The Madness of Crowds--A Novel

by Louise Penny

“But then the fireworks stopped and it got real dark. I put on my phone flashlight and looked around. That’s when I saw it.”

  “Now, be careful here,” said Beauvoir. “What did you see?”

  The boy paused before speaking. “A dark patch on the snow, like a big branch had fallen. It hadn’t been there before.”

  “Before? You’d been there before?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “To urinate?”

  “Yes. And throw up.”

  Now Jacques’s father actually moaned.

  “For God’s sake, Geoff,” his wife said, leaning around their son to look at him. “I met you at fifteen, at a St. Jean Baptiste party, when you were leaning against a tree throwing up. Give the boy a break.”

  This almost derailed, for a moment, the inquiry, as Beauvoir was sorely tempted to ask some questions about that. Like how she could possibly have been attracted …

  But he resisted.

  “What time were you last there, before you found the body?” Beauvoir asked.

  “I dunno.”

  “Try. Was it before the firecrackers?”

  “The ones that scared you?”

  “Yes,” said Beauvoir. “Those.”

  “I guess it was a little later. About ten to twelve. I went inside and watched Bye Bye.”

  “Did you see anyone else going into the woods last night?”

  “My friends.”

  “Yes, but anyone else? Any adults?”

  He thought, then shook his head. Then stopped. “Well, yes. Two women. At least I think they were women. They were by the fire, then walked away. I watched them because I was afraid they’d find the booze, but they just kept walking. I’m not sure they went into the woods.”

  “Did you see them come back?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s get back to the body,” said Beauvoir. “When you saw it on the ground, what did you do?”

  “I thought someone had dumped a bunch of clothes. I called my friends over.”

  Which was, the homicide investigators knew, natural but unfortunate.

  “And?” said Beauvoir.

  “And we looked more closely.”

  “Did you touch the body?”

  “No,” he said. “But…”

  “Yes.”

  “I poked it.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I picked up a stick and poked it.”

  “Jacques!” his father said.

  “What? I didn’t know. That’s when I realized…” His chin dimpled and his lips compressed. His father laid a hand over his, and gently squeezed. “That was,” he gasped, “when we”—he wiped his eyes with his sleeve—“all started to shout for help.”

  Beauvoir reached out and tapped his knee. “It’s okay. I see this sort of thing all the time and it still upsets me. It would be pretty terrible if it didn’t. If you think of anything else, you’ll let us know?”

  Jacques nodded.

  “I have a question,” said Gamache.

  The boy turned to him. He was more than a little in awe of the Chief Inspector, having seen him many times on the news.

  But Gamache was looking at Madame Brodeur. “What were you doing this evening?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  They looked at each other for a moment before Madame Brodeur smiled slightly and relented. “I was watching over them.”

  “Maman! You were spying on me?”

  She turned to her son. “No one loves you more, but no one knows better what a numbskull you can be. Honestly. You once went skinny-dipping in Lac Brume, then forgot where you left your clothes—”

  “Mom!”

  “It’s okay, you come from numbskull stock.” She looked beyond Jacques, to his father, who was grimacing agreement. “I knew you and your friends would probably be drinking, so I just kept an eye on you. It’s dangerous, isn’t it? Drinking outside in the winter.”

  Gamache nodded. “What did you see tonight, Madame?”

  “Unfortunately, nothing that Jacques hasn’t already described.”

  “Is that true?” Gamache pressed.

  “Yes. The idea wasn’t to spy on him, just to make sure he and his friends were safe. So I looked for him, but didn’t follow him.”

  “And once they came inside?”

  “He was safe. I was off duty and could enjoy myself. Sort of. It sure felt strange. Not the best party atmosphere. Between Madame Daoud being so unpleasant and then that professor who’s going around saying sick people should be put down, well…”

  Well. Well, thought Gamache. How succinctly she’d just put it. He turned to the young man. “What did you do with the stick?”

  “The one I touched her with?”

  “Yes.”

  “I threw it into the fire. Was that wrong?”

  “Non, I don’t think it would’ve helped.” Then he thought of something. “The fire was still burning when you threw it in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now listen closely.” Gamache leaned toward the boy. “Was it just embers, or were there flames?”

  Taken aback by the cop’s intensity, Jacques thought before he answered. “Definitely flames.”

  Gamache leaned back and nodded. “Merci.”

  So the last time one of them went for beer or to pee, before Jacques found the body, was about ten minutes to midnight. And there was no body.

  And at quarter past midnight, the alarm had been raised.

  That meant the window for the murder had become a single pane. There were roughly twenty-five minutes between no body and the body.

  After a few more interviews, they looked up to see Haniya Daoud standing at the door.

  “I’m next.”

  Gamache and Beauvoir suspected that might not be true, but chose the better part of valor. Jean-Guy indicated the sofa, and when she sat down, Gamache asked, “Are you all right?”

  “Sorry?”

  “This is upsetting for everyone, but you’ve been through more than most. A murder can trigger all sorts of things. I just want to know how you are.”

  She stared at him as though he’d said something not just nonsensical but idiotic.

  “Of course I’m all right. This’s nothing. A quiet evening in Darfur.”

