The Madness of Crowds--A Novel

by Louise Penny

  “Maybe not.” Stephen turned to the others with enthusiasm. “It was passed around in the investment community years ago. It’s pretty odd, but some think it explains why certain stocks, certain industries or products, like bitcoins, suddenly get hot. Why some ideas take hold, no matter how crazy, while other, even better ideas, just die.”

  “Like Betamax,” said Ruth. It was her answer to everything that should have succeeded but didn’t. That and the Avro Arrow.

  “What is this study?” Armand asked. Anything to do with human nature interested him.

  “Back in the nineteen fifties, I think it was,” said Gilbert, “sweet potatoes were dropped on a Japanese island for the monkeys that lived there. The monkeys liked the taste but hated the sand that covered the food. Anthropologists studying the monkeys noticed that one day a young female washed a sweet potato in the ocean. A few others eventually did it too, but most just watched and continued to eat the sandy potatoes. Have I got that right?”

  “That’s what I remember,” said Stephen.

  “Not much of a story,” said Ruth. “Have I ever told you about the Avro Arrow?”

  “She’s a friend of yours?” Gilbert asked Stephen.

  “Not her. It’s the duck who’s the friend.”

  * * *

  “Down syndrome?” asked Abigail.

  “Idola,” said Annie.

  Reine-Marie looked over to Armand, who would be, she knew, watching. And smiled.

  Then she turned back to Abigail. “I’d like to show you something.”

  The others followed as Reine-Marie led her across to the window and pointed to a pane. “There are others at different windows at the Inn and Spa. In fact, every home and business in Three Pines—”

  “Probably Québec,” said Gabri.

  “—has one.”

  * * *

  Taped to the windowpane was a child’s drawing of a rainbow, and beneath it the words Ça va bien aller.

  “Yes. I’ve seen one at Colette’s home,” said Abigail. But she didn’t seem to be looking at the drawing, but beyond it, to the bonfire.

  “It’s the French translation of the Julian of Norwich quote,” said Myrna. “One I believe you know. All will be well.”

  “Children drew rainbows,” said Clara, “as I think they did around the world. But here they also wrote that phrase. They gave them away during the first wave.”

  Within weeks of the lockdown every home and shuttered business in Three Pines had one in their window.

  Ça va bien aller became not just a comfort, but a battle cry. A call for calm and reason. A call for resistance to despair. To panic. To loneliness. To denial and even idiocy.

  It had given the villagers hope that they’d one day return to Myrna’s bookshop and sit by her woodstove. That they’d meet in the bistro for drinks. That they’d be invited to each other’s homes for a meal.

  That they’d once again hug. And kiss. Or just touch.

  Ça va bien aller.

  One day.

  There was no overstating the importance, the power, of that phrase.

  And now this academic, this professor, had co-opted it. She was using it to attack the very people it was meant to hearten.

  “This one was done by our granddaughter Florence,” said Reine-Marie. She recognized the slapdash nature of it. Though perhaps “exuberant” was a better, if less accurate, word.

  Daniel, Annie, and the grandchildren had joined them in Three Pines before the travel ban was put in place. Before the bubble closed around them.

  But Armand hadn’t made it in, and neither had Jean-Guy. Their absence was felt every moment of every day. And night.

  Reine-Marie remembered the day the bistro closed. Then the bookstore. The bakery. Monsieur Béliveau had stayed open, and had quickly run out of toilet paper. And yeast.

  The grocer had run himself ragged, and to the brink of bankruptcy, helping others. As had Sarah the baker. As had Olivier and Gabri, making meals for the elderly, for families who’d been thrown out of work. For children whose school food program was no longer an option.

  Myrna left books on doorsteps, of friends and strangers, practically emptying her store.

  Donning masks and slathering on disinfectant, villagers had delivered meals and medicine. Books and puzzles.

  Standing outside, often in the bitter cold, they’d talked to frightened and lonely elderly men and women, through closed windows. Trying to reassure them. And themselves.

  All would be well.

