The Madness of Crowds--A Novel

by Louise Penny

  “They were last night.”

  “Let’s divide up tasks,” said Gamache, before this went too far.

  Beauvoir would follow up with Debbie Schneider’s parents and the university. Lacoste would go to the arraignment of the Tardifs and see what more she could find on that front.

  Armand would speak to Abigail Robinson and Colette Roberge again.

  * * *

  Reine-Marie looked down at the pile of monkeys.

  Most were cartoonlike figures drawn on documents, but some were stuffed dolls. There were two porcelain figurines and one children’s book, Curious George.

  Oddly, there was no record by the Monkees.

  Humming “Last Train to Clarksville,” she put the loose papers into an archival box, then called Enid Horton’s daughter and drove to the home two villages over.

  * * *

  Édouard Tardif was formally charged with attempted murder, for which he pleaded not guilty, then was arraigned for trial.

  His brother, Alphonse, was charged with being an accessory.

  Once again, the two brothers didn’t speak. And while Édouard tried to catch Alphonse’s eye, the younger brother resolutely looked away.

  What did come out was that Édouard and Alphonse Tardif’s elderly mother was in a nursing home, having been severely disabled by a stroke. Her mind was clear, but her body was crippled.

  The elderly woman, having survived the pandemic, would not survive Abigail Robinson’s “mercy.”

  Love, as much as hate, had pulled the trigger. And luck had intervened.

  As Édouard was being led away, Lacoste said to him, “There was another attempt on Abigail Robinson’s life last night at the Auberge in Three Pines.”

  “The Inn and Spa?” he asked. “What happened?”

  “The wrong woman was killed.”

  “Killed?”

  She saw his surprise. But it went beyond that. Édouard Tardif was terrified.

  “Do you know who did it?” he asked.

  “No. Do you?”

  Tardif shook his head, and was led off.

  * * *

  Jean-Guy Beauvoir found the caretaker, Éric Viau, in the basement of the old gym wiping everything down with disinfectant.

  “I’m sorry,” said Beauvoir. “Did we leave a mess?”

  “No. Habit.”

  “I need your help with something. What can you tell me about Chancellor Roberge?”

  “The Chancellor?” Viau stopped what he was doing. “I don’t know her, not well. I’ve seen her at big University events, like convocation.”

  “Is she liked?”

  “Yes, very. She always has a kind word, always seems cheerful. Never heard anything against her. But you do know she’s not really involved in University life. Not day-to-day stuff.” He paused. “I heard about what happened at the party last night. Terrible.”

  “Out of interest’s sake, where were you last night?”

  “We always have a fondue on New Year’s Eve. The kids stayed up for midnight, but my wife and I were in bed by ten.”

  Thanking Monsieur Viau, Beauvoir walked across the campus to the pretty little fieldstone building where he’d arranged a meeting with the President of the University.

  “Chancellor Roberge?” said Otto Pascal, as though he’d never heard of her before. Then, dragging his head out of ancient Mesopotamia, he said, “No, we have no grievances filed against her. Her role is ceremonial. She doesn’t have much contact with professors or students, though she does give two lectures a year, to first-year mathematics students. A sort of introduction to statistics. I’ve been to some. Quite fun, really.”

  That seemed unlikely to Beauvoir, and unhelpful. As he left, he paused in the entrance to check the alert that had just come in on his phone.

  A new video from the event at the gym had been posted online. Not, he noticed, sent to them, but put up on YouTube. With commercials. So far it had more than five thousand hits.

  He almost didn’t watch it since the gunman had been arrested and charged, as had his accomplice. But Beauvoir was in no hurry to plunge back into the cold, gray winter day. He found a chair and clicked play.

  He could see from the first few frames that this video would be different.

  “Little shit,” he muttered.

  It was taken from the back balcony of the auditorium. Recorded, Beauvoir knew, by the lighting technician who’d sworn he’d done no such thing.

  * * *

  Armand turned off the engine and sat in his warm car in the driveway of Colette Roberge’s home.

  Light flurries were just beginning. They drifted, nonchalant, from the clouds, landed on his windshield, and lived there for just a moment before melting.

  Bringing out his phone, he read messages, replied, then made his way to the front door.

  * * *

  Reine-Marie placed the archival box on the living room floor.

  Most of the furniture had been removed. Cardboard boxes sat on the worn carpet, some taped up, some waiting to be filled.

  Susan Horton dragged her sleeve across her face, pushing loose hair back from her forehead.

  “Did you hear the news?” she asked Reine-Marie.

  “No, what?”

  “About the murder, over in Three Pines. Mom used to go there, to the church.”

  Reine-Marie did not say that she lived in the village and had been at the party.

  “I found something among your mother’s things,” she said instead. She heard moving about below them, in the basement.

  “Something valuable?” There was no mistaking the hope in the weary voice.

  “Well, no, not really. More puzzling.”

  “Puzzling how?”

  “Can we sit down?”

  They found two boxes of books, sturdy enough to sit on, then Reine-Marie took the lid off the box she’d brought.

  Susan looked in, then leaned back. “Dolls?”

