The Madness of Crowds--A Novel

by Louise Penny

  “Do you hire extra staff for the New Year’s Eve party?”

  “Yes. We give a lot of our regular employees time off around Christmas and New Year’s.”

  “Do you have a list of those who worked the party?”

  Five minutes later she walked into the dining room and spotted the Chief Inspector deep in conversation with Vincent Gilbert.

  * * *

  “Would you believe me, Armand, if I said when I saw the gun I was shocked? Too stunned to act?”

  Armand shook his head. “In almost anyone else, I might believe it, but you’re a doctor. A surgeon. You spent your career dealing with the unexpected. I suspect you also spent shifts in Emergency.”

  Gilbert nodded.

  “Your whole training is to react quickly,” said Armand. “And yet you didn’t. Or”—he examined the man in front of him—“more likely, you did react. You just didn’t act. You saw what was about to happen and let the gunman fire.”

  “I’m not going to admit that, not to you. But I think I owe you some possible explanation, since what happened could’ve cost you your life. That was never ever intended, and I’m sorry.”

  And he looked it.

  “What was intended, Vincent?”

  He took a while to answer. When he finally did, Gilbert could not look Armand in the eyes.

  “I was a coward. During those long months of the pandemic, I stayed in my cabin. People brought me food and drink. Supplies.”

  “Oui. Reine-Marie among them.”

  “Is that right? I never looked out. I was too afraid.”

  “Of what? The virus didn’t spread by sight.”

  “No, but shame does. As long as a bag mysteriously appeared, I could pretend I wasn’t hiding in there. But if I saw someone helping, when I should also be, then…”

  Then.

  “I’m a doctor. I should’ve been treating the sick. Administering tests. Doing something useful. But I hid.”

  “You’re in your seventies,” said Armand. “You’re in the age group ordered to shelter in place. You couldn’t have helped.”

  “But I didn’t try.” Vincent raised his voice, angry now. “So when I saw the gun, aimed at Abigail Robinson, aimed at the person convincing others that the sick and the elderly, and now even babies, should die, as they had in the pandemic, well…”

  Well …

  “Patron?”

  Both men looked up.

  “Désolée, but may I see you for a moment?” Lacoste asked.

  “Do you mind?” he asked Vincent, who shook his head.

  Dominique joined Lacoste and Gamache in the far corner of the dining room and pointed.

  When their waiter took their bill to the table, Armand broke away and rejoined Gilbert.

  “It’s on me, remember?”

  After handing his credit card to the young waiter and getting it back, Gamache said, “Merci. Monsieur Tardif.”

  The young man stiffened, and for a moment Gamache thought he’d try to run away. But he didn’t.

  “Might we have a word?”

  Vincent Gilbert looked perplexed but relieved. It was someone else’s turn to be grilled.

  And puréed. The waiter walked between Gamache and Lacoste, down into the basement of the Auberge, and took the seat indicated, at the long table.

  “You are Simon Tardif?” asked Isabelle Lacoste.

  “Oui.”

  “Your father is Édouard Tardif?”

  “Yes.”

  Simon Tardif was small. Slender. His face pale, pasty. He looked like a baby bird balancing on the edge of the nest, and about to be pushed out too soon.

  Too soon.

  “Where were you on the afternoon of December thirtieth?” Lacoste asked.

  “With friends. I can prove it.”

  “Not with your father, at the University gym?”

  “No.”

  “Did you work the New Year’s Eve party last night, here at the Auberge?” Gamache asked.

  The two locked eyes.

  Gamache could see that Simon Tardif was tempted to lie. But he could also see there was intelligence there, though not, he thought, cunning.

  “Yes,” said Simon. “But I didn’t do anything. I didn’t hurt that woman. I—”

  The Chief Inspector stopped him there. “You need a lawyer. Do you have one?”

  The boy looked like he was about to cry. “No. I’m sorry. I—”

  Gamache leaned forward and said, “Say no more. It’ll be all right. Look at me. Look at me.” The third time he said it, Simon Tardif did. He looked into the deep brown eyes, and his shoulders slumped. In resignation. And relief.

  It was over.

  * * *

  “Nothing,” said Reine-Marie, sitting back.

  Beside her, Jean-Guy had taken off his glasses and was rubbing his eyes.

  It was mid-afternoon and already getting dark outside. All the lamps in the huge library had been lit. It made the place feel more intimate. Though as the natural light faded, what had been aisles of books started to resemble tunnels. And it was possible for Jean-Guy’s vivid imagination to conjure all sorts of unnatural things awakening.

  So far all they’d found was what they pretty much already knew. Dr. Vincent Gilbert was a gifted thoracic surgeon. The one you wanted with his hands in your chest. But not the one you wanted standing beside your bed.

  And certainly not the one you wanted as a chief, if you were an intern or resident. The file was full of letters of complaint from young medical students about his manner.