  They returned home each evening. Exhausted. Bewildered by the speed at which all they’d known was crumbling. And not knowing how bad it would get.

  So fragile was life that they could be killed by a cough.

  And they were among the lucky ones.

  Armand and Jean-Guy were not.

  They, along with all those on the front lines, were working sixteen-hour days, coming into contact every hour with people who were desperately sick and needed help.

  At the end of their days, Armand and Jean-Guy couldn’t even go home to their families. They had to isolate in Montréal, for fear of spreading the virus.

  Every morning Reine-Marie would send Armand her favorite short video. Of the bells in Banff. The clapping in London. The singing in Italy. The retrievers Olive and Mabel. The funny. The profane. The moving and inspirational. And the just plain silly. So that he’d go back into the day with a smile.

  And every night, often well past midnight, Armand would place the video call. She could see, in the window behind him, the cheerful posters Florence and Zora and Honoré had made for their grandfather.

  As the days and weeks and months went on, he looked increasingly haggard. As did she, she suspected.

  And then came that night. He’d called later than usual. And he looked like hell. He looked like death.

  “Are you sick?” she’d asked, her voice rising. “Do you need to go to the hospital?”

  He shook his head but couldn’t yet answer. He’d looked at her, pleading for something. For help?

  “What can I do? What’s happened?” She reached out, but instead of his warm, familiar face, her hand touched the cold screen.

  As she watched, he lowered his head and, covering his face with his hands, he sobbed. Finally, he raised his head and lowered his hands and told her.

  About getting the call to go to a nursing home. When he’d arrived, he found the daughter of a resident standing in snow that had drifted across what should have been a shoveled path to the front door. But it hadn’t been cleared in days.

  Her eyes were wide in shock. He put her in his warm car, then called for help.

  On the windows he could see the signs of what had happened inside. Not happy hopeful rainbows, but something else smeared on the glass.

  Putting on personal protective equipment, he’d gone inside alone.

  As he opened the door to the building, he recognized the smell even through his mask.

  He didn’t describe to Reine-Marie in detail what he’d found. But he’d told her enough, and she’d seen the subsequent news reports to know that all had been as far from well as it was possible to get.

  The most vulnerable. The weak. The infirm. Those who could not care for themselves had been abandoned. Left to die. And die they had.

  Armand had been the first in and last out. Staying with each man and woman, each body, until all had been removed.

  He’d immediately sent teams to other nursing homes, until all of them had been checked. And all the horrors uncovered.

  It was a shame he’d carry all his life. Not that he himself had abandoned these people, but that Québec had. Quebeckers had. And he, as a senior police officer, hadn’t realized sooner that this could happen in a pandemic. That this could ever happen. Here. Here.

  Not given to conspiracy theories, Armand had, nonetheless, formed and harbored a suspicion that while authorities hadn’t actively hastened the deaths, hadn’t intentionally turned their backs, neither had they chosen to
look in that direction. No one had been in a hurry to use precious and increasingly rare resources on those who would die soon anyway.

  Then let us all turn eyes within,

  And ferret out the hidden sin.

  Reine-Marie knew that Armand had started a private file, investigating those responsible.

  It might take months, years, but he would ferret out the hidden sin.

  And now, to hear the phrase All shall be well used to justify ending the lives of the frail and most vulnerable appalled her.

  Yes, she thought, looking at Abigail Robinson, they were sick of the plague. And here, among them, was the new carrier.

  * * *

  “The numbers of monkeys washing the potatoes slowly crept up over a period of months—”

  “Oh, God,” said Ruth. “Are we still talking about monkeys? Let’s just agree that Peter Tork was the best and move on.”

  “Then,” Gilbert continued, “one morning the hundredth monkey, by the scientists’ count, picked up a sweet potato and washed it. And that did it. Something broke. By nightfall all the monkeys on the island were washing their potatoes.”

  “Are we sure that’s not a euphemism?” asked Ruth. “They are monkeys after all.”