  “Monkeys. Lots of them.” Maybe a hundred, she thought but didn’t say. “Do you have any idea why your mother might have so many?”

  “Monkeys? Well, she probably liked them. People collect things all the time.”

  “This wasn’t a hobby.” Reine-Marie brought some papers out of the box and showed the daughter. “You see? She didn’t just collect monkeys, she drew them.”

  Susan seemed genuinely perplexed. “Does it matter?”

  “Probably not, but you did ask me to go through her things and try to bring some order to them. This is something that seemed important to your mother.”

  “Maybe. It is strange, but she did get strange in the end.”

  “Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. This didn’t start in old age, it started when she was quite a young woman. So far, the earliest I’ve found is from the mid-sixties. She’d have been quite young. It was on a bill for a hotel in Montréal. Did something happen around about then?”

  “I was a baby,” said Susan. “I have no idea if something happened. Maybe she went to a zoo and fell in love with monkeys.”

  Reine-Marie considered the woman in front of her, just slightly older, she thought, than herself. “Did your mother ever read Curious George to you?”

  “What? No. It’s a book?”

  Reine-Marie brought out the book with its yellow cover and happy little monkey. It was unopened and unread.

  “Now why would your mother buy this but not read it to you?”

  Reine-Marie turned it upside down and shook. She’d found quite a few things hidden between the pages of books donated to the Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec. Documents. Letters. Even money.

  Both women watched, but nothing fell out.

  Putting the book down again, Reine-Marie said, “It looks to me like your mother hid all this from you. Can you think why?”

  “Sorry. This’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

  “Do you mind if I have a little look around?”

  While surprised, Susan said, “Knock yourself out. I
need to keep packing.”

  Twenty-five minutes later, after going through the rest of the house, Reine-Marie stood next to Enid Horton’s bed. Her deathbed, as it turned out.

  Glancing around to make sure no one was looking, she got onto it, rolled on her side, and lifted her arm.

  Her hand, finger out like a pencil, touched a rough patch in the rosebud wallpaper. It wasn’t a flaw. It was a scratch.

  “What’re you doing?” came a man’s angry voice from the door.

  CHAPTER 26

  Judging by the dark circles under their eyes, and the lethargy, neither Abigail Robinson nor Colette Roberge had slept the night before. Both looked stunned, shell-shocked.

  But that didn’t mean one of them wasn’t the killer. It seemed to Gamache that whoever murdered Debbie Schneider hadn’t started the day, or even the evening, planning to kill.

  It was probably as much a shock to him, or her, as to everyone else.

  The three of them sat, once again, around the fireplace in the kitchen. All very much aware of the empty chair.

  “Any progress, Armand?” Colette asked.

  “We’re gathering evidence, information. And I need more information from you, Professor Robinson.”

  “Yes. Anything.”

  “Why did you really come here?” It felt like the hundredth time he’d asked that.

  Abigail Robinson had been expecting some question about Debbie Schneider, and was momentarily stumped.

  “I told you already. It was to see Ruth Zardo.”

  “And yet you didn’t speak to her at all last night.”

  He placed the button on the table between them, then sat back and watched as color returned to Professor Robinson’s face.

  “Yes, exactly. I came to thank her for letting us use that line from her poem.”

  “‘Alas,’” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s the name of the poem.”

  “Yes.” Abigail smiled. “Sorry. I’m tired. Debbie had read in some bio of Madame Zardo that she lives in a village called Three Pines. That’s why we went to the party. Hoping she’d be there. But she didn’t look at all interested in being approached, so I didn’t.”

  “You travel thousands of miles just to thank her, then when you’re feet away you stop?”

  “Yes.”

  He lifted his phone. “This was Ruth’s reply one month ago to Debbie Schneider’s request to use that line from her poem.”

  No fucking way. Sincerely, Ruth Zardo.

  Abigail looked at him. “She didn’t agree?”

  “Seems pretty clear she did not. Was Madame Schneider in the habit of not sharing important information with you?”

  “No, not at all. At least I didn’t think so. But Debbie might not have wanted to upset or disappoint me. She might’ve thought that, once here, she could convince Madame Zardo to let us use her quote.”

  “And yet she didn’t approach Ruth either. Just so I’m clear about this. Madame Schneider lied to you.”

  Beside him, Chancellor Roberge shifted and seemed about to say something when Gamache’s sharp look stopped her.

  “No. Well, yes, but you have to know Debbie,” said Abigail, flustered now. “She’d never do it to hurt, she’d do it thinking she was helping. Protecting me even.”

  “If Madame Schneider misled you about the quote, are there other things she could have lied about?”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, like the meetings with the Premier. Like the income from sales of merchandise. It seems Madame Schneider was very involved in the day-to-day details of your campaign.”

  “Not just the campaign. My life. Maybe, I guess. I’ll have to check.”

  She looked around. For Debbie Schneider. To help her check on Debbie Schneider.

  “I’d like access to all your papers,” said Gamache. “Documents, finances, everything. To see what she might have been up to.”

  “Is that necessary?”

