The Madness of Crowds--A Novel

by Louise Penny

  The email address and phone number would appear on screen when the news was broadcast.

  He answered a few more questions, made a couple more statements, before turning away to rejoin the investigation.

  “Why was Professor Robinson even allowed to speak?” one of the reporters called out. “Given what she’s advocating, shouldn’t you have stopped it?”

  Gamache stopped and turned back. Pausing for a moment, he looked into the glaring lights.

  “I’ll be honest with you, it was something we struggled with. There are, in any free society, competing and sometimes contradictory needs. The need for freedom of expression, even those, especially those views we might not agree with. And the need for safety. A judgment was made that Professor Robinson’s thesis, though controversial, did not break any laws and therefore should proceed.”

  “She’s advocating mass murder,” yelled someone who might, or might not, have been a member of the press. “Are you saying you agree?”

  Gamache heaved a sigh, stronger than he’d expected, before saying, “I’m saying that my job is to defend the law. And the law, in this case, was clear. Therefore, the role of the Sûreté was to protect the people inside the auditorium. I need to get back to work. When there’s more to report, I promise to let you know. For now, everyone needs to know this was a targeted, isolated event, and they are safe.”

  “You thought that about the lecture,” a voice called after him, as he stepped away from the microphone and the harsh lights. “And look what happened.”

  Gamache returned to the gym, setting up a temporary office backstage, to oversee the million details that went into an investigation of this sort. The witnesses to interview, the evidence to collect. The reports to write. The phone calls to make and take. There were a hundred things his investigators needed to do, and a hundred things only the Chief Inspector could do.

  Édouard Tardif had no record. There was no history of violence. It seemed he’d woken up that morning, picked up a gun, and decided to murder someone. In a crowded auditorium.

  Of course, one of the big questions remained, how did the gun get inside? Did they miss it at the door, or was there indeed an accomplice? Someone who hid it beforehand?

  Gamache knew, as did the other senior officers, that they had to assume there had been someone else. And they suspected that someone had fled to the Abitibi, knowing his brother would be caught immediately.

  Finally, Armand had arrived home. Jean-Guy had stayed behind, supposedly to coordinate with the Sûreté in the Abitibi and organize the other units who would work through the night.

  But they both knew the real reason.

  He did not want to drive back with his Chief. Even less, with his father-in-law. He did not want to be alone with the man who could barely look him in the eyes.

  By the time Armand returned to Three Pines, the older children were fed, bathed, and already in bed.

  Reine-Marie met him at the door and, embracing him, she whispered, “We heard.”

  After decades as the spouse of a senior cop, she knew not to ask if he was all right. Clearly he was not. Instead she just held him tight.

  “Jean-Guy?” asked Annie, standing at the door and shielding baby Idola from the gust of winter that came in with her father.

  “He’ll be home soon.” Armand closed the door, took off his parka, then reached for his granddaughter.

  With Annie’s permission, he took Idola upstairs and, rolling up his sleeves, he bathed her, careful to keep her upright. The scent of the baby soap so soothing.

  He put on her diaper, his hands expertly folding and fastening and testing.

  Not too tight. Not too loose. “Just right,” he whispered.

  He chatted with her the whole time. Singing a little. Resting his large hand on her back and neck and head as she smiled up at him.

  Such a cheerful child.

  He thought of Abigail Robinson and tried to suppress his rage. And the fleeting thought of what would have happened had he not reacted quite so quickly.

  When he’d put Idola in her crib, Armand kissed Honoré, who was once again sleeping with his toboggan. Then he went next door to his granddaughters.

  Florence had made a tent of her bedding and was under it with a flashlight, reading The Little Prince.

  She looked guilty when her papa interrupted, but he gave her a wintergreen mint and reassured her he wouldn’t tell.

  Once downstairs, he found Daniel at the door with the dogs.

  “Walk?” Daniel asked.

  “Me or the dogs?”

