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.
Both Tardif kids were in their early twenties. As Isabelle Lacoste had looked around the Inn, she realized almost all the employees were also in their early twenties. The chambermaids, the waiters, the front desk clerks.
Suppose …
But there was no Tardif on the list.
It was only when she was almost at the barn to find Haniya Daoud that she had another thought. Turning around, she retraced her boot prints in the deepening snow and once again knocked on Dominique’s door.
“Do you hire extra staff for the New Year’s Eve party?”
“Yes. We give a lot of our regular employees time off around Christmas and New Year’s.”
“Do you have a list of those who worked the party?”
Five minutes later she walked into the dining room and spotted the Chief Inspector deep in conversation with Vincent Gilbert.
“Would you believe me, Armand, if I said when I saw the gun I was shocked? Too stunned to act?”
Armand shook his head. “In almost anyone else, I might believe it, but you’re a doctor. A surgeon. You spent your career dealing with the unexpected. I suspect you also spent shifts in Emergency.”
Gilbert nodded.
“Your whole training is to react quickly,” said Armand. “And yet you didn’t. Or”—he examined the man in front of him—“more likely, you did react. You just didn’t act. You saw what was about to happen and let the gunman fire.”
“I’m not going to admit that, not to you. But I think I owe you some possible explanation, since what happened could’ve cost you your life. That was never ever intended, and I’m sorry.”
And he looked it.
“What was intended, Vincent?”
He took a while to answer. When he finally did, Gilbert could not look Armand in the eyes.
“I was a coward. During those long months of the pandemic, I stayed in my cabin. People brought me food and drink. Supplies.”
“Oui. Reine-Marie among them.”
“Is that right? I never looked out. I was too afraid.”
“Of what? The virus didn’t spread by sight.”
“No, but shame does. As long as a bag mysteriously appeared, I could pretend I wasn’t hiding in there. But if I saw someone helping, when I should also be, then…”
Then.
“I’m a doctor. I should’ve been treating the sick. Administering tests. Doing something useful. But I hid.”
“You’re in your seventies,” said Armand. “You’re in the age group ordered to shelter in place. You couldn’t have helped.”
“But I didn’t try.” Vincent raised his voice, angry now. “So when I saw the gun, aimed at Abigail Robinson, aimed at the person convincing others that the sick and the elderly, and now even babies, should die, as they had in the pandemic, well…”
Well …
“Patron?”
Both men looked up.
“Désolée, but may I see you for a moment?” Lacoste asked.
“Do you mind?” he asked Vincent, who shook his head.
Dominique joined Lacoste and Gamache in the far corner of the dining room and pointed.
When their waiter took their bill to the table, Armand broke away and rejoined Gilbert.
“It’s on me, remember?”
After handing his credit card to the young waiter and getting it back, Gamache said, “Merci. Monsieur Tardif.”
The young man stiffened, and for a moment Gamache thought he’d try to run away. But he didn’t.
“Might we have a word?”
Vincent Gilbert looked perplexed but relieved. It was someone else’s turn to be grilled.
And puréed. The waiter walked between Gamache and Lacoste, down into the basement of the Auberge, and took the seat indicated, at the long table.
“You are Simon Tardif?” asked Isabelle Lacoste.
“Oui.”
“Your father is Édouard Tardif?”
“Yes.”
Simon Tardif was small. Slender. His face pale, pasty. He looked like a baby bird balancing on the edge of the nest, and about to be pushed out too soon.
Too soon.
“Where were you on the afternoon of December thirtieth?” Lacoste asked.
“With friends. I can prove it.”
“Not with your father, at the University gym?”
“No.”
“Did you work the New Year’s Eve party last night, here at the Auberge?” Gamache asked.
The two locked eyes.
Gamache could see that Simon Tardif was tempted to lie. But he could also see there was intelligence there, though not, he thought, cunning.
“Yes,” said Simon. “But I didn’t do anything. I didn’t hurt that woman. I—”
The Chief Inspector stopped him there. “You need a lawyer. Do you have one?”
The boy looked like he was about to cry. “No. I’m sorry. I—”
Gamache leaned forward and said, “Say no more. It’ll be all right. Look at me. Look at me.” The third time he said it, Simon Tardif did. He looked into the deep brown eyes, and his shoulders slumped. In resignation. And relief.
It was over.
“Nothing,” said Reine-Marie, sitting back.
Beside her, Jean-Guy had taken off his glasses and was rubbing his eyes.
It was mid-afternoon and already getting dark outside. All the lamps in the huge library had been lit. It made the place feel more intimate. Though as the natural light faded, what had been aisles of books started to resemble tunnels. And it was possible for Jean-Guy’s vivid imagination to conjure all sorts of unnatural things awakening.
So far all they’d found was what they pretty much already knew. Dr. Vincent Gilbert was a gifted thoracic surgeon. The one you wanted with his hands in your chest. But not the one you wanted standing beside your bed.
And certainly not the one you wanted as a chief, if you were an intern or resident. The file was full of letters of complaint from young medical students about his manner.
Those were accompanied by other letters, from patients and their families, thanking him for saving their lives. And from other interns and residents, saying what a wonderful teacher he was. How much he had helped them. His innovations, his challenging them to think for themselves. Yes, he was harsh at times. But so was life in a critical care unit.
The Asshole Saint emergent.
“We need to look at the early documents,” said Beauvoir, resigned to his fate.
“When he was an apprentice asshole,” said Myrna.
“A baby saint,” said Reine-Marie. She was curious to see what they’d find there. Had he started his medical career as a saint, or as the other? Had something happened that changed him?
Twenty minutes later Myrna said, “Look at this. Before starting medical school here at McGill, Vincent applied for, and got, a grant.”
“Really?” Reine-Marie leaned over and read the application.
Gilbert’s father had died, and his mother took in boarders and did laundry.
“But it’s pretty small,” said Myrna. “Did he also get a scholarship?”
Beauvoir found it. “Yes. But it’s not very much.”
Together, grant and scholarship would not be nearly enough to cover medical school at McGill.
“So how did he do it?” Beauvoir asked.
“He must’ve gotten a part-time job,” said Dr. Hague-Yearl. “Lots do, at the student pub, or the cafeteria. In the library shelving books. That sort of thing. Let’s keep looking.”
They didn’t realize it yet, but they’d just come across the first hint of the creature, unseen, that was waiting patiently in a tunnel of documents. To be found.
Twelve minutes later, it was.