The Madness of Crowds--A Novel

by Louise Penny

  “Says?” asked Beauvoir. “You don’t believe him?”

  “The President has a particular bent toward the make-believe, but”—Gamache considered—“I think he’s telling the truth.”

  “He would have access to the gym, though,” said Beauvoir.

  Gamache tried to imagine Otto Pascal sneaking over, letting himself in, and hiding a gun. But his imagination didn’t stretch that far.

  The door behind them opened and Monsieur Viau said, “Ready when you are.”

  Before going up onstage, Gamache ducked under the police tape and walked to the center of the room where charring marked where the firecrackers had been set off. And where the shots had come from.

  He stood pretty much where Tardif had been. Why so far back? Why not right up at the stage, to guarantee a kill?

  Was it possible he really didn’t want to hit her? And maybe, by standing there, Tardif thought he had a better chance of escaping.

  Gamache looked at the exits. Yes. It would be a good vantage point from which to escape. Though not to succeed, if the plan really was to kill Professor Robinson.

  He glanced at the floor. At the items that had been dropped in the rush to get out.

  There, lying almost on top of the burned wood, was a Habs tuque. The unmistakable red knit cap with the large C, for the Montreal Canadiens hockey team, known affectionately as Les Habitants. The Habs.

  It was an exceptionally popular hat. Almost everyone in Québec had one. He was pretty sure he had one, somewhere among their winter things.

  Still …

  He called over a technician and asked to have the tuque bagged and analyzed.

  Once on the stage he walked to the edge and looked out, his hands clasped behind his back, like a ship’s captain, searching the horizon for land. Or an iceberg. Jean-Guy and Isabelle joined him, standing on either side.

  “What’re you thinking, patron?” asked Isabelle.

  “I’m thinking that Monsieur Tardif was standing farther away than he had to be.”

  She turned to him in surprise. Surprise that she hadn’t seen that herself.

  “That’s true. Why wouldn’t he come right up here?” asked Beauvoir. “He couldn’t miss then.”

  “Maybe that’s why,” said Gamache, who then walked to the table in the middle of the stage. “Another question to ask him.”

  The caretaker returned with a plate of shortbread cookies decorated as Christmas trees and snowmen, with those silver balls that looked like buckshot, and were just as edible.

  He also put down three mugs of strong hot tea.

  They thanked him and put their hands around the mugs. Winter had seeped into the large, empty room, and the warmth felt good.

  At a nod from the Chief Inspector, Lacoste and Beauvoir reported on their conversation with Viau.

  “It looks like the purpose of the visit was for Édouard Tardif to distract the caretaker while someone else hid the firecrackers and gun,” said Isabelle.

  “Possibly his brother,” said Beauvoir. “Cops in Abitibi are still trying to find him, but he might not be there at all. We’ve circulated his picture and information.”

  Gamache took a sip of tea and looked at the Canadiens hat, still slumped on the floor.

  “Suppose the accomplice wasn’t the brother,” he said. Trying to see it. “Suppose the accomplice was here too? He’d hidden the things a few days earlier, so he’d know where they were.” As he spoke, the images, like a film, played before his eyes. A man, in a Habs tuque, coming in with the crowd. Sneaking away. Maybe to the bathroom. Finding the gun and firecrackers where he’d hidden them. Slipping the gun to Tardif.

  “Maybe his job was to set off the firecrackers, set off the panic,” said Isabelle. “While Tardif concentrated on firing the shots.”

  “Maybe, in the rush for the door after the firecrackers, he planned to run to the front and shoot her then,” said Beauvoir. “Taking advantage of the chaos.”

  “But why not just position himself there to begin with?” asked Gamache.

  “Maybe he meant to but saw you and the line of agents there and realized he’d never get off a shot,” said Beauvoir. “He had a better chance from farther back.”

  “Okay. We have to keep looking for Tardif’s brother, but explore the possibility that someone other than him was involved,” said Gamache. “What about the lighting and sound technicians?”

