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.
“He did get a job,” said Myrna, holding up a slip of paper. “He earned extra money looking after the lab animals.”
“Yech,” said Reine-Marie. “Terrible.”
She assumed the look of revulsion on Myrna’s face was because she too hated the use of animals in experiments. Which she did.
But it wasn’t that.
Dr. Hague-Yearl took the slip, read it, and looked stricken. “Not that. Not again.”
“What?” asked Jean-Guy.
She handed him the piece of paper. It was a receipt for delivery of lab animals to the Allan Memorial Institute of McGill.
She placed a finger on a name at the top.
“Who’s Ewen Cameron?” he asked. The name was familiar. Then he remembered that Gamache and Gilbert had talked about him.
“Wait a minute.” Reine-Marie took the paper and studied it. “Vincent worked with Ewen Cameron?”
“We don’t know that,” said Myrna. “Just that he looked after the animals that Cameron used.”
“Who is he?” repeated Beauvoir, growing more agitated.
Dr. Hague-Yearl had disappeared, as though the name itself was enough to incinerate the librarian.
Jean-Guy was beginning to think his instincts about those huge closed doors were right.
They were partly to keep intruders out, but also to keep something in.
Something, or someone.
A legal aid lawyer Gamache knew well showed up within the hour.
Ten minutes later, after private consultation, Simon Tardif confessed that he’d been involved in the plot at the auditorium.
The boy insisted that the plan was to just scare the professor, not hurt her.
No, he hadn’t thought about the hundreds of other people who’d be in the auditorium.
No, he hadn’t been there himself. His father had insisted he be with friends at the time.
Yes, he was surprised his uncle had confessed. As far as Simon knew, he wasn’t involved.
Yes, the plan was that while his father distracted the caretaker, he hid the gun and firecrackers.
Yes, there were bullets with the gun, but they were blanks. Weren’t they?
When Chief Inspector Gamache showed him the video, Simon Tardif broke down.
“I didn’t know. I didn’t know. Dad couldn’t have…”
His lawyer laid a hand on his arm to stop him.
“And last night?” Gamache asked, once Simon had recovered.
“I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even know that professor woman was here. I have no idea what she looks like.”
“You have no idea what the person your father was targeting looks like?” asked Isabelle, clearly incredulous. “You didn’t want to know why? We can check your search history.”
“No, don’t do that.” The boy blushed, and both investigators and the lawyer could guess why. It wasn’t just a university professor he was googling. “Yes, okay, I did look at her videos. And I could see why Dad would do it. But I spent most of the time at the party last night in the kitchen preparing the trays. I didn’t know she was there.”
“You came up for the countdown to the New Year, didn’t you?” Gamache guessed.
“Yes.”
“And what did you see?” Isabelle asked.
“Almost everyone went outside to the bonfire.”
“Did you see anyone go into the woods?”
“No. I wasn’t watching. I just wanted the night to be over and get home. All I could think of was my father. Of what was going to happen to him. And me.”
Chief Inspector Gamache stood up and said to Lacoste, “Charge him.”
“With what? Accessory to attempted murder?”
Gamache stared at the frightened young man. Thrown out of the nest by an obsessed father. To land, splat, in the arms of the Sûreté du Québec.
“Mischief.”
It was a misdemeanor. If convicted it would not ruin the boy’s life. But it still kept the options open to charge Simon Tardif with a more serious crime. Like murder.
They interviewed Alphonse Tardif again. He admitted he knew his nephew had been involved and confessed in order to protect the young man.
After weighing a charge of obstruction of justice, Gamache ordered that Alphonse Tardif just be released.
CHAPTER 31
“Ewen Cameron was a psychiatrist,” said Myrna. Her voice was calm and steady. Warm, as always. Almost musical. “He studied human behavior, but his specialty was memory. He went to Nuremberg and assessed the Nazi Rudolf Hess. Cameron’s diagnosis of amnesia got Hess out of a death sentence.”
“Didn’t Hess later admit he’d faked the amnesia?” asked Reine-Marie.
“Yes. Cameron went on to develop theories of society, placing people into two categories. The weak and the strong.”
Mary Hague-Yearl had reappeared with several books. She opened one to a black-and-white photograph and placed it in front of Beauvoir.
“That,” she said as she thrust her forefinger onto the face, “is Ewen Cameron.”
A slender, middle-aged man with gray hair and glasses smiled up at him.
Trustworthy. Benign. Caring. He looked like something out of central casting.
Marcus Welby, M.D.
The line under the photo said Dr. Cameron had been the President of the American Psychiatric Association. The Canadian Psychiatric Association.
The World Psychiatric Association.
“But it was his work with the CIA, here at McGill, that made his name,” said Myrna.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir looked up. “The Central Intelligence Agency?”
“Yes. This was back in the fifties and sixties. The height of the Cold War. He was hired by the CIA and others, including the Canadian government, to study brainwashing. How to do it. How to undo it. And to do that, he needed not just animals but human subjects.”
“Prisoners?” asked Jean-Guy.
It was a repugnant, immoral practice that had apparently continued long after it was declared illegal.
“No,” said Reine-Marie. “They were men and women from across Canada who came to him for help. Most had minor complaints, like we all do at times. Insomnia, headaches, anxiety. Some for depression. Young mothers with postpartum. It was a great thing, to be seen by the eminent Ewen Cameron. They had no idea what they were in for.”
“What did he do?” Beauvoir looked down and met those kindly gray eyes. What did you do?
“It was called MKUltra,” said Dr. Hague-Yearl. “Sounds almost laughable now. Like bad science fiction. You’ll find the details in those pages…” She motioned to the stacks of paper she’d brought over. “We also have the testimony of some of his victims.”
Not patients. Not clients.
Victims.
“They were guinea pigs,” said Myrna. “He used drugs like LSD. He tied them up and shot electricity through them. He used sleep deprivation. He put them into comas, sometimes for months—”
“My God,” said Beauvoir. “And no one stopped him?”
“No. No one even questioned him,” said Dr. Hague-Yearl.
“But he tortured them,” said Jean-Guy, unable to comprehend.
“Yes,” said Reine-Marie. “Ewen Cameron took men and women who’d come to him for help and he tortured them. Here. At the Allan Memorial Institute. At McGill University. For years. In full view. And no one stopped him.”
“Apparently the CIA was pleased with the results,” said Myrna. “They turned his findings into psychological torture methods they still use today.”
“Oh, my God,” whispered Jean-Guy.
He dropped his eyes to the smiling father figure in the photograph. And had it confirmed, yet again, that most monsters looked exactly like that.