The Madness of Crowds--A Novel

by Louise Penny

  * * *

  When she’d woken up that morning, Annie had known, instinctively, that she was alone in the bed. Drowsily sneaking her hand over, to confirm, she felt the bedding cool. Not cold. He hadn’t been gone long.

  Throwing on a dressing gown, she went to the room next door and found Jean-Guy at Idola’s crib, looking down at her.

  “Where’s Honoré?” she asked, sleepily.

  Jean-Guy nodded toward the window.

  “On the roof?” she asked as she strolled over. “Brilliant.”

  There was just enough light for Annie to make out the two figures.

  She smiled as she watched little Honoré walking beside his grandmother. The two deep in conversation. And she remembered doing the same thing with her mother. Walking hand in hand through the park near their apartment in Montréal. Telling her mother how the world worked.

  It wasn’t until she was in her twenties, and at the Université de Montréal law school, that she’d begun to listen.

  “I know it’s your turn to get her up,” said Jean-Guy, “but do you mind if I do it this morning?”

  “Are you kidding,” said Annie, turning back to him. “I’d pay you. But”—she looked at him more closely—“are you okay?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I was just wondering if you’re getting a cold. Is your nose blocked?”

  Since the pandemic, even though they’d all had the vaccine, even though there hadn’t been a new case in months, they still worried every time someone coughed.

  “Why do you ask? Oh, God, don’t tell me. Is it that bad?” He bent over Idola and inhaled. “I don’t smell anything.”

  “Not even bacon?”

  “It smells like bacon?”

  Now that would be a miracle, he thought before he realized what Annie was saying.

  She was smiling at him. “If anyone could have a child whose merde smelled of smoked meat, it would be you, but no. It comes from downstairs. Normally when you smell bacon, it’s all I can do to get you decent before you head down.”

  She watched as he finished what he was doing and picked their daughter up, protecting her floppy head as the doctors had shown them. It now came naturally.

  Holding Idola secure in his arms, he looked at Annie, who was staring at him with those thoughtful eyes, so like her father’s.

  “Everything okay?” she asked again.

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  “About Idola?” asked Annie, her voice rising in timber.

  “Non. Not really.” He sat on the side of Honoré’s bed.

  Annie joined him. “What is it? Is it bad? Did something happen yesterday? You seemed so distracted.”

  Jean-Guy brought Idola closer to him. Smelling her hair. Feeling her tiny fingers grasping his collar.

  “Last night, in the bistro,” he said, not looking at her. “Your father and I talked.”

  “Yes…?”

  This was it. He’d tell her about disobeying orders and abandoning his post. He’d tell her how he felt, sometimes, about their daughter. About their decision.

  He’d tell Annie everything.

  And that’s when he told her.

  About Haniya Daoud.

  * * *

  “News?” Jean-Guy asked when he arrived in the kitchen with Idola.

  He’d put her into a pretty little onesie, a Christmas gift from Stephen. It was covered in cavorting pink mice, each holding what looked like a wedge of cheese, or lemon meringue pie.

  “Non. Nothing,” said Armand, kissing Idola’s head. “She smells nice. New powder?”

  “It’s the bacon, Dad,” said Annie, and turned to Roslyn. “Men.”

  “I know. For years Daniel thought our children smelled of croissants.”

  “They don’t?” asked Daniel, and looked cross-eyed at Zora, who laughed.

  “I’ve spoken to Isabelle,” said Jean-Guy, pouring himself a coffee. “We’re set to interrogate Tardif later this morning. His lawyer will be there, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Idola sat on Armand’s knee as he listened to Zora, Florence, and Honoré describe the day ahead.

  Just then there was a flurry of dings, pings as texts arrived for Annie, Roslyn, and Reine-Marie. All with the same message from Clara, inviting them over for breakfast with Haniya Daoud. It seemed slightly more than an invitation, Reine-Marie noticed. More like a plea.

  Roslyn composed an excited reply.

