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’ll let you critique my latest work,” said Clara.
Ruth became more interested. Finding fault was just about her favorite thing to do.
As they left, Ruth paused in front of Armand. “Did you speak with her?”
“All sorted. Professor Robinson will stop using the quote and donate whatever they’ve raised to LaPorte.”
“Thank you, Armand,” she whispered.
At the door, Clara and Ruth looked back. Haniya was standing in the middle of the room, between the groups.
“Well?” demanded Ruth. “Do you need the king of Sweden to invite you? Dumb shit.”
Haniya paused, then walked across the bistro to join them. She was not totally sure, but she suspected being called “dumb shit” by Ruth Zardo was almost as good as winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Though it was possible the old poet was calling the king of Sweden a dumb shit.
As they trudged through the snow toward Clara’s pretty little cottage, Ruth lost her footing. Haniya grabbed her before she fell. She held Ruth’s hand for the rest of the way, and wondered if maybe the key was not in being held, but in holding.
Gabri put down a pot of tea. “It’s already steeped, just as you like it.” Then he threw a birch log onto the fire, and stirred it, before leaving them.
The white bark caught and curled as embers popped and chased each other up the chimney.
Armand poured the tea while Isabelle talked.
Within minutes, Jean-Guy, Myrna, Isabelle, and Armand had left the cheery bistro and were in the Sudan. Looking down, helpless, at the women, girls, staked to the dirt.
Armand clamped his jaw so tight he thought his molars might shatter. But if he didn’t, he was sure he’d vomit.
And still, Isabelle talked.
Jean-Guy saw his sisters, his mother. Annie. Staked there. And thought he might pass out.
And still, Isabelle talked.
Myrna felt the rawhide straps cutting into her wrists and ankles, the flesh now growing around the bindings. She saw the men approaching. Drunk. Angry. She saw them draw their machetes. And she looked up at Armand. At Jean-Guy. At Isabelle. Watching. And she pleaded with them. Begged them for help.
The world had been watching. And had done nothing.
And when Isabelle got to the part where Haniya escaped and killed her attacker, Armand unclenched his jaw.
When Isabelle got to the part where Haniya freed the other women and girls, Jean-Guy wanted to leap up and cheer.
When Isabelle got to the part where they approached the barbed-wire fence, to freedom, Myrna wanted to sob with relief.
When Isabelle got to the part where Haniya confronted the child soldier, she stopped.
“What is it?” Armand asked. “What happened?
“Brown brown,” said Isabelle.
And she told them what happened, when Haniya had a choice to make. And made it.
There was a long silence as their breathing mingled with the smoke and crackling fire and the images that had invaded the peaceful bistro.
Haniya was right, of course, thought Isabelle. No place was safe.
“Isabelle?” Armand finally said.
She looked at him. Not even the amber glow from the fire could disguise his pallor.
She knew what he was asking.
“Yes. I have no doubt she would kill again, if it meant saving lives. I’m not sure if it’s heroic or psychotic, but Haniya Daoud seems to see every innocent man, woman, and infant in the world as her children. She’s driven to save them. Obsessed even.”
A few years ago, Jean-Guy might not have understood that. Now he could. Every parent, he was sure, became slightly insane the moment their children were born.
Armand nodded. He too understood.
He’d assumed Haniya Daoud had survived, where so many had given up and died, out of hatred. An all-consuming need for revenge. But something even stronger had kept her going.
Love. The love of her children. The need to save, not the need to destroy, had kept her going. And still fueled every step Haniya Daoud took.
But to have to kill one child to save others? What did that do to a person? What had that done to Haniya? And did it make every other killing so much easier?
Would Haniya Daoud murder Abigail Robinson to save men, women, and children?
In a heartbeat.
Reine-Marie poured herself a red wine, dragged the box from the small study into the living room, lit the fire in the hearth, and turned on the Christmas tree lights.
Stephen and Gracie, who she now thought might be a guinea pig, were having a nap in his bedroom. Daniel and Roslyn were at the sales in Sherbrooke, and Annie had taken Idola to visit friends in the next village over.
Henri and Fred were curled at her feet.
She had the place to herself.
Before dipping into the last box, she sat back on the sofa, put her feet up, and quietly sipped her drink, staring into the fireplace, the lit tree in the background.
They’d take it down, along with the other decorations, on January 5th. The eve of the Twelfth Night.
Neither she nor Armand were particularly religious, though both had a steadfast and private belief in God. But they loved tradition, and taking down the Christmas tree every year on that day was one they’d both grown up with.
Besides being the night before Epiphany, when the Three Wise Men recognized the Christ Child, it also saved their Hoover from needing to pick up too many dried pine needles. And burning out. Again.
In the meantime, Reine-Marie relished the tree, the decorations, the quiet.
She closed her eyes, feeling the warmth of the fire on her face. But her peace was invaded by Ewen Cameron. His kindly face looked down at her, assuring her all would be well, ça va bien aller, even as he tied her wrists to the posts.
Her eyes flew open, and she sat up so quickly wine slopped from her glass onto Henri, asleep by the fire. He didn’t stir. With Ruth such a constant visitor, he was used to it.
Reine-Marie put down her glass and got to work, while over in the bistro Jean-Guy sat in front of the fire and told his horror story.
“Ewen Cameron?” Armand’s eyes moved from Jean-Guy to Myrna, then back again. “Vincent worked with Cameron?”
“Who?” asked Isabelle. Like Jean-Guy, she was too young to know the name. But it was about to become one she would never forget.
They told her, while Armand sat back, his hand to his face, listening, thinking.
When they’d finished, Isabelle had quizzed Jean-Guy and Myrna, unwilling to accept that this had actually happened. In Québec. In Montréal. At McGill. Within living memory. And no one had stopped it. Stopped him.
“And Vincent Gilbert was part of it?” she asked.
“There’s no actual proof of that,” said Jean-Guy. “We know he looked after the lab animals. If he’d been part of the experiments, wouldn’t there be papers in his file?”
“Evaluations of Gilbert by Cameron or others,” said Myrna. “You’d think.”
“Still,” said Armand, sitting forward. “It’s hard to believe Dr. Gilbert wouldn’t have at least known what was going on. By then Cameron had been at it for almost a decade.”
The Asshole Saint had gone, they noticed, from “Vincent” to “Dr. Gilbert,” as Gamache put distance between them.
He turned to Myrna, but before he could ask her to leave, she got up.
“I’m off. Work to do in the store.”
When she’d gone, Jean-Guy said, “Didn’t Cameron’s name come up last night? You mentioned it to Gilbert when we interviewed him.”
“Yes,” said Gamache. “I’ve been trying to remember the exact words Robinson used. She didn’t make a direct accusation. It was more subtle than that. She’d been talking about monsters and mentioned Cameron. And then she’d intimated that Gilbert was no better than him. That’s why I wanted to know what was in Dr. Gilbert’s files at McGill. But I never thought…”