  “They’re both students,” said Beauvoir. “It’s possible Tardif paid them to take something in, not knowing what it was.”

  “Wouldn’t they have come forward?” asked Lacoste.

  “You’ve never had teenagers,” said Gamache. “It’s like living with a ferret.”

  Which, in thinking of Gracie, they might well be doing.

  “I’ll interview them,” said Beauvoir. “I have a way with kids.”

  “Since when?” asked Isabelle.

  “Since I was issued a gun. There’s also the caretaker.”

  “Oui,” agreed Gamache. It was true, but it gave him no pleasure to think Monsieur Viau had a hand in this.

  This was a premeditated attempt on the professor’s life. And while there’d been very little advance notice of the event, the person who’d had the most warning, and the most time to plan, and the most familiarity with the layout of the venue, was its caretaker.

  Though there was, Gamache thought, as he looked out the huge windows, across campus, toward the Administration Building, one other person with even more opportunity.

  CHAPTER 13

  They listened as Chief Inspector Gamache reported on his meeting with the President of the University and the Chancellor.

  “Not much there,” he admitted when he’d finished. “Mostly I answered their questions.”

  Then he told them about his private conversation with Chancellor Roberge and watched as both Jean-Guy’s and Isabelle’s expressions went from interested to astonished.

  “She booked the gym?” said Beauvoir. “And didn’t tell you that before?”

  “Non.”

  “It’s more than booking the gym,” said Isabelle. “The event itself was her idea. What else isn’t she saying?”

  Beauvoir picked up the receipt Gamache had placed on the table and studied it.

  “She used a false name. Who’s he?”

  “A name she made up. Go on, say it.”

  “I know she’s a friend, patron,” said Jean-Guy, “but really, it’s looking more and more like the Chancellor’s in it up to her neck.”

  “I agree. That’s how it looks. But isn’t that always our problem? Things that seem fairly reasonable, though perhaps a little odd, in normal life suddenly look a lot worse when a crime is committed. It’s easy to overinterpret.”

  “She lied to you,” said Isabelle. “And put a false name on this paper. It would be hard to overinterpret that.”

  “I have no desire to defend Colette Roberge. But do I think she’s behind the attempt on Abigail Robinson’s life? No. I think at worst she didn’t want it to come out that she was helping Professor Robinson, so she lied and covered her tracks.”

  “Do you think she supports Robinson?” asked Jean-Guy.

  Armand took a deep breath. “I don’t really know.”

  “But she’s letting Robinson and her assistant stay at her home,” said Isabelle. “That’s gotta say something.”

  “It says she’s a good friend,” said Gamache. “It does not say she agrees with the professor. In fact, she said it was more for the sake of her friendship with Robinson’s father that she was doing it.”

  “We need to speak to him,” said Isabelle.

  “Can’t,” said Gamache. “He died years ago.”

  “So she’s doing all this for a dead man?” asked Jean-Guy. “That’s some relationship.”

  The wooden chair squeaked as Gamache slowly leaned back. After a few beats he said, “Isabelle, if there was an attempt on the life of someone you knew but not well, would you take them into your home?”
r />   She considered. “Yes, I would.”

  “With your family there?”

  “No, of course not. I’d get the family out.”

  Gamache nodded and looked at Jean-Guy, who said, “Same.”

  “And yet, when I told Colette about the accomplice and that there could very well be a second attempt, she didn’t say that the children would leave. I had to convince her.”

  She thought for a beat. “The only way you’d invite the target of a possible attack into a home with children is if you knew, knew for sure, there wouldn’t be another one.”

  Gamache was nodding. That was exactly what he was thinking.

  Beauvoir put his elbows on the table and leaned toward them. “And the only way Chancellor Roberge would know that is if she was involved in the first one. If she was the accomplice.”

  “Or knows who is,” said Gamache. “I’m beginning to think I was wrong earlier. Chancellor Roberge might be more deeply involved.”

  “And she’s just invited Robinson into her home,” said Beauvoir. “Should we stop it?”