  Yes, plenty. So exited. Can I binge the girds? Mercury.

  Not her best composition, but Clara understood and immediately sent back a text saying, best not to bring the grills.

  “I wonder why not,” said Roslyn.

  “Too scary,” said Jean-Guy, catching Armand’s eye.

  “You’re right,” said Annie. “We don’t want to overwhelm Haniya. She must be a little fragile.”

  Reine-Marie, who’d declined the invitation with regret, saying she had work to do, walked over to her husband.

  “I saw that look. What’s up?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” he whispered.

  The breakfast dishes were cleared away so that Annie and Roslyn could go and have their second breakfast with the honored visitor.

  Stephen was up by then and dressed as always in a crisp shirt, sweater, and gray flannels. Ready for a board meeting, should one arise.

  “Still finding monkeys?” he asked Reine-Marie, after getting a mug of coffee.

  She was now sitting by the woodstove at the far end of the kitchen and bending over a large cardboard box. “Oui.”

  “What’s the count?” he asked, joining her.

  “Fifty-seven, so far.”

  “What a weird person, collecting monkeys,” said Stephen, cradling Gracie, his ratmunk.

  “Wish I could say it’s the strangest thing I’ve found going through people’s things.”

  Having risen to chief archivist in Québec, Reine-Marie had recently decided to retire and take on consulting work.

  This was a commission from a local family to go through their mother’s things. The matriarch had recently died, leaving them far less wealth than expected, a rambling old house, and boxes and boxes of clothes, papers, knickknacks, and a completely unexpected collection of monkey dolls, monkey postcards, stuffed, painted, and illustrated monkeys. All in boxes in the attic.

  Though by far the largest collection of monkeys were hand-drawn on all sorts of documents.

  It was a puzzle, and one Reine-Marie hoped to solve.

  “Any of them valuable?” asked the old financier.

  “Not that I know of,” she said, holding a moth-eaten monkey doll by an ear.

  Armand had joined them, carrying a dossier.

  “All right,” said Reine-Marie. “Before you lose yourself in work, what did that look between you and Jean-Guy mean, when we were talking about Haniya Daoud?”

  “It’s just that if Annie and Roslyn are expecting a saint, they’re going to be disappointed.”

  “Why? What’s she like?”

  When he didn’t answer, her eyes grew serious and she understood.

  “It’s a miracle she survived at all,” said Reine-Marie, “and that she turned her own pain into doing so much good. Not surprising she’d be…” What was the right word? “Difficult.”

  “Oui,” said Armand. “And then some. Certainly wounded, maybe even unbalanced, in that she sees quite clearly what’s wrong with the world but can’t seem to see what’s right.”

  Though Haniya Daoud had certainly seen into him. If not his head, then she’d seen through the cracks, into his broken heart.

  And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

  Armand wondered if Florence understood that line from The Little Prince.

  He hadn’t, as a child. It was only as he got older that he knew it to be true. And now he thought about Haniya Daoud, and what she had see
n. With her own broken heart.

  “An Asshole Saint,” said Stephen. “Not the first. I think most were, weren’t they? In fact, she wouldn’t even be the first around here.”

  “You’re not talking about yourself, are you, Stephen?” asked Reine-Marie. “Because, at least according to Ruth, only one of those words applies to you.”

  “Really? You’d take the word of a madwoman who carries around a duck? Treats that thing like it’s her child, isn’t that right, Gracie?” He kissed the ratmunk on her whiskered nose.

  But both Reine-Marie and Armand knew who Stephen meant. Their resident Asshole Saint lived in a cabin in the woods, preferring his own company to that of anyone else on earth.

  Everyone else on earth felt the same way.

  They’d grown so used to calling him that, and he even introduced himself as the Asshole Saint, that the villagers had almost forgotten who he really was.

  “I haven’t met him yet,” said Stephen. “So what makes him an asshole?”