  “Why?” asked Armand, ignoring her, but unable to suppress a smile. “Was that monkey an alpha? A leader?”

  “No, nothing special at all about her,” said Gilbert. “Interesting, isn’t it? Why it should suddenly take off like that. What difference that one monkey, the hundredth, made. What’s even more interesting is that they then discovered monkeys on other islands doing the same thing. None of them had washed their sweet potatoes before, but now they all were.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Ruth. “That’s not possible. Are you saying the monkeys had ESP? They communicated by, what? Brain waves?”

  Rosa snorted.

  “I’m not saying it,” said Gilbert. “The anthropologists just reported it. They were as baffled as anyone else. It’s become known as the hundredth monkey effect. Whether it was a hundred monkeys or not, the point was that when a tipping point is reached, when a certain number of monkeys—”

  “—or people,” said Stephen.

  “—start doing the same thing—”

  “—or believing the same thing,” said Stephen.

  “Exactly,” said Vincent. “The idea explodes.”

  “It takes on a life of its own,” said Armand, glancing at Abigail.

  He wondered if, thanks to the event at the gym and the errant gunshots, that hundredth monkey had been reached. He also wondered if that had been the purpose of the shots.

  He was deep in thought when Honoré, still wearing his bunny ears and dragging his toboggan, came up to him.

  “Papa—” he began, but that was as far as he got.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! Explosions filled the room.

  Armand pulled Honoré to him, swiftly turning his back on the shots, bending over and enveloping the boy with his body.

  Across the room, Jean-Guy grabbed Annie and Idola while Haniya Daoud dropped to her knees, bending over, covering her head with her hands. Making herself as small as possible.

  Seconds later the shots stopped and, keeping Honoré behind him, Armand swung round. His sharp eyes scanned the room. Body tense, prepared to act, even as his mind said—

  “They’re firecrackers, Armand.” Stephen was looking with concern at his godson. Reaching out a bony hand, he placed it on Armand’s chest. “It’s all right.”

  Honoré was looking at his grandfather in shock. His bunny ears askew. His lower lip trembling.

  “Oh, no.” Armand dropped to his knee, to be at eye level with the child. “No, no. It’s all right. I just…” Just what?

  Just thought it was gunfire. But he didn’t say that.

  The day before, at the event, he’d immediately recognized the firecrackers, but then he’d been alert and prepared for something to happen. Here, now, he’d been taken by surprise.

  He held out his arms, and Honoré walked into them.

  Across the room, he saw Jean-Guy looking shaken. Then his gaze went to Haniya Daoud being helped to her feet by Roslyn and Clara, and shaking off their hands.

  No one else had reacted to the noise. Just them. Everyone else heard firecrackers. While they’d heard gunshots.

  As he held his grandson, Armand Gamache wondered how deep their wounds really went. How much damage had been done.

  And if they’d ever really heal.

  CHAPTER 19

  “Désolé,” Félix called as Jean-Guy and Armand stepped outside.

  “The little shit’s not sorry at all,” said Jean-Guy.

  It was clear now that the firecrackers had been thrown onto the bonfire by Monsieur Béliveau’s eleven-year-old assistant.

  “You can’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing, Jean-Guy, when you were his age. Fireworks? A bonfire? You’d have thrown the whole damn box into the flames.”

  Jean-Guy grinned. It was true. Pinwheels. Roman candles. Those whistling rockets. All would have gone up in one glorious demonstration of his impotence.

  Monsieur Béliveau joined them, his boots crunching on the hard-packed snow. “Désolé. I’ll handle this. My fireworks. My fault.”

  Monsieur Béliveau looked across the flames at Félix, who was inching toward the big open box of fireworks.

  “Eh, garçon. Non.” His voice was firm, but when he turned back to Armand and Jean-Guy, he was amused. “Kids.”

  Though dour and childless himself, the grocer was unfailingly kind and patient with children. As though instead of having none, he had them all.

  While Monsieur Béliveau went to speak to Félix, Armand and Jean-Guy warmed themselves by the bonfire, holding their bare hands to the flames. It was a crisp, clear winter night, though the wind was picking up.

