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.
“Are you saying she had a hidden agenda?” asked Isabelle, proud of the double entendre.
While the men groaned, she called Nanaimo with yet another request. After verbally prostrating herself, she hung up. Grimacing.
“He’ll go back down to shipping and find the agenda. He says the box might’ve left already.” She put her phone down on the table and focused on the Chief. “Even if Debbie did kill Maria, which can never be proven now, where does this lead us?”
“It leads us,” said Jean-Guy, “to Debbie Schneider being the intended victim all along, and Abigail Robinson the murderer.”
“How do you figure that?” asked Isabelle.
“Revenge. Abigail finally realized what Debbie had done.”
Isabelle stared at him. “Really? Forty years later? And even if that’s true, why murder her at a party? Abigail could hardly have chosen a worse place. I think we’ve gotten way off track. We need to go back to our first, most likely suspect, victim, and motive. Vincent Gilbert killed Debbie mistaking her for Abigail Robinson. He had any number of motives.” She lifted a finger as she counted them off. “He despised her campaign. He realized she knew about his work with Ewen Cameron and was blackmailing him. He was making up for failures of the past. Any one of those would be enough.”
Gamache was nodding, deep in thought, then he came to a decision. “The fact is, we don’t know. So we follow all lines of inquiry. D’accord?”
“D’accord,” said Jean-Guy.
Gamache looked at Lacoste.
“D’accord, patron.”
“Bon.” He got up and they followed suit.
“Back to the Incident Room?” asked Jean-Guy.
“You go ahead,” said Armand. “I have a stop to make first.”
At the door, Jean-Guy suddenly turned around and returned to their table.
“The brownies?” Isabelle asked as they left the bistro. Her nose never lied.
They walked together as far as St. Thomas’s.
While they climbed the hill, he climbed the steps and turned around. From there he could survey the village.
When he’d first visited Three Pines, he’d had the impression the four roads radiating off the village green formed a sort of sundial. Which had struck him as ironic. To have a huge timepiece in a place that was so clearly timeless. But soon he’d realized the roads were a compass. Each one corresponding exactly to north, south, east, and west.
With Three Pines in the center.
And again, the irony was not lost on him. A compass for a village not on any map. Only found by those who were lost. But then maybe it wasn’t ironic.
He stood there and considered what might have led to the murder of Debbie Schneider. Could love really have been at the heart of it, the start of it?
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, he thought, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
Was he looking for someone who was nothing? A shell? Or was he looking for someone whose love was so great it had moved them to murder. Could love really do that?
“Close the fucking door” came the shout from the body of the chapel, followed by a muttered “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Armand was pretty sure it wasn’t the voice of God. At least he hoped not. Though he suspected God might want to, at times, scream at them.
He did as he was told.
Ruth was in her usual pew, bathed in the bright reds, blues, and greens of the three stained-glass boys. Brothers. Marching forever into a battle from which they would never return.
Armand crossed himself, by habit, even though this was not a Catholic church. And he no longer considered himself Catholic. Or Protestant. Or Jewish. Or Muslim.
He was, in the words of Abu Ben Adhem, one who loves his fellow man. Though the duck, he had to admit, took some effort.
“Sit in the last pew,” Ruth said, at least her tenth command of the day. “The one to the left of the door.”
Again, Chief Inspector Gamache did as he was told. It took him a few minutes, but he finally found out why he was there. A small figure was etched into the wood on the back of the pew, hidden by a Book of Common Prayer.
He got up and joined Ruth.
“What do you know about the monkeys?”
Ruth’s face was in profile as she stared ahead. And stroked Rosa.
“I know they weren’t drawn by a crazy woman. Enid came here most afternoons. So did I. She was here when I arrived, and here when I left. We never spoke, barely acknowledged each other. Not because we didn’t like each other, but we’d both come here for peace. One day I heard scratching. Now, as you know, it’s not in my nature to be critical, but I just thought I’d point out that this is God’s damned house and she should fucking stop desecrating it.”
“Amen,” said Armand, and saw her smile.
“If you can believe it,” said Ruth, turning to him, “she took offense, and left. So I looked at what she’d done.”
“The monkey.”
“No, the stained-glass window. Of course the monkey, Clouseau. When I saw her next, I asked her what that was about.”
“And?”
“And it took her seven years to tell me. We sat in silence all that time. Every day. She in her pew, me in mine. She didn’t draw any more monkeys, but she seemed to get some sort of comfort from that one. Then one day she just blurted it out.”
“What did she say?”
“That she’d been a patient of Ewen Cameron.” Ruth studied him. “I already told you that.”
“But you didn’t tell me about the monkeys.”
“No. Reine-Marie found something in those boxes, didn’t she. I thought she might.”
He nodded but didn’t tell her about the letter from Vincent Gilbert.
“Ruth,” he asked softly. “What do you know about Ewen Cameron?”
She took a deep breath. But didn’t break eye contact. They could have been there for ten seconds or ten minutes, or a lifetime, before she spoke.
“My mother took me to him. To fix me. She thought that I was broken.” She tried to smile but could not. “She wanted to leave me there, but he didn’t have any beds. By the time one had freed up, I’d changed.”
“Changed?”
“I’d learned what she wanted me to be. I learned to pretend. So I wouldn’t be sent to that place. I learned what it would take for my mother to love me. But—” Ruth raised her hands, then dropped them back. One to her lap, the other to rest gently, protectively, on Rosa. “That was a long time ago.”
“My mother isn’t finished with me yet,” he said and saw her smile. Just a little.
“Probably true.”
Armand glanced at the demon duck and knew that, if and when the time came and Rosa was in distress, Ruth would do what was necessary. So great was her love.
“Enid wasn’t so lucky,” Ruth continued. “She was a young mother and was having trouble sleeping. She’d begun having anxiety attacks. So she went to Cameron for help. She came home…” Ruth looked around. “She found peace here. At least for a little while each day.”
“And the monkeys? Did she ever explain them?”
“She said when she was in the Allan she could hear them. She knew she wasn’t alone. It was comforting.”
“And she never told anyone?” he asked.
“Not as far as I know. Just me. When she died and her house was sold, I was worried that her kids would find something among her things. And it would be upsetting.”
“That’s why you suggested that Reine-Marie help to sort through things. So if there was anything to find, she’d get there first.”