  “Both. If you promise not to run away, I won’t put you on a leash.”

  Armand laughed. The first one in what seemed a very long time. Father and son strolled around the deserted village green, heads bowed, bobbing slightly and in unison with each step. They chatted. They paused, to find Orion’s Belt and the Big Dipper in the Northern Hemisphere sky. They threw snowballs for Henri to catch, while old Fred and little Gracie looked on and seemed to say, Silly dog.

  Daniel finally asked, “Can you talk about it, Dad?”

  In the dark, Armand nodded. “It’s probably good to talk.”

  And so he did. And when he finished, Daniel had questions, which Armand answered fully. More fully than he’d answered the reporters. He knew Daniel would keep this private.

  Though there was one thing Armand didn’t tell him.

  Jean-Guy had returned by then and was sitting with everyone else in the living room. When Daniel and Armand returned, they found the television on.

  “We were going to watch the news. Do you mind, Armand?” Reine-Marie asked.

  “Non. I need to see how it’s reported.” He poured a weak scotch and joined them.

  Watching all this with shrewd eyes, Annie knew something was wrong. Her father hadn’t spoken to her husband. Could barely look at him. And vice versa.

  “What’s wrong? What happened?” she whispered to Jean-Guy as they sat together on the sofa.

  But he just shook his head.

  The events at the Université de l’Estrie led the news.

  “Are you kidding,” whispered Stephen, as the reporter described Professor Robinson’s thesis, her growing popularity, and the increasingly violent confrontations.

  There was footage, taken from phones in the hall. It was, of course, shaky, but it gave the sense of what had happened.

  The firecrackers going off.

  Then the screams, the shouts. The beginning of panic. They could hear Armand’s voice, calling for calm. And then the shots.

  Reine-Marie inhaled sharply, a sort of gasp. The others looked at Armand. Except Jean-Guy, who was staring straight ahead.

  Abigail Robinson was interviewed. She refused to discuss the contents of her lecture, saying what mattered now was that everyone was safe.

  It was, Gamache thought as he held Reine-Marie’s hand, typically masterful. She came across as caring, thoughtful. Deeply distressed and profoundly empathetic.

  It could have been worse.

  She didn’t say it now. She was far too sophisticated for that. But she’d said it to him.

  And she was right. But it could also have been better.

  That was, Armand realized, the professor in brief. Stating a truth, but leaving out a greater truth.

  He appeared in the report, answering questions about public safety and reassuring the population that this was a targeted crime. They were safe.

  On the television, Armand praised the audience members for their extraordinary restraint in not panicking. In helping each other get out, and once out, comforting those who needed help. He talked about their caring for, and about, each other. And what a difference that made.

  He praised the building caretaker and the Sûreté officers who’d done their duty under extremely trying conditions.

  Annie saw her husband drop his eyes and stare at the rug between his slippered feet.

  “Jean-Guy?” she whispered.

  He turned and looked at her, m
anaging a smile.

  She smiled back. Warm. Loving. Supportive. He wondered how long that would last, if she learned the truth. No, he thought. Not if, but when. He knew he’d tell her what he did, and what he did not do.

  But first, he had to talk with Armand.

  After the news, they said bonne nuit and went to bed. Though Armand still had work to do.

  He sat at his laptop, reading updates and writing reports.

  Around him the house settled into familiar sounds. Water running. Footsteps on creaky floorboards overhead. Muffled conversations that became hushed, then fell to silence.

  The slight groans and cracks as the temperature dropped still further and frost crept once again into the bricks and beams of the old home.

  Armand could sense Jean-Guy’s presence before he actually saw him. He could always tell when the younger man was close.

  After finishing the last email of the evening, a detailed report to the Premier of Québec, he turned.

  “Yes?”

  “Can we talk?”

  Armand reached over and turned off the lamp on his desk, then got up.

  Using his reading glasses, he pointed into the empty living room and the fire dying in the grate. As he left his study, he glanced at the stairs, which would take him up to bed. To Reine-Marie.