  “Weather’s closing in,” said Jean-Guy, looking up at the stars. Instinctively finding the Big Dipper.

  Just in sweaters, they got as close to the fire as they dared.

  There was a familiar scratching as ice crystals, picked up by a gust, slid across the surface of the snow. The same gust caught smoke and embers from the bonfire and blew it toward them.

  Armand and Jean-Guy closed their eyes and turned away. When it had passed, Armand asked, “Everything okay?”

  Jean-Guy smiled. “It’s smoke. I think I’ll survive.”

  “I meant Professor Robinson.”

  “She saw Idola,” said Jean-Guy. Armand was silent, staring into the crackling bonfire, knowing there was more. “I tried to stop her, Armand. I think Annie thought it was because I wanted to protect Idola, and it was mostly that. But…”

  Armand waited.

  “… but a small part of me didn’t want her to see.”

  In the wavering light of the flames Armand saw, for the first time, lines on Jean-Guy’s face. Had so many years really passed, Armand thought, since they first met? So many lines produced.

  And now he noticed too the beginning of gray in Jean-Guy’s dark hair.

  “But you let her,” Armand said.

  “Only because of Annie. She said it would be all right.”

  “And is it? All right?”

  Jean-Guy gave a short laugh, and Armand saw that the deepest lines actually ran from the corners of his son-in-law’s eyes. Laugh lines. “It’s getting there.”

  Beauvoir glanced into the room behind them. A television had been positioned by the fireplace and tuned to the annual Radio Canada year-end special, Bye Bye.

  Chairs were being pulled forward and guests were wandering over, plates and drinks in hand.

  “Come in,” Reine-Marie called from the door. “It’s almost time.”

  “Wind’s picking up,” said Monsieur Béliveau. “I’ll stay outside and watch the fire.” He turned to Félix. “You go in too. Get a hot chocolate and get warm.”

  “No,” said the boy. “I want to stay with you. Fire needs watching.”

  “Come along,” Armand s
aid to Jean-Guy. “We’ll see this year out together.”

  “You’re not going to kiss me at midnight, are you? By the way, you’re on fire.”

  Armand looked down. Sure enough, embers had landed on his sweater.

  Jean-Guy pulled the sleeves of his own sweater over his hands and batted the embers out.

  Once inside they got two hot chocolates and took them out to the grocer and his apprentice, then joined the others around the television.

  Reine-Marie put her arm through Armand’s and leaned into him. “You’re smoking.”

  “Smoking hot?” he asked with a grin.

  “No, no, just smoking.”

  He looked down. Seemed Jean-Guy hadn’t quite got all the embers.

  Reine-Marie patted him down. “This sweater was a Christmas gift, monsieur. You’ve had it a week.”

  “Mrs. Claus is going to be disappointed.”

  “Mrs. Claus understands that sometimes men set themselves on fire, for no particular reason.”

  He laughed. “Thank you for saving my life.”

  “I saved the sweater. You happen to be in it.” She hugged him tighter, smelling the wood smoke and singed wool mingling with sandalwood and rose. It was earthy and strangely pleasant.

  “Shhhhh,” Ruth hissed. “It’s almost midnight.”

  They leaned forward, toward the unblemished new year, as numbers appeared on the screen.

  “… sept, six, cinq…,” they counted down. “… trois, deux, un! Bonne année!” they shouted, laughing and hugging.

  Reine-Marie and Armand embraced and kissed, as did other couples. Stephen tilted his head at Ruth, who closed her eyes and leaned toward him before Rosa popped up between them and he ended up kissing the duck.

  A Roman candle lit the sky above the Inn and Spa. Monsieur Béliveau had also found silent fireworks, so as not to upset the animals. Which somehow made the display all the more magical.

  Armand sought out Daniel, and gave him a hug. “I’m so glad you’re home.”

  “Moi aussi,” said Daniel. Together they went outside to watch the fireworks.