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.
Her actions had saved not just his life, but the lives of most of the villagers. She’d been shot, almost killed, right there. In the bistro. In the safe place.
But they, better than most, knew that no place was really safe from physical harm. Anything could happen to anyone, at any moment. What made a place safe were the people. The caring. The kindness. The helping. Sometimes the mourning. And often the forgiveness.
“I am stronger, in every way,” she said. “But I feel badly for my children. I tell myself it’s made them stronger too, more resilient. They saw that it’s possible to overcome. But…”
But.
“They were wounded too,” he finished her thought.
“Oui.”
They sat in companionable silence, breathing in the thin, cold air. Breathing out words unspoken. Until Isabelle spoke.
“I’ve been thinking about Abigail. What happened to her mother is something a child would never fully get over.”
She saw Gamache nod, then he got up. Together they walked past the New Forest and into the village. Both of them limping slightly.
Daniel was out with the dogs, the last walk of the day. Armand joined him, while Isabelle headed to her bed in the B&B.
“Dad?”
“Oui?”
“Do you think Professor Robinson will be successful? In her campaign, I mean.”
Armand turned to his son. Large, sturdy like his father. Strong and kind. And sensitive. One day it might fall to Daniel to make that decision. To pull the plug, to remove the respirator. To let his father die. To let nature take its course.
But what “nature” were they talking about? Human nature? Was that what Abigail Robinson was relying on? Armand knew it was not always pretty. Or compassionate. Or brave.
If human nature was allowed to take its course, unchecked, what would happen?
He remembered the smear on the window. The elongated handprint. And had some idea. Though he also had an overriding belief in the decency of people. While he’d seen the worst, Armand Gamache had also seen the best. And he believed the best would prevail.
“I hope not.” But was hope enough?
“Would it be such a bad thing if Professor Robinson died?” Daniel asked.
Armand looked at his son, hardly believing what he heard. “You can’t mean that.”
“I do.” Daniel examined his father for a moment. “Do you regret saving her life?”
No one had, as yet, asked him that. Not directly. “I had to try.”
“I understand,” said Daniel. “But do you regret it? Do you wish you’d failed?”
Armand breathed in, and out, unable to answer.
“Would you do it again?” Daniel asked, quietly.
Over his son’s shoulder Armand could see the hill out of Three Pines where the bench, invisible in the darkness, sat. And on that bench, the words, unseen, were etched.
May you be a brave man in a brave country.
Armand Gamache realized he no longer knew what bravery might look like. What “the best” might be.
CHAPTER 37
Dr. Sharon Harris was having a café au lait and brioche in the bistro when Armand, Jean-Guy, and Isabelle arrived.
“I thought you’d email the answers to us,” said Armand, sitting down after greeting Gabri and Olivier. “Or call. I didn’t expect you to actually come here.”
“Though we’re not complaining about meeting you in the bistro,” said Jean-Guy. He’d slept in and missed breakfast. Now he ordered French toast, with maple-smoked bacon and syrup from the cabane à sucre down the road.
The other two had coffee.
It was a few minutes past eight on this crisp January morning. The sun was just coming up, and the bistro was just filling up. Children were beginning to hit the rink. Some literally. As parents stood in the snow, rubbing their arms, stamping their feet and glancing longingly at the bistro.
“I wanted to talk it over,” said the coroner. “The reports you sent on the three deaths in the Robinson family are … suggestive.”
“Of what?” Isabelle asked.
“Of something more going on,” said Sharon Harris.
“Like?” said Jean-Guy.
“I think you already know.”
Gamache held her steady gaze and said nothing.
“All right, I’ll tell you,” said Dr. Harris. “I think the doctor’s notes are right. Kathleen Robinson, the mother, killed herself. The drugs she was prescribed are consistent with depression. The report says she’d given birth a few years earlier, so it might’ve been a prolonged, extreme case of postpartum. In an unusual death like this, it would be normal to do an autopsy. But none was performed. I’m guessing it’s because the doctor and coroner knew exactly what she died of.” She glanced around the table. “You don’t look surprised.”
“We’re not,” said Lacoste. “We think it was…” She searched for the word. “Provoked.”
“How?”
“She came to Québec to be treated for her depression, by Ewen Cameron.”
Sharon Harris’s eyes widened and she gave a short sharp inhale. “I see.”
And what she saw was an otherwise healthy, happy woman suffering temporary, though acute, depression put into the hands of a monster. To be cured.
What she saw was that after months of torture, Kathleen Robinson was sent home to her husband and children. She’d left depressed, she returned in despair.
And killed herself.
“I see.”
What Sharon Harris saw was that it wasn’t really suicide. It was morally, if not legally, murder.
“If you knew all this, why send me the reports?”
“I think you already know,” said Gamache, with only a slight smile.
Dr. Harris gave a small grunt of amusement. “Touché.” She glanced down at the printouts. “It wasn’t about Madame Robinson’s death, was it? That was for context. It’s about the others. The husband and daughter. The report on the man’s death, Paul Robinson, also says heart failure. You’re wondering if there’s more there?” She exhaled. “Might be, but it’s impossible to tell. In his case it could really have been heart failure. He was in his early fifties, so a heart attack or stroke aren’t out of the question. Equally, he could have killed himself. Like his wife’s, the report on his death is vague.”
She hesitated, then looked directly at the Chief Inspector. “But you’re head of homicide, not head of suicide. What do you suspect, Armand?”
“You tell me.”
She dropped her head and muttered what sounded like “bastard.” “All right,” she said, when she looked up again. “I’ll tell you, but this isn’t official. It can’t be. And I doubt at this point it can ever be proven.”
The three investigators waited. Sharon Harris shuffled the papers in front of her. Bringing one to the top.
“I think the child Maria Robinson’s death wasn’t an accident.”
“Meaning?” Isabelle leaned forward.
“Meaning I think she was murdered. I think her father killed her, then later took his own life.”
“But the deaths are years apart,” said Isabelle.
“True. But there can be a delayed reaction.”
“Of years?” she asked, clearly not buying it.
“When you investigate a murder,” said Dr. Harris, “don’t you go back into the past? To find some wound that festered? That erupted years later in murder? I’ve heard you talk about that. Why not self-murder? Suicide. Paul Robinson must’ve been deeply scarred by what happened to his wife. And then the pressure of caring for a severely disabled child alone. The mind can warp and twist and land in a very dark place. Chalk another one up to Ewen Cameron.”
“Wait a minute,” said Beauvoir, holding up his hand. “You think Robinson killed his own daughter? A defenseless little girl? Wh … wh…”