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.
“Yes. Imagine finding out that your mother had been tortured. If Enid had wanted them to know, she’d have told them herself. Explained. Answered their questions. But now…”
Now, thought Armand, there were no answers. How do you explain a Ewen Cameron? A Harold Shipman? How do you explain what happened to Haniya Daoud? How do you begin to explain brown brown?
Not just that it could happen, but that so many could know about it and do nothing.
What are you doing out there, Ralph?
“Why did you want to speak to Reine-Marie?”
“I wanted to say that the truth doesn’t set everyone free. For some it becomes a burden. A stinking albatross. I wanted to ask Reine-Marie if it was necessary to tell them.”
Armand stood up and, reaching into his parka pocket, he brought out a linen napkin.
“From Jean-Guy.”
Then he bent down and kissed her cheek.
Reine-Marie looked down at the box. Full of things collected over a lifetime. Including one small slip of paper. On Allan Memorial letterhead. Explaining everything.
She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Haniya said, “Can I ask you a question?”
When Susan and James nodded, she said, “Was she a good mother?”
The question took them by surprise. Susan said, “Of course.” But it took James longer to answer.
“Yes. She could be impatient, sometimes a little unpredictable. But she was great.”
“Did you know that you were loved?”
“Why are you asking this?” asked James. “Why’re you even here?”
“I—”
“I asked her along,” said Reine-Marie.
“Why?” said Susan. “Is there a problem?”
Reine-Marie started to answer, but Haniya gave her a shove and she almost fell off the packing box.
“I remember my mother,” said Haniya. “But not well. I remember her trying to protect me when the soldiers came. I was eight. I tried to find her years later, but the village was gone.”
She paused then and thought of the other village. The one covered in snow, in the valley. Frozen, it seemed, in time.
“I think she was killed,” Haniya whispered. She spoke directly to Enid Horton’s children. “Protecting me. I imagine your mother protected you too. In her way.”
“She tried, yes,” said James. He turned to his sister. “Remember when the smoke alarm would go off?”
Susan laughed. “She wasn’t a very good cook and it went off at least once a week. She’d come running into the living room where I was watching TV and shove me outside.”
James laughed. “I remember.”
“‘Get out! Get out!’” they both screamed, clearly imitating a hysterical woman.
“She went back in.” Susan looked at her brother. “I hadn’t thought about that, until now. She thought the house was on fire, but she went back in. For you.”
James looked stricken. “That’s true. We thought it was funny. We teased her about that relentlessly.”
“She loved you,” said Haniya.
“But the monkeys?” asked Susan.
They looked at Reine-Marie. Who knew the answer. Knew their mother had been tortured. Had been kept awake for days on end, listening to the shrieks of monkeys. Maybe even seen the panic in their wide, knowing eyes.
Now was the time to tell her children.
“Your mother loved you. That’s what’s in the box,” she said.
She laid a hand on the top of the container, as though to say goodbye. Then, reaching out, she helped Haniya up.
CHAPTER 40
“Still no word from your friend in Nanaimo?” asked Gamache, as he took off his tuque and, shoving it and his gloves into the arm of his parka, he hung them up.
“No,” said Isabelle. “I’m afraid the evidence from the desk might’ve already shipped. I’ll call him back in a couple of minutes. Unless you’d like to?”
He laughed as he tried to smooth his hair. “I wouldn’t deny you the pleasure. Any news?”
“None,” said Jean-Guy, then went back to making phone calls.
Isabelle sat forward and said to the Chief, “I’ve been thinking about what you said in the bistro. About the possibility it was Debbie who killed Maria, then Abigail killed Debbie.”
“Oui?”
“I think, patron, that you’re off base.”
“How so?” He sat down and swiveled his chair to face her.
“I think you and Jean-Guy are fathers and you don’t want it to be Paul Robinson who smothered his daughter.”
Gamache paused, absorbing what she said before speaking, quietly, reasonably. “I’ve arrested fathers for the murder of their children before, Isabelle.”
“Yes, but this one’s different. This has Abigail Robinson in the mix. And a disabled child. You asked me what I think, and I’m telling you. I think both you and Jean-Guy want Abigail to be guilty of the murder of Debbie.”
“Are you saying you think that I’m ignoring, even twisting evidence, in order to build a case against Abigail Robinson? Because I don’t like her or her views?”
Put so starkly, Lacoste didn’t quite know what to say. But the fact was, that was exactly what she thought. That they’d pivoted away from the obvious suspect, Vincent Gilbert, and the obvious motive, in favor of the least likely.
It would be so much better all around if Abigail Robinson was arrested and convicted of the crime.
“Not intentionally,” she began.
He lowered his head and glowered at her. “By mistake?”
Now she was confused. Clearly, the Chief Inspector, the head of homicide, the man who’d recently headed the entire Sûreté du Québec, did not do things by mistake. He might make mistakes, but his actions, his decisions, were well thought out.
“I think,” she began, gathering her thoughts, “I think you’re going after Abigail Robinson on purpose. Not because you really believe her to be guilty, but because you want her to be guilty.”
Armand Gamache couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He stared at her, speechless.
Isabelle Lacoste had, in the past, disagreed with him. They’d sometimes argued over evidence, or suspects, over an arrest even.
And yes, he could be wrong, and had been wrong in the past. But neither Lacoste nor anyone else had ever questioned his motives. Until now.
“You think I’m railroading Abigail Robinson out of prejudice? My own personal agenda?”
“No, I’m just—”
“You think I’d turn my back on solid evidence and arrest someone for a murder I knew, I knew, they didn’t commit?”
His voice instead of rising had dropped to a whisper so that she had to lean closer.
“Because it sounds like that’s what you’re accusing me of. It’s one thing to disagree with a line of inquiry, Isabelle. It’s another to accuse me of wanting to arrest someone I knew to be innocent.”
Her cheeks were burning so hot Isabelle wondered if she might melt. She also wondered if she’d crossed a line that could never be uncrossed. If she’d gone far too far.
And now she faced a choice. To scramble back and beg forgiveness. Plead a sugar high from the four brownies she’d eaten.
Or …
“No one has more respect for you than I do, patron. I don’t think I need to prove that. We’ve been through too much together. But you’re human. Jean-Guy is human. Lots of what we do is science, but a lot is driven by intuition. By emotion. You say so yourself. And you’re no different than the rest of us.”
She watched him as he watched her. His eyes astute. And hurt.
“You have a granddaughter you adore and whose future concerns you. You see Abigail Robinson threatening that future. And…” She hated to do this, but felt she had to. “And I saw some of the footage you took inside that nursing home.”