  He could decline to talk with Jean-Guy, explaining that he was tired. It would wait until morning. He could climb the stairs, shower, then pull up the comforter and feel it warming up around his body. Feel her, warm in his arms.

  But he knew this really would not wait. They needed to talk. This was another injury done that day. Best not to let it fester.

  “Actually,” said Jean-Guy, “I was hoping we could get out of the house.”

  “The dogs have already been walked.” Armand had decided to call Gracie a dog, for simplicity’s sake. And for his own peace of mind. Who needed a chipmunk in the house?

  Though Stephen had now taken to telling the children that, after careful scientific study, he’d concluded that Gracie was almost certainly a ratmunk. A fantastical cross between a chipmunk and a rat.

  “With, just possibly,” he’d explained as they bent toward him, “a bit of duck. We’ll have to wait until Gracie gets older, to see if she can fly.”

  “Fly?” sighed Zora.

  It was hard to tell if the children actually believed him, but they at least humored the elderly man.

  “I was thinking the bistro,” said Jean-Guy.

  Armand glanced at his watch, then out the window. It felt like three in the morning but was, in reality, just before midnight. He could see the bistro’s cheerful lights and was pretty sure he recognized Myrna’s distinctive silhouette as she passed from the bar to the sofa by the large stone hearth.

  Before arriving in Three Pines, Myrna Landers had been a prominent psychologist in Montréal, specializing in especially difficult cases. Part of her work was in the SHU, the Special Handling Unit, reserved for the worst, the most troubled offenders. The insane.

  Dr. Landers decided there were better ways, better places, happier people to spend her life with. So she’d submitted her resignation, cleared her case files, sold her home, packed her car, and one spring morning she’d turned south.

  Her goal was to keep driving until she finally, Ulysses-like, found a community where the people did not know what an ice scraper was. But, losing her way after only an hour of driving, she crested a hill and found a tiny village in a valley. It wasn’t on her map. In fact, her GPS was warning her she was in the middle of a meadow, in the middle of nowhere.

  But it was wrong. She was somewhere.

  From the top of the hill she could see fieldstone homes, clapboard cottages, and brick shops surrounding a village green. Perennial gardens were in their first blush. There were peonies and huge purple lilac bushes. Banks of lupins grew wild down the slope.

  Three massive pine trees stood in the center of the village.

  She drove down and parked in front of the shops. Getting out, she took a deep breath of fresh air and fresh baking. Going into the bistro to ask for directions, Myrna Landers sat down, ordered a café au lait and a fresh, crispy, warm amandine. And pretty much never left.

  She rented the shop next door, opened a new and used bookstore, and moved into the loft above.

  Armand suspected the other glass of red wine he could see Myrna carrying was for her best friend, the artist Clara Morrow.

  “D’accord,” he said to Jean-Guy. “The bistro it is.”

  As he put on his parka and boots, he wondered why Jean-Guy wanted to leave when the home was warm, and private. But as they walked across to the bistro, he understood.

  Home was home. A safe, almost sacred place.

  Jean-Guy did not want to sully it with what was about to be said. And once again Armand was reminded of how much he admired and respected Jean-Guy Beauvoir.

  Which made what was about to happen all the worse.

  CHAPTER 8

  Clara looked up as the door opened and a gust of cold air blew in, bringing with it Armand and Jean-Guy.

  A pretzel she’d absently stuck in her hair, thinking it was a pencil, fell to the old pine floor. Stooping to pick it up, she popped it in her mouth and wondered just how many pencils she might have eaten, mistaking them for pretzels. Since it didn’t bear thinking of, she stopped.

  “Huh,” said Myrna, also turning to look. “Didn’t expect to see them.”

  She began to rock her large body out of the deep sofa. But stopped when she saw Armand’s face.

  Beside her on the sofa Rosa the duck muttered, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” and also looked surprised. But then ducks often did.

