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.
Like a man warding off an attack, Gamache put up his hands and turned his head away, dropping his gaze. Asking them to give him a moment.
Instead of pulling on the thread, now he was trying to follow it. The answer was right there. He was sure of it. Gently, carefully, quietly, he traced it back.
From Debbie’s body. To Abigail’s confrontation with Vincent Gilbert at the party. To the attack in the gym.
From Abigail’s controversial research into the pandemic. To clearing out her father’s home, and finding Ewen Cameron lurking there. And, by association, Vincent Gilbert.
The agenda. The photograph. And, maybe, the copy of the strangely but carefully worded suicide note.
And finally, again and always, he came face-to-face with Abby Maria.
He stood up. “We won’t find the truth sitting here. We need to go back to the Roberge home. I think Paul Robinson trusted the Chancellor to keep his secret. To help him hide the truth. I think that was his eternal gratitude.”
“You know what that is?” asked Lacoste, getting up too. “The truth?”
“No. But I think Colette Roberge does.”
CHAPTER 44
It was just before six when she opened the door. She was in her housecoat, and while surprised to see them, Chancellor Roberge did not look shocked.
After she took them into the now familiar kitchen, and offered coffee, they sat at the table.
Without prelude, Armand said, “Paul Robinson trusted you with the truth, and now we need to hear it.”
“No. What Paul trusted me with, Armand, was Abigail. He loved her. He loved both his daughters more than life itself. That’s the only truth you need to know.”
“If he loved her so much, why would he tell you to show her his suicide note?” asked Isabelle. “Why would he hurt her like that?”
The Chancellor crossed one arm over her lap and rested her other elbow on it, bringing her hand to her mouth. She could not have been more armored if she’d been wearing chain mail.
Gamache could see Isabelle’s frustration, shared by Beauvoir. Shared by himself. But he also felt a frisson of elation.
This was the question.
Why would Paul Robinson write such a letter, then ask Colette to show it to his daughter? What was he trying to tell her? What was that precise man, that loving father, trying to say?
Why couldn’t he make this last connection? What couldn’t he see?
“Tell us again about that weekend in the Cotswolds,” Gamache said. “When you showed Abigail and Debbie the letter.”
Though still guarded, the Chancellor relaxed, slightly. “I remember it was Saturday afternoon. Dreary. We’d been on a long walk and stopped for lunch at a pub. Sat in front of the inglenook and had a ploughman’s.”
Though not a lot of that sentence made sense to Beauvoir, he followed the gist. “You remember that much detail?”
Colette turned to him. “I couldn’t tell you what I had for lunch the day before, or after. I remember because I knew what I was about to do. I had the letter on me, and as we sat with our pints, chatting, it seemed the perfect time to show Abigail. Everyone was relaxed. Comfortable. I actually had it in my hand, then put it back in my pocket. It was too public. By the time we left it was drizzling. One of those cold, damp English days.”
Armand remembered them well, and with fondness, from his time at Cambridge. Sitting in the pub by the fire with a pint, studying, as a heavy mist settled outside.
“When we got home, I made tea and took the tray into the living room. Jean-Paul was laying the fire while the girls got into warm, dry clothes. I knew it was time.”
She paused. Reliving that moment. What she was about to do.
Armand knew what it felt like. He again had the sense of standing in front of the closed door. Two inches of wood between the family inside and catastrophe.
He saw his hand lift. Made into a fist. Ready to rap on the door and change a life, end a life. He’d look into those mild, inquiring eyes. I’m sorry, but I have news about your daughter. Son. Husband. Wife. Mother.
Father.
“I brought out the letter,” said Colette, “and gave it to her.”
“What was her reaction when she read it?” asked Jean-Guy.
“I watched her face, of course,” said Colette. “I could see exactly where she was in the letter. When she came to the part about him killing Maria, she crumpled it in her lap and made a noise. Sort of deflated.”
“Did she say anything?” asked Jean-Guy, quietly.
“She whispered, ‘Oh, God. Daddy. You did that?’” Colette shook her head. “I’ve asked myself a thousand times if I did the right thing, in showing her. It seemed…” She searched for the word.
Cruel? thought Jean-Guy.
Unkind? thought Isabelle.
“Unnecessary?” suggested Armand when Colette seemed stuck.
She looked at him. “Yes. That was it. I couldn’t understand why he’d want or need her to know. But he did. And it wasn’t for me to question. I was like the executor of his will, with a small w. Paul had his reasons, and he knew his daughter better than I did.”
“And Debbie?” Armand asked. “Jean-Paul said she reacted even more strongly when she read it.”
“Yes.” Then her brow creased in an effort to recall. “But she never actually read the letter.”
“Pardon?”
“She reached for it, but Abigail did this.” Colette mimed turning away and clutching something to her chest, protectively.
“So how did she know what was in it?” Isabelle asked.
“Abigail told her.”
“Read it to her, you mean?” asked Armand. It was important, vital at this stage, to be precise.
“No. She described the letter.”
“Accurately?” asked Isabelle.
“Oui. Debbie started to cry. Abigail didn’t. At least, not that I saw. I think she was just too shocked.”
“Did you and Abigail have a chance to talk about the letter privately?” asked Armand.
“Yes. I told her that her father loved both his daughters. And that it was his choice, his decision. And not her responsibility.”
“And you kept the letter,” said Armand.
“I asked Abby if she wanted it, but she didn’t. So yes, I’ve had it all this time.”
“And as far as you know, Debbie never actually read it?”
“That’s right. Why?”
“Paul Robinson made a copy of it. I’m wondering where it went.”
Now Colette smiled and nodded. “Yes, I can see him doing that. I’d do that.”
“I imagine you’d also be clearer, Colette.”
Her smile flattened and she stared at him, then at the other two. “You noticed that, did you?”
“You did too?”
“Not at first, but I read it again a few years later, and it struck me that he never really came right out and said he’d killed Maria. It’s near impossible to read it and not come to that conclusion. And yet…”
“Why didn’t he just say it?” Armand asked.
He thought back to the notes he’d written before heading into an action he was leading. One he knew could go very badly. The scribbled words of love. And then sliding his wedding ring off and sealing it in the envelope, to be left in his desk drawer.
In case.
There was no ambiguity about those few words. And neither should there have been about Paul Robinson’s. He’d had, after all, time to consider. Years in fact. To choose each word.
Armand Gamache had no doubt that Robinson had indeed killed himself. And he had absolutely no doubt Robinson had written the suicide note. But what was he saying?
And to whom?
Colette Roberge? Abigail?