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.
“Why the monkey?”
“Pardon?”
“The drawing on the letter,” said Beauvoir. “What does it mean?”
“How should I know?”
“I think, Dr. Gilbert,” said Gamache, “you’ve proven there’s a great deal you do know that you’re not admitting. Madame Horton died recently. In the attic the family found boxes filled with, among other things, monkeys. Dolls. Books. Drawings. Why this fixation on monkeys?”
Gilbert was silent for a moment. Sullen. But as the silence went on, his expression changed. His face opened, in realization.
“There was a woman in the room next to where the animals were kept. She was part of the sleep-deprivation trials. She must have heard…”
They looked down at the drawing, the first one. Of the terrified animal with the human eyes.
The monkeys, their screaming, must have, in her muddled near-demented state, become part of her nightmares. Become part of her. The lab monkeys had fused to her shattered mind and stayed there.
In drawing them, she freed them. An act of compassion that the great Dr. Gilbert could never achieve.
“Do you also hear them?” Armand asked.
Had Gilbert also conflated the animals and the people? And convinced himself it wasn’t people he’d heard screaming? Begging for help. Searching, with wild eyes, for one decent person to free them.
“Not monkeys, no.” Gilbert paused before going on. “Have you ever heard a blue jay shriek?”
And they had their answer. Vincent Gilbert thought he’d find refuge, peace, deep in the forest. But all he’d done was go deeper into the nightmare. Where all the wild creatures, the forest itself, screamed at him. Every day and all night long.
But if he could just do one magnificent thing, maybe he and they would be free.
Maybe, thought Beauvoir, the Wicked Angel would be redeemed.
Maybe, thought Gamache, the era of prominent madmen would end.
“When Abigail Robinson threw Ewen Cameron in your face last night,” he said, “what did you think?”
“I thought she knew.”
“And?”
“And I was afraid.”
“And?”
Gilbert shifted in his seat. “And you want me to say I tried to kill her? To keep her quiet? But that I killed her friend by mistake?”
“Tell us, Vincent,” said Gamache, leaning forward.
“The truth? Yes, I saw a chance to redeem myself. Not because she knew about my work with Cameron, but because what she’s proposing is wrong, on every level. It was too late to stop her with intellectual arguments. I’d missed my chance. I should have done something when Colette sent me the paper. But now I could make it right. I’d failed to save those men and women years ago, I’d failed to help in the pandemic. I’d failed to condemn her work when I first read it, but now, maybe I could make up for it. Abigail Robinson has to be stopped. I knew that. You know that.” He stared at Gamache.
Beauvoir looked over at Gamache. They had him. It was over.
“And?” said Gamache. They needed to hear him say it.
“And nothing. Someone got there first. Except they messed it up. Killed the wrong person.” He held Gamache’s eyes. “I wouldn’t have made that mistake. I’m not the one you’re looking for, Armand.”
“Were you and Colette Roberge in this together?” Gamache asked. “Did she know what you had planned?”
“All she knew is that I was determined to stop Professor Robinson.”
“She brought Professor Robinson to the party so you could kill her,” said Beauvoir.
“No, no. It was Abigail Robinson’s idea to go to the party, not Colette’s. But we decided it was a good idea. It would give me a chance to try to reason with Abigail. Get her to stop this madness. Colette thought, I thought, that the reason she wanted to meet me was because she respected me. Not…”
“So Colette Roberge also wanted Abigail Robinson stopped? And she’s alone with Professor Robinson?” said Gamache.
“No. Well, yes, but she didn’t know how far I was willing to take it.”
“And maybe you don’t know how far she’s willing to take it,” said Gamache.
He turned to Beauvoir, who grasped the situation immediately. Getting up, he took a few steps away and placed a call.
“You’re coming with us,” Gamache said to Gilbert.
Gamache grabbed the letter off the coffee table and put it back in his pocket before taking Gilbert’s arm and maneuvering him to the door.
Jean-Guy had reached the agents guarding the Chancellor’s home and told them to go inside and find Professor Robinson.
“And stay with her. We’re on our way.”
The flurries had stopped, and the stars were just coming out while around them the creatures in the dark forest watched.
CHAPTER 35
Chancellor Roberge’s eyes widened, slightly, when she saw Vincent Gilbert at her front door.
She was expecting the Sûreté investigators, but not him. And not him with them. Though she quickly recovered herself.
“Welcome,” she said. This time Colette did not lean forward to kiss Armand. The lines, and boundaries, were now clear. “Your people are here, Chief Inspector. They’re in the kitchen with Abigail.”
“Merci.”
They followed her into the house. The Chancellor paused at the door to the now familiar kitchen. Armand could feel warmth radiating off the woodstove.
The agents behind Abigail Robinson stood a little taller when they saw the senior officers.
“Patron,” they said.
Beauvoir went to step into the kitchen, but Chancellor Roberge stopped him.
“I thought since there are so many of us, we should sit somewhere else.”
After passing through the gracious living room, Colette Roberge stopped at the room that was as far from the kitchen as possible.
Gamache quickly took in his surroundings, instinctively checking for any escape route.
The Chancellor had taken them to the solarium. The sofa and armchairs were covered in fresh botanical prints. Gamache could see that the room, with its three walls of windows, would be magnificent in the daylight.
But now, lacking both light and warmth, it felt as though the dark panes of the windows were made of ice.
Dr. Gilbert had taken the seat next to Chancellor Roberge on the sofa, while Abigail Robinson took one of the armchairs.
Beauvoir indicated to the agents that they should stand just outside the door, in the living room. Out of sight, but ready should anything happen. Then he and Gamache brought over two incidental chairs and sat.
Armand contemplated the Chancellor. A woman he admired, respected. Liked. And now distrusted.
She held his thoughtful gaze.
“What’s your role in this?” he asked, going straight to the point.
“This?” Her voice was almost amused. “What ‘this,’ Armand?”
But even as she said it, she recognized her mistake. It was childish. Worse, she’d placed the power back in Gamache’s hands after he’d offered her a chance to frame the events herself.
“The conspiracy, Madame Chancellor, to stop Professor Robinson, by killing her if necessary.”
“That’s not true,” protested Colette Roberge, outraged.
“What?” said Abigail, almost laughing. Then, seeing Gamache’s serious expression, she turned to Colette. “What’s he saying?”
“Nothing. He’s taking leaps of logic. Making spurious correlations.”
“He’s saying,” said Beauvoir, “that your former mentor, your friend, has been involved in a plot to murder you.”
“That’s not possible,” said Abigail, though they could see her hesitation now. “Is it?”