  Those were accompanied by other letters, from patients and their families, thanking him for saving their lives. And from other interns and residents, saying what a wonderful teacher he was. How much he had helped them. His innovations, his challenging them to think for themselves. Yes, he was harsh at times. But so was life in a critical care unit.

  The Asshole Saint emergent.

  “We need to look at the early documents,” said Beauvoir, resigned to his fate.

  “When he was an apprentice asshole,” said Myrna.

  “A baby saint,” said Reine-Marie. She was curious to see what they’d find there. Had he started his medical career as a saint, or as the other? Had something happened that changed him?

  Twenty minutes later Myrna said, “Look at this. Before starting medical school here at McGill, Vincent applied for, and got, a grant.”

  “Really?” Reine-Marie leaned over and read the application.

  Gilbert’s father had died, and his mother took in boarders and did laundry.

  “But it’s pretty small,” said Myrna. “Did he also get a scholarship?”

  Beauvoir found it. “Yes. But it’s not very much.”

  Together, grant and scholarship would not be nearly enough to cover medical school at McGill.

  “So how did he do it?” Beauvoir asked.

  “He must’ve gotten a part-time job,” said Dr. Hague-Yearl. “Lots do, at the student pub, or the cafeteria. In the library shelving books. That sort of thing. Let’s keep looking.”

  They didn’t realize it yet, but they’d just come across the first hint of the creature, unseen, that was waiting patiently in a tunnel of documents. To be found.

  Twelve minutes later, it was.

  “He did get a job,” said Myrna, holding up a slip of paper. “He earned extra money looking after the lab animals.”

  “Yech,” said Reine-Marie. “Terrible.”

  She assumed the look of revulsion on Myrna’s face was because she too hated the use of animals in experiments. Which she did.

  But it wasn’t that.

  Dr. Hague-Yearl took the slip, read it, and looked stricken. “Not that. Not again.”

  “What?” asked Jean-Guy.

  She handed him the piece of paper. It was a receipt for delivery of lab animals to the Allan Memorial Institute of McGill.

  She placed a finger on a name at the top.

  “Who’s Ewen Cameron?” he asked. The name was familiar. Then
he remembered that Gamache and Gilbert had talked about him.

  “Wait a minute.” Reine-Marie took the paper and studied it. “Vincent worked with Ewen Cameron?”

  “We don’t know that,” said Myrna. “Just that he looked after the animals that Cameron used.”

  “Who is he?” repeated Beauvoir, growing more agitated.

  Dr. Hague-Yearl had disappeared, as though the name itself was enough to incinerate the librarian.

  Jean-Guy was beginning to think his instincts about those huge closed doors were right.

  They were partly to keep intruders out, but also to keep something in.

  Something, or someone.

  * * *

  A legal aid lawyer Gamache knew well showed up within the hour.

  Ten minutes later, after private consultation, Simon Tardif confessed that he’d been involved in the plot at the auditorium.

  The boy insisted that the plan was to just scare the professor, not hurt her.

  No, he hadn’t thought about the hundreds of other people who’d be in the auditorium.

  No, he hadn’t been there himself. His father had insisted he be with friends at the time.

  Yes, he was surprised his uncle had confessed. As far as Simon knew, he wasn’t involved.

  Yes, the plan was that while his father distracted the caretaker, he hid the gun and firecrackers.

  Yes, there were bullets with the gun, but they were blanks. Weren’t they?

  When Chief Inspector Gamache showed him the video, Simon Tardif broke down.

  “I didn’t know. I didn’t know. Dad couldn’t have…”

  His lawyer laid a hand on his arm to stop him.

  “And last night?” Gamache asked, once Simon had recovered.

  “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even know that professor woman was here. I have no idea what she looks like.”

  “You have no idea what the person your father was targeting looks like?” asked Isabelle, clearly incredulous. “You didn’t want to know why? We can check your search history.”

  “No, don’t do that.” The boy blushed, and both investigators and the lawyer could guess why. It wasn’t just a university professor he was googling. “Yes, okay, I did look at her videos. And I could see why Dad would do it. But I spent most of the time at the party last night in the kitchen preparing the trays. I didn’t know she was there.”

  “You came up for the countdown to the New Year, didn’t you?” Gamache guessed.

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you see?” Isabelle asked.

  “Almost everyone went outside to the bonfire.”

  “Did you see anyone go into the woods?”

  “No. I wasn’t watching. I just wanted the night to be over and get home. All I could think of was my father. Of what was going to happen to him. And me.”

  Chief Inspector Gamache stood up and said to Lacoste, “Charge him.”

  “With what? Accessory to attempted murder?”

  Gamache stared at the frightened young man. Thrown out of the nest by an obsessed father. To land, splat, in the arms of the Sûreté du Québec.

  “Mischief.”