  Gamache thought for a moment, then shook his head. “If she is involved, and that’s a big ‘if,’ there’s no way she’d allow another attack in her own home. No, I think this’s just about the safest place for Professor Robinson.”

  Beauvoir met Lacoste’s eyes. They knew famous last words when they heard them.

  * * *

  “Is she gone?” Myrna asked, standing just inside the door of Clara’s cottage and craning her neck to see beyond the mudroom and into the kitchen. “I can still smell sulfur.”

  “That’s probably Ruth.” Clara shut the door firmly against the cold, then turned to Myrna. “And yes, she’s moved up to the Inn and Spa. You’re a shitty friend, by the way.”

  “Gâteau?”

  Clara took the chocolate cake, but made it clear this didn’t mean they were even.

  “I begged you to come over and you didn’t. She’s your guest, and you left me alone with her. All night. Do you know she ordered French toast for breakfast? I’ve never even made it for myself. But I figured it out, then she decided it was, in her word, ‘disgusting,’ and refused to eat it.”

  “Did you?”

  “Eat it? Yes. But that’s not the point.”

  “You offered to put her up.”

  “When I thought she was a remarkable person, yes.”

  “She’s still that.” Myrna removed her boots and put on the slippers she kept at Clara’s.

  “And a shit.”

  “Well, yes. Things they don’t mention in the Nobel Prize citation.”

  They cut the cake into five equal pieces and took them into the living room, where Reine-Marie, Annie, and Ruth were gathered around the fire.

  “Where were you?” Annie demanded. “You coward.”

  “Cake?”

  Annie took it and seemed at least somewhat mollified. Or at least distracted. As a diversion, few things were as effective as chocolate cake.

  “I wanted to come,” said Myrna, plopping onto the sofa and sending Ruth and Rosa, at the other end, bouncing into the air. “But I had urgent business.”

  “A used-book emergency?” asked Clara. Though, with her mouth filled with cake and creamy icing, it came out as “Uh oozed ook emerenthy?”

  “This’s all your doing,” said Ruth. “Bringing that woman here. What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking that she’s a brave woman who should be supported and celebrated.”

  “From a distance,” said Annie. “Of say a continent or two.”

  “May the Lord bless her, and keep her,” said Clara, “far away from us.”

  “Fiddler on the Roof?” asked Annie. “Isn’t Gabri hoping to do that for this year’s production?”

  “Yes. He’s trying to convince your father to play Tevye.”

  “He won’t do it?” asked Myrna.

  “Have you ever heard Armand sing?” Reine-Marie asked.

  “And where were you?” Clara turned to her. “You could’ve come over.”

  “I’m actually sorry I didn’t. I’d like to have met her. I suspect now I won’t. Madame Daoud will be gone soon, right?”

  “One way or another,” said Ruth.

  “Now, Ruth,” said Annie. “Remember what we talked about.”

  “I’m not allowed to kill anyone.”

  “Good. Remember that.”

  “I think what we all need to remember,” said Reine-Marie, as she looked at the semicircle of friends, “is what Haniya Daoud has been through in her life. She’s younger than you,” she said to Annie. “She lost her own children, but has saved thousands of others. She’s been sold into slavery. Raped and tortured. Imagine, try to imagine the horrors she’s been through. And out of that she’s started a movement that has saved and empowered women around the world. And we expect her to make small talk? To be polite? And when she isn’t, when she’s impatient and angry, we joke about killing her?” Her eyes, her voice, her expression had turned hard. “Killing her?”

  There was silence.

  Clara sighed. “You’re right. I think she moved to the Auberge because she could tell that I didn’t want her here.”

  “After all she’s gone through, how could we expect her to be like us?” asked Annie.

  “No,” said Ruth. “Not like us. Better than us. We really were expecting a saint.”

  “Not flesh and blood with feelings of her own,” said Myrna. “She might’ve been unpleasant, but we were mean. Cruel even. Letting her know she wasn’t wanted.”

