,” said Dr. Gilbert, taking the menu from the young man and grunting what might have been thanks.
“What a coincidence,” said Armand, scanning the menu. “Exactly what I plan to do with you.”
Gilbert laughed. “I doubt I’ll be as tasty, or as tender. Any progress on the murder last night?”
“Some.” Armand waited until they’d ordered and the young server poured Vincent a glass of Chablis. “But before I get into that I have a question about the other attack, the one at the auditorium.”
“Oui?”
“Why didn’t you tell us you were there?”
Vincent had reached for one of the rolls, still warm from the oven, and was tearing it in half, when he paused. Then continued, though now, as he twisted the roll, it looked like he was wringing a neck.
“Admit I was there when both attacks happened? Do I look that stupid?”
“It’s a matter of how you act, not how you look. You’re smart enough to know that.”
Vincent Gilbert, who was fairly sure he was smart enough to know nearly everything, smiled thinly.
“I was curious. I’d read her paper and knew the Royal Commission had refused to hear her. An extraordinary decision, given the study was commissioned by the federal government. I wanted to see just how crazy she and her followers are.”
“You could’ve watched one of the online videos. You didn’t have to go to the rally.”
“It’s not the same as being there. You’re smart enough to know that.”
Armand grinned. No one collected, and, when necessary, manufactured, resentments quite as efficiently as the Asshole Saint. But few, Armand knew, were kinder.
Kindness and cruelty, side by side. In the same person. The Asshole Saint.
“And?”
“And they’re pretty squirrelly.”
“What was it like, to be in the middle of the crowd?” Armand asked, after the waiter put down his bowl of cider-and-onion soup and Vincent’s grilled langoustines. “I was off to the side of the stage, so my experience was different.”
“Yes, I saw your experience.”
He squished a piece of bread into the garlic butter and considered.
“It was frightening. All those people chanting. Supporting her. Supporting killing others so they could be safe. How did it come to this? Were people like this before the pandemic, or did that bring it on? A long-Covid of fear? I don’t know, Armand. It made me sick. And sad. And glad I live far—”
“From the madding crowd?”
Vincent Gilbert smiled and nodded. “Yes. I peek out every now and then, then scuttle back to my little cabin, where I hope so-called civilization won’t find me.”
“Has it, though, Vincent? Found you?”
Armand’s companion was silent, dropping his eyes to his plate.
He slowly looked back up and sighed. “It’s hard, Armand. When you care, but try not to. Pretend not to. As long as I didn’t hear about anything, see anything, I was okay. I lived through the pandemic in my own little bubble. Safe from the world. But then Colette sent me the research paper, the statistics on what happened, and…”
He opened, then closed his hands.
“Your bubble burst.” Armand lowered his voice and asked again, softly, gently, as though coaxing a wounded fawn out of hiding. “Why did you go to her talk?”
“I needed to assess the damage she’d done. The damage I’d done by not trying to stop it when I had a chance. If I’d said something after reading her paper.”
“Professor Robinson’s university tried to stop it and couldn’t.”
“At least they tried. I didn’t. I just retreated into my little home and hid from the world.”
“But then you came out.” Armand paused. Examining the lean, leathery man in front of him.
“And found a plague of another sort, but just as deadly. Abigail Robinson isn’t just spreading death, she’s spreading despair. That chant of ‘Too late, too late.’ It needs to be stopped. You see that too. I know you do.”
“What did you decide to do about it?”
When the Asshole Saint was silent, Armand brought out his phone, swiped once, then tapped the screen a few times and hit play before turning it around.
The sound was off. No need to disturb the other diners.
Anyone who was watching the two men by the bay window would have seen the younger and sturdier of the two holding out a phone and the other staring into it, the blood draining from his face.
It would have been disturbing.
Jean-Guy drove over the new Samuel de Champlain Bridge, the Montréal skyline ghostly through the snow.
Within minutes they were at McGill University. The campus buildings circled a parklike setting, right in the middle of Montréal. Thanks to Reine-Marie’s contacts, the head of the Osler Library met them at the main door into the McIntyre Building and let them in.
“Bonne année,” said Mary Hague-Yearl, as the women kissed on both cheeks.
“Bonne année,” said Reine-Marie. “Thank you for opening the library for us.”