  “If he’s there tonight, you’ll probably see,” said Reine-Marie. “The saint part is a little more hidden.”

  Armand smiled. That was true. But it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. The man had actually devoted much of his life to improving conditions for the vulnerable. For the forgotten and dismissed. Though whether he actually liked those people was a matter of debate.

  “Well, now I’m really curious,” said Stephen. “Do you think he’ll be at the party tonight?”

  “Probably,” said Reine-Marie. “It’s at his son’s place.”

  “The Auberge,” said Stephen. “Will you be going?”

  The question was directed at Armand.

  “I hope to. Have to see.”

  Actually, he hoped not to. Not that he didn’t want to be there. But he hoped he’d be arresting and interrogating a suspect. The accomplice. And closing this case.

  “Isabelle just called,” said Jean-Guy, leaning against the doorway into the kitchen. “She’ll be at the University auditorium in twenty minutes.”

  “Bon.” Gamache got up and looked at the clock. “I’ll come with you. The President and Chancellor have asked to meet with me.”

  “In the principal’s office, Armand?” asked Stephen.

  “Feels a bit like that.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “Explain yourself,” said Haniya Daoud, staring at Roslyn, whose eyes were wide and getting wider. “You spend your days designing clothing for rich people?”

  * * *

  “Explain yourself,” said the President of the Université de l’Estrie, staring at Gamache.

  Otto Pascal sat behind his large desk while Colette Roberge, the Chancellor, was in a high-back chair that looked uncomfortable. The President had not invited Gamache to sit.

  “Oui. How could this happen?” the Chancellor asked.

  Gamache turned to stare at her.

  * * *

  “Let me explain,” said Éric Viau, the building superintendent, as he stood in the old gym with Inspectors Beauvoir and Lacoste. “All the doors are kept locked and are attached to alarms that sound in my home”—he waved toward the road and the small house by the entrance to the University—“and at campus security. They also give off a god-awful siren.”

  “The alarms didn’t go off in the last week?” asked Isabelle Lacoste.

  “No. Nothing.”

  “And there were no other events here over Christmas?” Beauvoir asked, looking around at the hats and mitts, the bags and boots that lay where they’d fallen.

  They were standing where the firecrackers had gone off. The floor there was charred.

  “Nothing. It’s not exactly anyone’s first choice for a venue. We only use this place if all the other venues are booked. But not recently, non. Not over the holidays.”

  “So why was it booked for the event yesterday?” asked Lacoste. “And at short notice? Was every other place already taken?”

  Monsieur Viau looked at her in surprise. “You’re asking me? I just try to keep the old place standing. I have no idea why someone would choose it.”

  * * *

  “Wait a minute, Armand,” said the Chancellor, getting up from her chair by the President’s desk. “Are you saying this all might’ve been planned and carried out by Professor Robinson herself? For publicity?”

  “What I’m saying is that it’s a possibility, one of many we’re looking into.” He’d gone through the various theories they were pursuing. It interested him that the Chancellor had landed on that one.

  President Pascal had also gotten to his feet. He came around his desk and stood beside and slightly in front of the Chancellor as they confronted the Chief Inspector.

  Otto Pascal was looking more and more agitated. This was far beyond his understanding, which stopped sometime around 600 BC and the Sack of Thebes.

  The twenty-first century was a cipher to the Egyptologist. He studied the Sûreté officer’s face, as though hoping he’d found the Rosetta Stone.

  “You’ve arrested the man who took the shots. So why keep digging?”

  “Why do you?” asked Gamache. “In case there’s something you missed. In case there’s something else to be found. Like you, we need to be thorough.”

  Dr. Pascal was pale and looked like he wanted to sit back down. He also looked like he’d spent most of his life sitting down. Which he had.

  As an authority on hieroglyphic literature, when he hadn’t been sitting for the last forty years, he’d been bending over. Some would say backward. Trying to first see, then convince the rest of the world, that such a thing as hieroglyphic literature existed.