  “Who’s that?” asked the woman in the armchair closest to the fire. Unused to winter, she wore layers of itchy wool under her flowing fuchsia caftan. A wool scarf around her neck met the hijab covering her head, framing her lined face.

  Though only in her early twenties, Haniya Daoud looked much older.

  Her lips were thin in displeasure. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  “Cops,” said Ruth Zardo. “Sûreté du Québec. Brutal. Especially to people of color, as Myrna knows. Probably heard you were here.” She looked around. “Too late to run.”

  “For chrissake, Ruth,” snapped Myrna. She turned to Haniya. “It’s not true.”

  But it was too late. The newcomer was gripping Ruth’s thin arm. “Save me. I know what police do to people like me. You have to help me.” Her voice had risen in panic. “Please. I’m begging you.”

  Ruth, seeing what she’d created, was desperately trying to walk it back. “No. No, no, no” was all she could get out.

  Haniya started to wail and rock back and forth. Rosa let out a mighty “Fuuuuuuck.”

  Only when Myrna started to laugh did Ruth get it. Her eyes narrowed, and she looked at Haniya. “Are you messing with me?”

  “And why would I do that?” the young woman said, perfectly composed now and smiling.

  But there was a sharp glint in her eye, which Myrna the psychologist and Clara the artist both recognized. It wasn’t amusement, it was malice.

  Armand and Jean-Guy had taken off their coats and were making their way across the bistro, with its wooden beams and wide-plank floor. Huge fieldstone fireplaces on either end were lit and throwing warmth.

  Neither man acknowledged their friends and neighbors. They kept their eyes forward and kept walking.

  A hush had descended. Everyone in the bistro knew what had happened at the University that afternoon. Ruth gave them her usual greeting, but they ignored the raised finger.

  Jean-Guy in particular looked grim.

  * * *

  Armand passed any number of places before choosing a small round table far from everyone else.

  He pointed, indicating Jean-Guy should sit at the far seat. The one in the corner. Jean-Guy wondered if that was on purpose. Like a naughty child.

  Very little of what the Chief Inspector did was without purpose.


  As he squeezed in, Jean-Guy glanced at the group by the fireplace. How he wished they were headed there. To sit by the fire and talk about a day that had been uneventful. To hear how many books Ruth had stolen from Myrna, claiming to believe her bookstore was a library. To hear about Clara’s latest painting and watch crumbs drop from her hair as she moved her expressive hands through it.

  To exchange insults with the crazy old poet, and pretend not to hear the mutterings of that odd duck. To be joined by Olivier and Gabri, at the end of their day running the bistro, and pretend not to be interested in gossip about who’d be at the New Year’s Eve party the next night, up at the big house on the hill.

  As they’d walked over to their table, he’d noticed there was someone else sitting by the fire. Someone he didn’t recognize. An older woman in a hijab.

  And it came to Jean-Guy who this must be. Myrna had said she’d be picking her up in Montréal that evening. There was much excitement in the village about the arrival of Haniya Daoud. A woman who’d endured so much. Survived so much. Spoken at the UN. Led a movement for social justice. Led so many others to freedom. Was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

  Myrna Landers, with the support of others in Three Pines, had been among the first to answer Haniya Daoud’s call for help. A human rights campaign was launched, in a corner of the world few seemed to know about and fewer still seemed to care about.

  Madame Daoud was in Canada to thank Myrna and others for their support.

  Now Jean-Guy wondered, in passing, if she’d be at the New Year’s Eve party. Did people like that go to parties, or was it too frivolous?

  He also wondered if he’d be going, or still be stuck in the corner.

  All this flashed through his mind as he sucked in his stomach, whose size was beginning to surprise him, and maneuvered into the seat.

  “What will you have?” Armand asked.

  “I’ll get it,” said Jean-Guy, struggling to stand up again.

  “Sit. I will. What do you want?”

  As Armand spoke, Olivier was making his way across the room to their table.