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.
“So do I,” said Armand.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir hung up from the first call, made notes, then placed the second.
After a few questions, he thanked the head of the mathematics department and hit end call.
Sitting back in his chair in the basement Incident Room, he thought for a moment. Then, after placing a third call to British Columbia, he finished his notes and went upstairs to wait for the Chief Inspector.
He saw Vincent Gilbert sitting by the fire in the living room. Relaxed, cross-legged, reading a book. He wore gray flannels, a cashmere sweater with a crisp white shirt and tie. His white hair was trimmed and his glasses were round tortoiseshell.
A professor.
A doctor. Right out of central casting.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir returned to the basement.
Reine-Marie Gamache stared into the flames, then looked down at her fist.
She was clutching the paper, the letter. Crushing it in her hand. Opening it, she smoothed the paper out, read it again, then got up.
She had to find Armand. Had to show him this.
He was, she knew, at the bistro.
Putting on her coat and boots, she tried to explain to Henri and Fred that she’d take them out soon, but not now.
They didn’t understand.
“Join the club,” she muttered, as she shoved her hat down over her ears and went out into the snowy evening.
She got partway to the bistro when she heard her name through the flurries. “Reine-Marie!”
She saw Armand jogging across the road from Clara’s home. They met in front of the pines, their faces lit by the Christmas bulbs.
“I have to tell you…,” they both began.
“You first,” he said.
“No, you.”
“I was just talking to Ruth. It took a while, she didn’t want to tell me, but finally she did. That woman whose documents you’ve been going through, Enid Horton—”
“She was a patient, a victim of Ewen Cameron,” said Reine-Marie. “I just realized that myself. I have to show you something.”
Armand and Reine-Marie sat in the small study off their living room.
Beyond the closed door they could hear Stephen greeting Daniel and Roslyn. They could hear Annie return home with Idola.
The comforting sounds of normality. Of a family doing what families did. Just outside the door.
While inside, Armand and Reine-Marie looked at the paper Enid Horton had kept and Reine-Marie had found.
It was on Allan Memorial letterhead. A fairly polite but firm request that an earlier bill be paid. It was for the services of Dr. Ewen Cameron. For twenty-three days of inpatient treatment of postpartum depression for Enid Horton.
In the margin was a doodle. A monkey. As yet barely formed. Just taking shape. The first crude attempt. The head, ears, curling tail. And the wide, terrified eyes.
The letter was signed by Dr. Vincent Gilbert.
“Monsieur Tardif,” said Isabelle Lacoste, as the prisoner was led into the interview room.
His avocat had been summoned and had had a brief word with the Sûreté Inspector before they joined Édouard Tardif.
“We’ve arrested your son,” said Lacoste.
There was a long silence as Édouard Tardif opened his mouth, not to speak, but to catch his breath.
“It’s not his fault,” he said, softly. “He didn’t know. He thought … I told him … He believed the gun had blanks. I told him I just wanted to interrupt her talk. He didn’t know.”
“And your brother?”
“He had nothing to do with it.”
“Then why did he confess?”
“He must’ve guessed that Simon had helped me, and he wanted to protect him.”
Isabelle nodded. This was a close family. A loving family. That had, inadvertently or not, colluded in attempted murder.
“Don’t say anything,” said Maître Lacombe. She turned to Lacoste. “Monsieur Tardif was in extreme distress. His mother was in a home where more than twenty elderly residents had died of Covid. She’d survived. But he was afraid she wouldn’t survive Professor Robinson. He was protecting his family. Or thought he was. Surely you can see that.”
“I have sympathy, but the fact remains, your client shot a gun in a crowded auditorium. Barely missing the professor and a Chief Inspector of the Sûreté.”
“Yes, he has to face the consequences,” agreed the avocat, while Tardif looked on. “But he wasn’t of sound mind.”
“Simon didn’t know,” Tardif repeated.
“He was at the Inn last night. He was working the party when Professor Robinson’s assistant was murdered.”
“He was?” Then his eyes widened. “You can’t believe Simon did that.”
“Given he was your accomplice in the attempted murder of Professor Robinson, it’s hard to believe he didn’t.”
“But he never … he couldn’t. He doesn’t have it in him. He was just doing what I asked. He has his whole life ahead of him. Please, for God’s sake, believe me. Let him go. Charge me with anything you want, but let him go. Don’t ruin his life.”
“I’m afraid I’m not the one who’s ruined his life.”
“So,” said Beauvoir, looking up from the letter, “this proves it. Vincent Gilbert did know what Cameron was doing. And was part of it.”
“Yes,” said Gamache.
He’d walked up to the Auberge and gone in the back way to avoid running into Gilbert.
With each mention of Ewen Cameron, the faces in the basement wall seemed to grow more prominent. Pushing forward.
Was Cameron himself in there? Had he been summoned from Hell?
Gamache knew this was fantasy. And yet …
“We need to have another word with Dr. Gilbert,” he said.
Beauvoir got up. It had been a while since he’d so looked forward to an interrogation.
“But first,” said Armand, motioning him to sit back down, “I want to hear what you found out from your calls out west.”
“Oh, right. Seems they all knew about the second daughter, Maria,” said Jean-Guy. “She was no secret. Her death had been especially hard on her father. He blamed himself.”
“Why?”
“The little girl choked on a peanut butter sandwich. One he gave her for lunch.”
Armand took a long, deep breath. Imagining, and trying not to imagine, what that would be like. The minutes when it happened, and the years that followed.
“I also called the coroner’s office in Nanaimo,” said Beauvoir.
“Why?”
“Well, it just seemed to me there were quite a few deaths in that family. First Abigail’s mother, then her sister, and finally her father.”
Gamache frowned, then slowly nodded. “Good idea. Anything?”
“Not yet. I asked for the death certificates and any autopsy reports.”
Armand pushed himself out of the chair. It was time.
CHAPTER 34
Vincent Gilbert watched as Chief Inspector Gamache closed the door to the library. That was expected, in a private conversation.
What happened next was not.
Gamache turned the key in the lock. And pocketed it.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir sat in one of the leather chairs across from Gilbert, while Gamache took the other.
A chill crept over the doctor and he looked at the hearth. There was no fire. Not even one laid and ready to be lit. Instead it was just a dark hole, with ash in the grate and a slight smell of burning.
Gamache brought a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and handed it to him.
Gilbert unfolded it, saw the letterhead, and let it go. It fell to the coffee table, unread. Had there been a fire in the grate, he might have tried to throw the letter in. Consign it to where it belonged. Though he wasn’t sure it would burn.