  Which is to say Dr. Pascal, now President Pascal, believed that some of what had been presumed to be nonfiction accounts of ancient Egyptian lives and events, etched carefully into stone, were actually the ancient equivalent of novels. Mostly thrillers.

  Which is to say he’d spent his career, pinned his career, on the ability to turn truth into fiction. Which he seemed desperate to do in this meeting.

  * * *

  “Well, I,” stammered Roslyn. “Yes, I suppose that’s … I also design children’s—”

  “Clothes for children?” asked Haniya. “Presumably children of the privileged. And what do they cost?”

  Roslyn mumbled.

  “Sorry, what?” said Haniya.

  “Well…” Roslyn looked to Clara for help, but her friend and host had been through the wringer herself, several times that morning, and was already deflated.

  She’d gotten out of bed partly reluctantly, partly excitedly.

  Haniya Daoud, the toast of the Free World, was asleep in the next room.

  Except she was not. Clara found her in her studio, going through the oil paintings propped against the wall.

  “They’re from an earlier show,” Clara said from the doorway. “I haven’t gotten around to hanging them.”

  Haniya, now in a splendid deep green silk caftan, turned to Clara and said, “I can see why not.”

  It was then, as her scalp went cold but her cheeks burned, that Clara had composed the text to Myrna, Reine-Marie, Annie, and Roslyn. The SOS. To save her soul from the Asshole Saint.

  Now she dropped her eyes to the phone in her lap and sent off a quick message to Myrna.

  Where are you?

  Sorry. Can’t come.

  Can’t or won’t?

  Yes.

  Bitch, Clara typed and got a smiley face back.

  “That’s a beautiful sari you’re wearing,” Annie said.

  Roslyn turned a grateful face to her sister-in-law, who’d just distracted the ogre. But Clara suspected there was more to it than that.

  It was a subtle rapier thrust, pointing out to Haniya the hypocrisy of criticizing Roslyn while enjoying the fruits of similar labor.

  That sari must’ve cost a pretty penny, was probably a gift from a wealthy benefactor, and might even have been made by child laborers in some hellhole sweatshop in India.

  “It’s called an ab
aya,” said Haniya. “It comes from a network of women’s co-ops I formed in Nigeria. It’s funded by a banking system I set up which is also run by…”

  Clara thought she might throw up, and Annie looked light-headed.

  Roslyn, on the other hand, was leaning forward, taking in every word.

  * * *

  “Did you see anyone hanging around the building in the last week or so?” asked Isabelle.

  “I thought you caught the gunman,” said Monsieur Viau.

  “We have,” said Jean-Guy. “We just need to make sure no one else was involved.”

  As he said that he watched Monsieur Viau for any reaction. A slight change in skin tone, in breathing. A sprint for the door.

  But the caretaker was just listening.

  “Did anyone set up an appointment to see the place in the last couple of weeks?” Beauvoir asked. “Were there any workers? Repairs?”

  “Not a worker, but some fellow came by. Wanted to hold a fundraising dance and had heard this place was cheap.”

  “Did you ever leave him alone?” Lacoste asked.

  “No.”

  “Did you take him anywhere else in the building?”

  “No. Just here.”

  “Could he have hidden anything without you seeing?” asked Beauvoir.

  Monsieur Viau considered, then shook his head. “No. I was with him the whole time. I’d have noticed that.”

  “Is this the man?”

  Isabelle showed him their photo of Édouard Tardif.

  As Monsieur Viau studied it, the blood drained from his face. “Oui.” He looked up at them. “I let the gunman in?”

  “You couldn’t have known,” said Isabelle. “Did he rent the place?”

  “You’ll have to ask someone in Administration about that.”

  “The Chief’s over there now,” said Beauvoir, taking out his phone. “Meeting with the President and Chancellor.”

  “Lucky man,” said Viau.

  “I’ll see if he can get the information.” As he sent off the text, Lacoste turned back to the caretaker.