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.
Vincent Gilbert put his hand over Colette’s. To stop her from saying anything more? But Gamache didn’t think so. It was an intimate gesture. Meant to support and comfort.
Colette was shaking her head. “All I wanted to do was change your mind about your campaign. I tried to talk you out of it.”
“You never did,” said Abigail. “I sent you my preliminary research and you thanked me. You never said you disagreed. You invited me here. You set up that talk. You told me I could meet with Dr. Gilbert.”
“Is that why you came to Québec?” Gamache asked. “Not to see Ruth Zardo, not even to see Chancellor Roberge, but to meet Vincent Gilbert?”
Abigail Robinson hesitated, then nodded. “To get him to publicly endorse my work. The Royal Commission would listen to him.”
“What made you think he’d do that?” Gamache asked.
“Because when Colette showed him my report, he didn’t disagree with it. He has a reputation for brutal honesty, so I assumed that meant he, you, agreed.” Gilbert dropped his eyes. “So I came here to see you. To ask for your help.” She turned to her former mentor. “But you actually planned to kill me? Colette?”
“No. We planned to talk you out of it. When you called and said you wanted to visit, we saw our chance. I offered you the event to make sure you’d come. I had no idea so many would show up. That only strengthened our resolve.”
“To kill me?”
“To stop you,” said Gilbert. “The Royal Commission was right not to hear your submission. Even if your findings are correct, they aren’t right. There’re human factors.”
“You’d say that? To me?” demanded Abigail, rounding on him. Sneering at him. “You’d lecture me on what’s right? On human factors?”
Gamache watched this with intense interest and was tempted to interrupt. To ask his question. But once again he remained quiet, to see where this would go.
“Damn right I will,” said Gilbert, leaning toward her. “I was there, at your rally. You whipped them into a frenzy with your patented mix of facts and fear. Like some snake oil salesman at a fairground, trying to get gullible people to buy your poison. First you scare them, then you offer them your false hope. It’s disgusting. But it works. And now the politicians, familiar with the power of fear, have bought your potion wholesale.”
“You’d give me a sermon on morals, then murder me?”
Abigail looked from Gilbert to Colette.
“No,” said Gilbert. “She had no idea what I had in mind. I didn’t even know, not until I saw your rally at the University. Colette wasn’t there. Clips on television or social media couldn’t fully capture the atmosphere. I saw what you did. I saw your face as your supporters chanted. You weren’t triumphant, you were smug. You knew exactly what you were doing. And I knew there was no stopping you.”
Gilbert failed to mention that he’d also seen Édouard Tardif raise the gun to shoot Abigail Robinson. And had done nothing.
It was Vincent Gilbert’s first attempt at the murder of Abigail Robinson. Perhaps not in the eyes of the law, but in a higher court, almost certainly.
Professor Robinson’s eyes widened as she followed the logic, the steps, the evidence, until she reached the only possible conclusion.
“You killed Debbie.”
“No.”
“Yes, you killed her thinking it was me.”
“No, no, I didn’t. I’m not that stupid.”
It was not, they could all see, much of a defense.
Gamache shifted slightly and all eyes went to him.
It was time to ask his question.
After her interview with Édouard Tardif, Isabelle returned to the basement Incident Room.
It was dinnertime and she was hungry, especially walking by the dining room of the Inn and smelling the rich, earthy scent of Québécoise winter cuisine. The soups and sauces, the stews and pies, both savory and sweet.
But she forced herself onward. Downward.
Once at her desk, she checked messages. She’d been copied on Beauvoir’s request to the coroner in Nanaimo, and now she opened it.
No autopsy had been done on Abigail’s mother or father. The attending physician had put down heart failure. Abigail’s sister, Maria, had choked to death on a piece of peanut butter sandwich, lodged deep in her throat.
It was tragic, but straightforward enough. Still … Lacoste called Nanaimo.
“Heart failure” was what doctors put on reports when they either didn’t know what someone died of, or knew and wanted to protect the feelings of the family.
“How did you know that Dr. Gilbert once worked with Ewen Cameron?” asked Gamache.
“He did?” Abigail Robinson asked, eyes wide.
Gamache smiled pleasantly. “Come now, Professor. You all but accused him of it last night at the party, and again today.” He paused before dropping his voice deeper into the inky void. “We know.”
He didn’t say what they knew. The truth was, they knew almost nothing.
He could see her quickly examining the various options. Struggling to find a way out that did not involve the truth.
“I’d hoped to torment you a little longer,” she said, giving up and turning to Gilbert. “But I see the time has come for the truth. A fact, if you prefer. I’d asked Debbie to research you so I’d be prepared for our meeting. She came across some documents suggesting that you worked with Ewen Cameron.”
Gamache kept his focus on Professor Robinson, but he also, in his peripheral vision, watched Chancellor Roberge’s reaction.
There was none.
She knew, he thought. She knew he worked with Cameron.
“What were the documents Madame Schneider found?” Beauvoir asked.
“Just vague references.”
“Like the ones you’re making now?” he said. “We went through your files. We also searched what Debbie Schneider brought with her. There were all sorts of papers, but nothing about Dr. Gilbert.”
“Really? That’s surprising. Something must have happened to them.”
“How were you planning to use those documents?” asked Beauvoir.
“Well, once I got over the shock that he was involved in something so hideous, I thought they might help convince him to support my work, if he was reluctant. He’s still a nationally recognized scientist.”
“Internationally,” said Gilbert, instinctively.
“Blackmail?” said Beauvoir, but Abigail ignored that.
Her brows had drawn together in thought. “I wonder if Debbie showed you what we’d found. Is that what happened? Did she meet you outside and show you the proof? Did you kill her and take the papers?”
It was something that had occurred to Gamache. The one reason Gilbert might have killed Debbie. To destroy the damning evidence.
But there were other possibilities.
Beauvoir’s phone had vibrated with a message, which he ignored. Now it rang. Looking down at it, he glanced at Gamache, who nodded.
Beauvoir walked into the next room, taking the call while Gamache turned to Colette Roberge. “Ewen Cameron would have needed a statistician in his work, wouldn’t he?”
“Yes, that’s true. Are you accusing me?”
“No. You’d have been far too young. Cameron would have made sure to use the best, even if the best was all the way across the continent. In, let’s say, British Columbia.”
He turned back to Abigail Robinson. They all turned to her.
“Is that what you found?” Gamache continued. “Is that why you were reluctant to come right out with it? Debbie Schneider said you were going through your father’s papers. Is that where you found the proof that Dr. Gilbert was involved in Cameron’s experiments? Because your father was too.”
“No, never,” said Abigail. “My father would never have done that. He was a good man. A caring man.”
Beauvoir came back and flashed his phone for Gamache to see the four-word message.