  But he didn’t believe it.

  When those first fireworks had gone off, the three of them had all flinched. Ducking into a world no one else knew existed. One where it was reasonable to mistake a car backfire, a large book falling to the floor. Firecrackers. For gunshots.

  Their nerves had been both shattered and strengthened by their experiences.

  “Things are strongest where they’re broken,” he said to her.

  And while the words seemed to come out of nowhere, he could see she understood.

  He could also see that the scars on her face went far deeper than her skin.

  She smiled. “I’m not quite as broken as you seem to think.” She studied him. “You’re trying to work out if I killed that woman, thinking she was Professor Robinson. Let me save you some time. I did not.”

  “But you would have liked to,” said Gamache. “You told me as much the other night in the bistro.”

  “I’m hardly alone. Millions feel as I do.”

  “True, millions are appalled. But a growing number, it seems, are beginning to agree with her. Including people in a position to implement her suggestions. Unless, of course, she doesn’t make the meeting.”

  “So you’re saying I decided to stop her from getting to meetings I knew nothing about?”

  “You could have heard about her upcoming meeting with the Premier. It wasn’t a secret. That could have been the impetus.”

  “A lot of could-haves, Chief Inspector. That’s a pretty shaky house you’re building. It’ll never stand the monsoons.”

  “Then let’s move on to solid facts. Not only did you make it clear that you thought I should have let her be gunned down, you said, ‘Best to get out of my way.’”

  “
Now, while I think you’re a moral coward, I did believe, until now, that you were at least intelligent. Do you really think, if I had plans to kill Professor Robinson, that I’d challenge you to watch? And, as though that wasn’t stupid enough, I chose to do it at a party with fifty people present, then kill the wrong person?”

  “Mistakes happen,” said Gamache. “It was dark, cold, the killer must have been in a hurry—”

  “I don’t make mistakes,” she said. “Not when human lives are at stake. It’s true, I would have little trouble killing Professor Robinson, but I wouldn’t make such a shit show of it. That is the expression, no? Shit show, shit storm. You seem to like your merde around here.”

  She leaned forward, and Gamache was reminded, yet again, how very young she was. Only in her early twenties. In which case, unlike Stephen, the threat of life in prison was very real.

  But he suspected she was already in prison. Those scars her bars.

  “I didn’t kill Madame Sch—whatever. On purpose or by mistake.”

  “Schneider. And forgive me if I don’t take your word for it. I can’t remember seeing you at midnight. Nor did I see you at the fireworks.”

  “You didn’t see me because you didn’t look.”

  The words, said so plainly, held a plain truth.

  No one, including himself, had turned to the Hero of the Sudan, the possible next recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, to wish her bonne année. To wish her health and happiness and long life.

  No one reached out to embrace her. And he suspected she hadn’t reached out to anyone.

  “That doesn’t mean you were there,” said Gamache.

  “And it doesn’t mean I was off killing the wrong person.”

  “What were you doing in the minutes on either side of midnight?”

  “I was watching that stupid show on the television. Then I went outside and watched the fireworks.” She paused. “I’d never seen them before. Not in person. They were…” As she searched for the word, Gamache waited for the insult. “… very beautiful. Almost sweet. The way they lit up the village below. Not pyrotechnics, but just an old man and boy setting them off in a backyard.”

  She seemed tired, but also calm. “It’s good to be reminded now and then that such things exist.”

  “What things?”

  “Beauty. Peace.” She held his eyes. “Goodness. But they’re fragile and can so easily disappear, unless people are willing to do what’s necessary to defend them.”

  “I’m not sure that goodness is all that fragile,” said Gamache.

  Off in the corner the young agent looked from one to the other of them, not sure she was following this conversation in English. Were they, the Chief Inspector and a suspect, debating goodness?

  “If not fragile, it’s mercurial,” said Haniya. “Good. Evil. Cruelty and kindness. Guilt and innocence. An act can be all those things at once, depending on your perspective. It’s so easy to delude ourselves, wouldn’t you say, Chief Inspector?”

  “Into believing killing one person to save millions is an act of moral courage?”

  “I don’t think that’s a delusion.”

  “And if you kill the wrong person?”

  “If I?” She smiled again. “Once again, and please pay attention this time, I did not kill that poor woman. And who knows, it might not have been a mistake.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Just a possibility. Maybe she knew something, or saw something. Or maybe there’s a maniac around. I’d start with the old woman with the duck. Personally, I think the duck is the more dangerous. Did you know people actually have attack geese? Very mean.”

  Beauvoir, who’d been chased out of several farmyards by geese, and at least one malicious rabbit, nodded. He too suspected Rosa might not be all there.

  “Most helpful,” said Gamache, getting to his feet. “You’re staying here tonight?”

  “Yes. That artist woman invited me back to her home, but I could see it was more out of guilt than sincerity.”

  “She’s a good person,” said Gamache. “A good friend. I think she was sincere.”

  “You also think I committed murder tonight. You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your opinions seriously.”

  “It was a question, not an opinion,” said Gamache as he walked her to the door.