  Myrna Landers knew there were few things worse than being excluded, shunned. It was seen in some communities as a punishment worse than death.

  “Why didn’t you come over?” Clara asked Reine-Marie.

  But Reine-Marie wasn’t listening. She was thinking of her conversation with Armand, about Haniya Daoud. How he’d described her. There was respect, compassion, but there was also concern. An awareness of the damage damaged people could do.

  “Maman?” Annie interrupted her thoughts.

  “Oh, sorry.” Reine-Marie turned to Clara. “Work got in the way, I’m afraid.”

  “More monkeys?” asked Myrna.

  “Oui.”

  “My favorite was always Davy Jones,” said Clara.

  “You really are a daydream believer,” said Myrna.

  “What’s the count now?” asked Ruth.

  “Sixty-three. What could they mean?” Reine-Marie asked Myrna, their resident psychologist. “Why would someone spend more than half a century secretly collecting monkeys?”

  “The question isn’t why monkeys,” said Ruth. “The question is why a secret?”

  “She’s right,” said Myrna, turning astonished eyes on the mad poet at the other end of the sofa.

  “She was bound to be right eventually,” said Clara. “Law of averages.”

  “Is there such a thing?” asked Annie. “Can’t math, numbers, be interpreted, massaged to mean just about anything? To predict any outcome?”

  They all knew what Annie was really thinking.

  It wasn’t about Ruth’s chances of finally being right. Nor was it about the chances Haniya Daoud, a distinguished but disappointing stranger, and her insults would finally hit a nerve.

  Annie Gamache was thinking about statistics. About graphs. About a law of averages that seemed to have predicted that a lunatic theory would take hold. Eventually.

  And that probability grew by the day, by the click-through, by the event.

  It grew every time Professor Abigail Robinson opened her mouth.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Armand,” said Colette Roberge, and surprised the Chief Inspector by kissing him on both cheeks as though he were just a friend dropping in for a visit, and not the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec, in her home to investigate an attempted murder.

  “Madame Chancellor,” said Gamache, stepping back and introducing Isabelle Lacoste.

  Despite Jean-Guy’s assurances that
he could be civil, Gamache had thought it better if he didn’t accompany them, but instead interview the lighting and sound techs.

  “We’re in here,” said Colette as she led them through the house and to the kitchen.

  It was a comfortable room, with open shelving displaying blue-and-white china. Tins lined up on the counter said Farine. Sucre. Café. Thé. And Biscuits.

  The ceiling had whitewashed beams, and French doors at the far end opened onto a large garden, now buried in snow.

  In the corner by the door, bathed in sunshine, was a card table with a child’s jigsaw puzzle. A remnant of the grandkids.

  Two women stood by the fireplace and turned anxious faces to the newcomers. It was clear neither had slept much. They looked disheveled, exhausted.

  “Has the gunman said why he did it?” asked Debbie Schneider, stepping forward.

  “No,” said Isabelle. “He’s not saying anything. We’re not releasing his name or any details yet, but I can tell you that he’s not a professional. In fact, he has no prior record at all.”

  “Just a local crazy,” said Madame Schneider.

  “There’s no indication he’s that either,” said Lacoste, her voice cool.

  Debbie Schneider opened her mouth to argue the point, but Abigail Robinson interrupted.

  “Thank you again, Chief Inspector,” she said, offering her hand. “I watched the videos last night. I think I must’ve been in shock. It’s clear that if you hadn’t acted I probably wouldn’t be here.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said, taking her hand.

  Isabelle Lacoste considered the two women as they all took seats in front of the warm woodstove. She’d only seen Professor Robinson at a distance, onstage.

  There she’d been calm, assured. There’d been a warmth about her that Lacoste had found disconcerting.

  But this was a different woman.

  She was tense. Haggard. It was a perfectly normal reaction to what had happened.

  The other woman, Debbie Schneider, was new to Isabelle.

  She and the professor must be about the same age, but there was about Madame Schneider the sense of harder roads. Steeper climbs. A life not longer in days, but longer in other ways.