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.
Armand sat back and considered. It wasn’t what he’d want. To burden, to hobble one of his children with such a truth. Some things really did not have to be said.
But then Colette was right. He didn’t know Paul Robinson. He’d learned long ago the folly of expecting others to behave, to feel, to think and make the same choices as he would.
“And did you?” Beauvoir asked.
“What?”
“Did you tell Abigail about the letter?”
“She did more than that,” said Jean-Paul Roberge, his voice strong, his eyes clear. “She showed it to her. She was very upset.”
“Abigail would be,” said Beauvoir.
“Not Abigail. The other one.”
“Bonjour,” said Isabelle. “Do you mind if I join you?”
She’d found Abigail sitting alone in the library.
“I didn’t think cops asked.” Abigail closed her laptop.
“My mother raised me to be polite. And the Chief Inspector gave me a gun, in case that doesn’t work.”
Abigail smiled. She looked wan. Tired.
Lacoste took the armchair across from her so that they were sitting on either side of the lit fire. She cast a glance toward the stack of wood, where Vincent Gilbert, two nights earlier, had found a murder weapon.
“Are you hiding?”
“Not a great hiding place if I am. You found me.”
“I don’t think I’m the one you’re hiding from.”
Abigail heaved a sigh. “I needed to get out of my room, but I didn’t want to see him. I don’t trust myself.”
“You think you might finish what you came here to do?”
Abigail smiled again and shook her head. “I came here to humiliate him. To scare him. To wound his ego but leave his body intact. So that he’d spend the rest of his life writhing. Like my mother.”
“You’ve already done that. So what are you afraid you might do now?”
“Kill him. We all know he killed Debbie, thinking it was me. Gamache and the other one as much as told me that the night Debbie died. Debbie was killed by mistake. But I didn’t take it in.” She rubbed her forehead, hard enough to leave red marks. “Is there always a delayed reaction?”
“Often, yes.” Isabelle leaned forward. “Can you tell me about the day your sister died?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Maria. What happened that day?” As she asked her question, her phone pinged with a message from Beauvoir and a photo of a letter. She’d read it later.
“Why do you want to know that?” Abigail asked. “It was a long time ago.”
“Please, just tell me.”
Another sigh. Not of exasperation, but of exhaustion.
“It was a Friday. Dad had just come back from a conference—”
“Was he alone?”
“Yes. He’d been there with Colette, but she didn’t come to Nanaimo with him.” She paused. “I always wondered if she and Dad … But I guess not. And then the thing happened, and they almost never saw each other again.”
“Huh,” said Lacoste, her mind moving quickly. “Where were you when your sister died?”
If Abigail heard a slight suspicion in the question, she didn’t show it. “Debbie and I were looking after Maria. But we’d gone out for a bike ride—”
“And left Maria?”
“She was asleep. We wanted to go to the store, and I knew Dad would be back soon. Debbie decided she’d rather go home, so I went to the store alone. By the time I got home Dad was there, but Maria was…”
“What did your father say?”
“Nothing, not then. He was working on her. Trying to bring her back. She was on the kitchen floor and he had his fingers down her throat. I must’ve shouted because he turned and looked at me. I’ll never forget his expression.”
“Yes?”
“He looked terrified. Panicked. He told me to leave. To call nine-one-one. Then all sorts of people arrived and I was pushed out of the way.”
“Was Debbie there?”
“No, like I said, she’d gone home.”
Lacoste leaned forward and her eyes and voice became intense. “Think carefully. Before you left to go to the store, was Debbie alone with Maria?”
“No, why would she be?”
“Were you together the whole time?”
“Well, I went to the bathroom, and Debbie wasn’t with me.” She smiled, then it faded. “Why’re you asking?”
“Could your sister’s death have been more than a terrible accident?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive. Why are you asking? What does any of this have to do with Debbie’s murder?”
“Have you seen this picture before?”
Isabelle handed her the photograph of the four of them. The last one.
As Abigail stared down, her chin puckered and she took a deep breath. “Yes. But not for years. Where did you find it?”
“At Debbie’s home. It was locked in her desk.”
Abigail’s brows drew together. “But why would it be there? Why would she have it?”
“We don’t know.”
What Isabelle did know, and suspected all along, was that their theory was wrong. Abigail hadn’t found the photo among her father’s things and given it to Debbie, starting a chain of events that led to murder.
No. The picture of that happy day had probably sat in Debbie’s desk for years, forgotten. Debbie Schneider’s murder had nothing to do with the picture, or what had happened to Maria.
Her phone dinged again. Another message from Beauvoir, asking if she’d read the letter.
Not yet, she typed and hit send.
She turned back to Abigail, but was interrupted by a call.
“Yes, what is it?” she demanded. “I’m in the mid—”
“Read the damned letter,” he hissed, and hung up.
Gamache looked at Beauvoir and raised his brows.
Jean-Guy smiled tightly. “All’s well.”
“That bad?” said Colette.
Gamache turned back to the Chancellor and her husband. “You said the other one was upset by Paul Robinson’s letter. Who was that?”
Jean-Paul had gone back to the tissues, but Colette answered. “Debbie Schneider.”
“She was with you when you showed Abigail the suicide note?”
“Yes.”
“When was this?”
“Shortly after Paul’s funeral. It’s my understanding Abby and Debbie had had a falling-out, but they reconnected at the service. Abby returned to Oxford, and Debbie went with her for support. They stayed with us for a weekend, and I decided if I was ever going to show Abby the letter, it would be then, when she had a friend with her.”
“What was the reaction?” Beauvoir asked.
“What you’d expect. Abby was shocked, she didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe that her father would do that to Maria. As you read, he explained in his letter that it was to free them both. Maria from her misery and Abigail from her obligation, her burden. She was freed to live her life.”
The letter had been deeply disturbing and painful, even for a stranger to read. A father trying to justify killing his daughter. But what had struck Jean-Guy, and he suspected Armand too, was that last bit.
Even if it was true, why lay some of the motive, and therefore indirectly the blame, for the murder on the other child? How could she not, then, spend the rest of her life feeling guilty? Her sister had been sacrificed so she could have a better life.
Did that explain Abigail Robinson’s headlong pursuit of terminating pregnancies of children who’d be born less than perfect? So no other parent need make that choice?