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.
“Merci, Marc. Nothing to worry about.”
Move along, nothing to see here. Though there always was.
Just asking questions. No real reason. Though there always was.
Nothing to worry about. Though …
“Nothing,” said Beauvoir, when Gamache hung up.
Isabelle appeared from the other direction and agreed.
“What’s going on?” demanded Haniya, who was standing in the lobby beside Chancellor Roberge.
“Look outside,” Gamache said to Beauvoir and Lacoste, then turned to Haniya.
“Did you see or speak to Professor Robinson or Dr. Gilbert last night when you got back from our place?”
“No. I went right to my room.”
“And this morning? Did you hear or see anything?”
“I was asleep until you called. What’s happened?” She looked from the Chief Inspector to the Chancellor, who seemed troubled.
Beauvoir arrived back. “The agent saw the night shift leave at six thirty but didn’t check them.”
“There’re boot prints leading into the woods,” reported Lacoste, breathless.
“Toward the crime scene?” asked Gamache.
“No. Toward the cabin. Two sets.”
“Damn.” Gamache looked at his watch. “That was seventeen minutes ago.” He turned to Colette. “What’s his plan? What’s he going to do to her?”
The Chancellor was pale. Her breathing rapid. Her mind working. “Nothing. I’m sure of it.”
But of all the things she seemed, “sure” wasn’t one of them.
“There’re snowmobiles in the garage,” Gamache said to Beauvoir and Lacoste.
While they sprinted out, he turned to Colette and Haniya. “Stay here. Don’t follow us. I mean it, Colette. Do not follow us.”
They heard engines revving outside.
“Chief?” Lacoste called from the door.
At the door Gamache put on his gloves, then said to Colette, more gently now, “Paul Robinson was wrong. You know that.”
More revving.
“Was he?”
“Don’t follow us.”
The Chancellor noticed the emphasis and tilted her head.
Gamache pointed at Haniya. “Stay.”
She was clearly outraged at being spoken to like that. He couldn’t blame her. But it had to be done.
He plunged back into the cold, and after speaking quickly to the Sûreté agent in the car, he hurried over to Beauvoir and Lacoste, each astride their own snowmobiles.
“Are you armed?” he asked, his voice raised above the roar.
When both shook their heads, he opened his glove to reveal a gun. “Here, take it.”
“Not yours,” said Beauvoir, zipping it into a pocket of his parka.
“Non. The agent’s. For God’s sake, don’t lose it. Gilbert has a rifle. It’s licensed. He has it for protection in case a bear attacks, though I doubt he’s ever fired it.”
“Only because he prefers bears to people,” said Lacoste.
Gamache got on the lead machine and, gunning it, he crossed the road and headed deep into the woods. With Beauvoir and Lacoste right behind.
The wind was full in their faces. Their eyes teared and their cheeks froze as they hunched over their machines. Banking around corners, and racing ahead, desperate to get to the cabin.
Just before the last curve, Gamache stopped and dismounted. As did the others.
They ran the rest of the way, slipping and skidding on the snow and ice. When one fell, the others ran back and dragged them up.
Sunlight bounced off the reds, blues, and greens of their coats, as the three of them plunged forward.
They could smell the cabin before they saw it. A fire had been lit in the hearth and the scent wafted to them through the thin air. Rounding the corner, they slowed to a walk. Then, at a signal from Gamache, they stepped off the path and into the woods. Their boots sank knee-deep into the snow as they waded through it, catching glimpses of the cabin through the forest.
It sat at the far side of the clearing, a wisp of smoke coming out the stone chimney. A propane lamp had been lit, throwing soft light from inside onto the pristine snow.
It was a peaceful scene. Like a Christmas card, or a snow globe before being shaken.
But it was time to shake it up.
Gamache pointed, and together they sprinted across the clearing, skidding to a stop at the cabin. Pressing themselves against the logs, they held their breaths.
Nothing. They hadn’t been heard.
Lacoste craned her neck and glanced through the window. Then ducked back down.
“They’re sitting by the fire,” she whispered. “One on either side. Talking.”
“Talking?” asked Beauvoir. He had his hand on his pocket. He hadn’t yet unzipped it, but he could feel the comforting outline through the goose down.
“Oui. I can’t see the rifle.”
She looked again, then ducked down quickly. “Gilbert’s gone.”
“Get back,” said Gamache. As Beauvoir and Lacoste went to scramble around the corner, the cabin door opened.
Armand threw out his arm, as a father did to instinctively protect a child in the passenger seat, when something unexpected happened.
They froze.
Vincent Gilbert stepped onto the small porch and looked around. He held something in his hands. Something long and metallic.
At the small sound of a pocket beginning to unzip, his eyes swung around and landed on Gamache.
Armand stood up and faced Gilbert.
“What’re you doing in there, Vincent?” he asked.
“What’re you doing out there, Armand?”
The Sûreté officers followed Vincent Gilbert into the cabin.
Gamache saw Jean-Guy’s hand on his still sealed pocket and made a small gesture.
Not yet.
Isabelle was the only one who hadn’t been in the Asshole Saint’s home before. She quickly took in the single room.
A brass bed, separated from the rest of the cabin by bookcases, was at one end. A small kitchen with worn wooden counters and an old pine table was at the other. And in between was a sitting area around a woodstove, which Gilbert was now tending with the poker he’d been carrying.
The cabin was warm and smelled of sweet pine and herbs. It smelled of the forest. As though the log walls were an illusion. Like so much else about this case.
Propane lanterns had been lit, and a coffeepot was perking on the woodstove.
It would have been a perfect domestic scene, if not for the rifle on the coffee table among the mugs, the cream jug, and the sugar bowl. Like a still life in Appalachia.
Two oversized armchairs were in front of the fire. One for solitude. Two for friendship.
Neither Henry David Thoreau nor Vincent Gilbert had anticipated so much society. Nor could the two people who’d been in the chairs be considered friends.
“May I?” Gamache asked, stepping forward and pointing to the rifle.
“Perhaps not,” said Gilbert, sitting back down, still holding the poker. “As you know, I have a license for it.”
“True, but you’re not licensed to point it at people.”
“It’s just sitting on the table, Armand. Not doing any harm.”
Not yet.
“Are you all right?” Lacoste asked Abigail.
“Yes.”
“Why wouldn’t she be?” asked Gilbert.
Isabelle looked from Gilbert to Abigail. She couldn’t make out who was the hostage and who was the taker. And she could see that Gamache and Beauvoir were having the same difficulty.
While Gilbert held, gripped really, the poker, the rifle was actually closer to Abigail.
“We were just talking,” said Abigail. “Two scientists comparing notes. But looks like the time has come for some sort of conclusion, don’t you think, Dr. Gilbert?”