  But before reaching it, Haniya stopped and turned to face him. “You’ve told me why you think I’d want to kill Professor Robinson. Now, let me tell you why I would not.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Because, as satisfying as killing her might be, I know that murdering a person doesn’t kill the idea. In fact, just the opposite. If you want an idea to flourish, the best fertilizer is the body of a martyr. I don’t want her ideas to flourish, but someone else might. Something to think about, Chief Inspector.”

  “Merci,” said Gamache, who’d already considered exactly that, certainly when it came to the shooting in the gym. And maybe the attack that night.

  He was impressed, though, that Madame Daoud had gotten there so quickly.

  “I spent a lot of the evening watching Professor Robinson, and you want to know what I saw? I saw the fox.”

  Gamache raised his brows.

  “You’re surprised? How do you think I stayed alive when so many around me were killed? I watched, carefully. Through the rapes and beatings, mine and others, I watched and listened and learned how things worked. How human nature works. It’s why I don’t much like humans. Or nature, for that matter.”

  “Doesn’t leave a lot else,” said Beauvoir.

  “True.”

  “But there are always fireworks,” said Gamache, and saw her smile.

  “Want to know what I see when I look at you?” Haniya asked.

  “Not really.”

  “I see the lion.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Before the next guest arrived to be interviewed, Beauvoir asked, “Fox?”

  “The Fable de La Fontaine, I think,” said Gamache. “‘Les Animaux Malades de la Peste.’”

  The Animals Sick of the Plague.

  “Oh, right. I was really only watching Honoré. He was a terrific rabbit.”

  “One of the greats,” agreed Armand.

  “So who was the fox?”

  “The cunning one who convinces the others that someone innocent is actually guilty. Blaming the victim.”

  “That does sound like the professor. At least Madame Daoud saw you as the lion.”

  Gamache wasn’t so sure it was the compliment Beauvoir believed.

  The lion, while nominally in charge, had actually been taken in by the fox.

  He wondered who Haniya Daoud would be, in that fable.

  She’d asked how he thought she’d survived the rapes and torture. He honestly didn’t know, but he did wonder if two things in particular compelled her to survive. A burning desire for revenge that incinerated despair, and her ability, her willingness, to be as brutal, when the time came, as her captors.

  It was a life hard to shake once back in polite society, as many warriors knew. As the fox would know.

  “Well, there is one piece of good news,” said Jean-Guy, holding up his phone. A message had just come in from the detachment in Abitibi. “They picked up Tardif’s brother, at a hunting cabin outside Val-d’Or. They’re bringing him down tomorrow morning.”

  Vincent Gilbert arrived just then. He looked more than usually disheveled, with bags under his eyes, gray hair sticking out, and patchy white stubble around his chin.

  Beauvoir rubbed his hand over his own face and felt the scratch. And saw his father-in-law’s salt-and-pepper growth of beard.

  Then he looked at the young agent. As fresh as the moment she’d arrived at work, sixteen hours earlier. She looked over at them, bright-eyed, at 3:35 in the morning.

  “Thank you for staying up,” said Gamache.

  “Are you telling me I had a choice?” Gilbert sat down with a tired groan. “This’s a terrible thing to happen.”
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  “Yes, very sad,” said Gamache.

  “Can’t be good for business,” said Dr. Gilbert, clearly not thinking of the same tragedy as Gamache. “There’s already the persistent rumor that the place is haunted. Bullshit, of course. There’s no such thing. But try to convince the great unwashed.”

  Armand suddenly felt the need to shower.

  At a glance from Gamache, Beauvoir took the lead and asked Dr. Gilbert about his movements just prior to, and just after, midnight.

  He was a little vague. He’d been in the living room for a while. He’d been outside for a while. He’d even been in the library. For a while.

  “Hiding, I’m not ashamed to say. I hate parties. Only come to this to support Marc and Dominique. People expect me here.”

  He made it sound like his legion of fans expected him. It was true, though, that people knew this was just about the only time they were guaranteed to see the Asshole Saint.

  Gamache wondered if Abigail knew that. She’d said Ruth Zardo was who she’d come to see, but he doubted that. She hadn’t approached the elderly poet. But she had made a beeline for Vincent Gilbert.

  “When did you leave here?”

  “The library? When the fireworks started to go off.”

  “You weren’t in the room for the countdown to midnight?” asked Beauvoir.

  “So that people could hug me?” He grimaced. “No.”

  Though Gamache had the fleeting thought that maybe the Asshole Saint had come in here so that he didn’t have to face no one hugging him.

  “You were vague earlier this evening,” said Gamache, “when I asked how you’d read Professor Robinson’s study. Now I’ll ask you again. How did you come to read it?”

  “God, it was months ago. I can’t remember. Once I’ve memorized the Cheerios box, I get desperate. The winters are long, and I don’t have many visitors.” He looked at Gamache. “But you’re one, Armand. You bring me books.”

  Gamache nodded. Whenever he approached the log cabin, he was reminded of Thoreau, who’d said of his own cabin on Walden Pond, “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.”

  Vincent Gilbert had two chairs. He did not like society, and society did not like him.

  “Someone sent you Professor Robinson’s research?” asked Beauvoir.

  “Must have because I read it.”