  He looked at her with some sympathy now. “A murder investigation is, by nature, invasive, and I’m genuinely sorry about that. By the time this’s over we’ll know far more about you, about everyone involved, than we should. But I can promise you, if the information isn’t pertinent, it will be forgotten.”

  “Really? You have that ability, Chief Inspector? To just forget? Lucky you.”

  They held each other’s eyes. No one with gray in their hair got there without things they’d prefer to forget. But could not.

  Armand finally broke the silence. “Madame Zardo asks that you stop using her poetry, and certainly stop selling the buttons.”

  “Of course, I’ll get…” Abigail’s voice petered out. Get who? “I’ll make sure it’s done.”

  “And she wants any proceeds already collected to go to LaPorte.”

  “Where?”

  He looked at the Chancellor, who had no reaction. Gamache chose to say nothing either, except “Perhaps the Chancellor here can help with that.” Then he turned back to Abigail. “Who’s Maria?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Debbie called you Abby Maria. But your middle name’s Elizabeth, not Maria. So where does that come from?”

  “It’s a nickname. From childhood. My God, you’re never going to find out who did this to Debbie if these are the questions you’re asking.”

  Her eyes shifted, quickly, briefly, to Colette. She must’ve given her some subtle signal because Abigail exhaled in an exasperated sigh.

  “You’ll find out soon enough. I had a sister. Maria. Younger than me. She was born severely disabled. She died when she was nine.”

  “Abby Maria,” he said and glanced at Colette Roberge.

  She knew. And yet Gamache remembered, when he’d asked her directly if Abigail was an only child, she didn’t disagree.

  “My mother used to call us that, from the moment they brought her home. I knew what it meant.”

  “What?”

  “That we were linked. Not two individuals but one person. Abby Maria. Dr. Gilbert was right last night. It was a reference to Ave Maria. A play on words. An attempt to make it seem a good thing. A gift from God.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  Abigail didn’t answer. Instead she looked down at her fingers, twisted together in her lap. Not two separate hands, but one mass. Impossible to tell which fingers belonged to which hand. Where one ended and the other began. Not stronger for being pressed together. The one held the other so tightly both were useless.

  Armand knew that the “Ave,” in “Ave Maria,” translated into “Hail.” Though it could also mean “Be well.”

  But all had not been well.

  Alas.

  * * *

  It was just a split second. So quick Beauvoir only caught it the third time through the video.

  Because of the vantage point, he could see almost all the audience, as well as the stage. Granted, he only saw their backs, but it was enough.

  He’d suffered through Abigail Robinson’s talk again and again, with its odd combination of dull facts building to an electrifying conclusion.

  “Too late! Too late!” half the auditorium chanted, while the other half jeered.

  And then the firecrackers went off.

  Gamache strode to center stage and tried to calm everyone, but couldn’t be heard above the growing panic. Grabbing the microphone, his voice clear and commanding, he managed to settle everyone down.

  Then Beauvoir saw the man in the middle of the auditorium raise his arm and point the gun. Even though he knew what happened next, it was still shocking.

  The podium between Gamache and Robinson exploded.

  Then the second shot rang out. How it missed them, Beauvoir couldn’t guess. Thankfully, agents tackled the gunman before he could get off a third shot.

  Beauvoir watched it again, slower this time. Focusing on the firecrackers. On who might have set them off.

  His view of that moment was blocked by a man in a Montreal Canadiens tuque. Beauvoir began to
wonder if, maybe, he was the one who’d set off the firecrackers, not Tardif.

  The man had his back to the camera, of course. Beauvoir moved the video forward, frame by frame. Just as the shots were fired, the tuque man ducked. And as he did, he turned his head just enough for Beauvoir to see who it was.

  “Holy shit,” he whispered, looking at the face frozen on his screen.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry,” said Reine-Marie, getting off the bed as quickly as though it was on fire. “I was told it was all right to look around the house.”

  “And to lie on my mother’s bed?” the man at the door demanded.

  Reine-Marie smoothed her slacks and felt her cheeks getting warm. “No, I just wanted to see something.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Reine-Marie Gamache.” She walked toward him, her hand extended. “I’m the archivist.”

  “Archivist?” he said, staring at her. Angry, but also perplexed.

  “Oui. You’re James Horton? Madame Horton’s son?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your sister contacted me and asked if I’d help her sort through your mother’s papers. She found boxes of things in the attic and she wasn’t sure what should be kept for the family records and what could be thrown out. I understand the house has been sold and there’s a time issue.”

  “She had no right to do that without asking me. Those are personal, private family papers.” He looked at her. “And?”

  “And?”

  “What did you find?”

  She knew she should tell him. Knew his sister probably would. But something in the way he demanded to know told her not to say anything.

  “So far just bills and pictures. Mother’s Day cards. The usual.”

  “Why were you on her bed?”

  “I am sorry. I hadn’t planned to, but I saw something on the wall and wanted to check it out.”

  “What?”

  She took him there and pointed.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “It’s a few lines scratched into the wallpaper between the bed and the nightstand.”

  “What business is that of yours?” he asked.