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.
“The agenda,” said Jean-Guy.
“Yes,” said Gamache. “The agenda. That’s what Debbie found. That’s what Debbie hid.”
The evidence box arrived at the Auberge within the hour.
By then they’d showered and changed into warm clothes. Armand had wound a bright red cashmere scarf around his neck and tucked it into his parka, to better protect himself against the biting cold.
The night was impossibly clear, the sky awash with stars.
It was preternaturally quiet. Still. Peaceful.
The only sound was the rhythmic crunching of their boots on the snow-covered road as they made their way past St. Thomas’s, past the New Forest. Toward the only light visible. Toward the Old Hadley House, at the top of the hill.
It was like a beacon, thought Gamache. A lighthouse.
Except a lighthouse was a warning, of shoals, of rocks. It was not a destination. No mariner would steer toward one, he knew, as their steps took them closer and closer.
Once there, they found the agent sitting on a straight-backed chair in the lobby, the box on her knee and her arms around it.
“Agent Lavigne, isn’t it?” said the Chief Inspector.
“Oui, patron.” She stood up so quickly the box almost fell to the floor. When Inspector Lacoste took it, the young agent turned to Gamache.
“If you don’t mind…” She was holding out a receipt.
Beauvoir pressed his lips together and made a mental note to buy her a coffee. If not for good sense, then for valor.
She left with a receipt signed, Armand Gamache. And they were left with the box.
Putting it on the conference table in the Incident Room, Beauvoir handed around sterile gloves. Gamache put them on, trying not to show the nausea he still felt as the memories came flooding back, carried on the scent of latex.
Lacoste brought out her phone to record the proceedings.
Breaking the seal, Beauvoir picked up the various items, dictating as he went. All went into bags and were labeled.
The last three items he placed on the desk.
“Four birthday cards.”
Isabelle opened them. “For Abigail’s sixteenth to nineteenth birthdays. All signed, Love, Debbie. So now we know exactly when the falling-out happened.”
“Not long after Maria died,” said Gamache.
“Here’s the photograph,” said Beauvoir. Turning it over he saw, neatly written, The last one. It was the same handwriting as the suicide note.
There was only one item left, sitting all alone at the bottom of the box.
“An agenda,” he said, for the recording. But it was, they all knew, far more than that.
He opened the front cover to reveal the name and year. Then he handed it to Chief Inspector Gamache. “Paul Robinson’s.”
Gamache closed his eyes for a moment and exhaled. He’d thought maybe, but until Jean-Guy had said that, he hadn’t been sure.
“From the year Maria died?” asked Isabelle.
“Non,” said Jean-Guy. “From the year he died.”
Armand sat down, put on his reading glasses, and opened it.
“Debbie Schneider found it when they were going through his things,” said Isabelle.
“Just weeks ago,” said Armand, looking up. “Oui. I think that was the catalyst.”
They’d come around and now hung over his shoulder as he turned to the day Paul Robinson died.
“It’s blank,” said Isabelle. Though disappointed, she knew he was hardly likely to put in a reminder to kill himself.
“I think when Debbie found it, this picture”—Gamache held it up—“was in that page. You can just see where some of the resin from the gloss has come off. We’ll get it analyzed.”
Armand turned the pages. All the ones going forward were blank.
Then he turned back. One page. Two. And there was the entry. The last one.
Letter to Colette. Copy.
And there it was. So matter-of-fact. Not the word “letter,” but the other one.
“Copy,” said Armand, nodding. “You said it, Isabelle. You even did it.” He looked over at the scanner. “You made a copy of the letter. So why wouldn’t he? It’s been bothering me. Everyone describes Paul Robinson as a methodical scientist. Wouldn’t he make a copy of something so important?”
“And he did,” said Isabelle. “So where is it?”
Smiling, Armand turned the book upside down and shook, waiting for the letter to flutter out.
But it did not. Nothing came out.
“Sometimes the magic works,” he said with a sigh.
Jean-Guy smiled, recognizing the quote from Little Big Man.
“Okay,” said Isabelle, “let’s say Debbie found the copy of the suicide letter among his things. Where is it? And how could it matter? She already knew what was in it. She’d read the original when Colette showed it to them. I agree that what started this all off was something they found when going through Paul Robinson’s things, but I don’t think it’s that.” She pointed to the agenda. “That was the ninety-ninth monkey.”
“And the hundredth?” asked Jean-Guy, also taking a seat.
“Was something Abigail found. The letter from Gilbert, demanding payment for torturing her mother. That’s what started all this.”
Gamache removed his reading glasses, the better to study her. “Go on.”
“That letter from Gilbert must’ve been explosive. It changed everything for Abigail, but it also explained everything. Cameron’s experiments led to the deaths of her mother, her sister, and her father.”
Isabelle leaned forward, her arms outstretched on the table, trying to get them to embrace her scenario.
“Abigail is smart. She realizes that it’s a personal tragedy, but also a professional opportunity. Vincent Gilbert, the great humanitarian, was involved in the most shameful event in Canadian medicine. What would he do to hush that up? She was in the middle of a shit storm of controversy. She needed allies. She admits she came to Québec to try to blackmail Gilbert into an endorsement. But suppose it’s more than that?”
“You’re saying she came here to kill him,” said Gamache.
“We talked about that, yes. Doesn’t that make the most sense? Maybe she didn’t start off with that idea, maybe it did start as only blackmail, but when she came face-to-face with him at the party, it changed. He was smug, arrogant. Mocking. She snapped. This wasn’t a murder with a whole lot of thought. A whole lot of planning.”
“So how does Debbie Schneider end up dead?” asked Jean-Guy.
“Because Gilbert gets there first. He had a whole lot of motives.” Isabelle ticked them off on her fingers. “To protect his reputation.” One tick. “To make up for what he didn’t do before.” Another. “In self-defense when he realizes what she probably has in mind for him.” A third. “He just made one mistake.”
“He killed the wrong person?” said Beauvoir.
“Did he? Maybe he knew, or suspected, that Debbie Schneider had the letter from Cameron, the proof. He had to get it back. And there was something only he could do.”
Isabelle looked from one to the other. It all seemed so obvious. Couldn’t they see it?
To his credit, she thought, the Chief Inspector did seem to be trying. There were deep creases across his forehead and his eyes had the thoughtful, slightly unfocused look of someone struggling to see something in the distance.
“The firewood,” she finally said. “Vincent Gilbert was alone in the library on New Year’s Eve. He was just about the only one who could pick up a log and—”
“Come on, Isabelle,” said Jean-Guy. “This’s all circumstantial. You have no evidence that Gilbert did it. But there is evidence that Debbie Schneider—”