  It was a misdemeanor. If convicted it would not ruin the boy’s life. But it still kept the options open to charge Simon Tardif with a more serious crime. Like murder.

  They interviewed Alphonse Tardif again. He admitted he knew his nephew had been involved and confessed in order to protect the young man.

  After weighing a charge of obstruction of justice, Gamache ordered that Alphonse Tardif just be released.

  CHAPTER 31

  “Ewen Cameron was a psychiatrist,” said Myrna. Her voice was calm and steady. Warm, as always. Almost musical. “He studied human behavior, but his specialty was memory. He went to Nuremberg and assessed the Nazi Rudolf Hess. Cameron’s diagnosis of amnesia got Hess out of a death sentence.”

  “Didn’t Hess later admit he’d faked the amnesia?” asked Reine-Marie.

  “Yes. Cameron went on to develop theories of society, placing people into two categories. The weak and the strong.”

  Thus human courts acquit the strong,

  And doom the weak, as therefore wrong.

  Mary Hague-Yearl had reappeared with several books. She opened one to a black-and-white photograph and placed it in front of Beauvoir.

  “That,” she said as she thrust her forefinger onto the face, “is Ewen Cameron.”

  A slender, middle-aged man with gray hair and glasses smiled up at him.

  Trustworthy. Benign. Caring. He looked like something out of central casting.

  Marcus Welby, M.D.

  The line under the photo said Dr. Cameron had been the President of the American Psychiatric Association. The Canadian Psychiatric Association.

  The World Psychiatric Association.

  “But it was his work with the CIA, here at McGill, that made his name,” said Myrna.

  Jean-Guy Beauvoir looked up. “The Central Intelligence Agency?”

  “Yes. This was back in the fifties and sixties. The height of the Cold War. He was hired by the CIA and others, including the Canadian government, to study brainwashing. How to do it. How to undo it. And to do that, he needed not just animals but human subjects.”

  “Prisoners?” asked Jean-Guy.

  It was a repugnant, immoral practice that had apparently continued long after it was declared illegal.

  “No,” said Reine-Marie. “They were men and women from across Canada who came to him for help. Most had minor complaints, like we all do at times. Insomnia, headaches, anxiety. Some for depression. Young mothers with postpartum. It was a great thing, to be seen by the eminent Ewen Cameron. They had no idea what they were in for.”

  “What did he do?” Beauvoir looked down and met those kindly gray eyes. What did you do?

  “It was called MKUltra,” said Dr. Hague-Yearl. “Sounds almost laughable now. Like bad science fiction. You’ll find the details in those pages…” She motioned to the stacks of paper she’d brought over. “We also have the testimony of some of his victims.”

  Not patients. Not clients.

  Victims.

  “They were guinea pigs,” said Myrna. “He used drugs like LSD. He tied them up and shot electricity through them. He used sleep deprivation. He put them into comas, sometimes for months—”

  “My God,” said Beauvoir. “And no one stopped him?”

  “No. No one even questioned him,” said Dr. Hague-Yearl.

  “But he tortured them,” said Jean-Guy, unable to comprehend.

  “Yes,” said Reine-Marie. “Ewen Cameron took men and women who’d come to him for help and he tortured them. Here. At the Allan Memorial Institute. At McGill University. For years. In full view. And no one stopped him.”

  “Apparently the CIA was pleased with the results,” said Myrna. “They turned his findings into psychological torture methods they still use today.”

  “Oh, my God,” whispered Jean-Guy.

  He dropped his eyes to the smiling father figure in the photograph. And had it confirmed, yet again, that most monsters looked exactly like that.

  They didn’t hide in dark alcoves. The distinguished monsters sat among them. Secure in the knowledge that no one would condemn them, even if they knew.

  “The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman,” said Mary Hague-Yearl, following his thoughts and his eyes to the photograph.

  Jean-Guy spent the next hour reading about the victims of Ewen Cameron. Their stories. How they showed up in his office complaining they couldn’t sleep and returned home months later unable to speak.

  Unable to recognize their husbands and wives and children.

  Unable to hold a job, or hold their bladders, or hold their babies.

  He read about how Cameron would strap them down and send electricity through them so strong they could smell their flesh burning.

  How he kept them awake for days at a time, or put them into comas for months and filled them with drugs.

  Unti
l their brains were so washed they’d lost their minds.

  And then he sent them home, addled. Clutching bills for the treatments. Then Dr. Ewen Cameron went on to the next, and the next.

  “And Vincent Gilbert knew about it?” said Beauvoir. “Helped him?”

  “We don’t know that,” said Myrna. “All we know is that the receipt for the animals, sent care of Dr. Vincent Gilbert, is authorized by Cameron. It’s from the mid-sixties. Gilbert must’ve been young, just starting out.”

  “Come on,” said Beauvoir. “He must have known.”

  Reine-Marie saw Vincent Gilbert sitting at the old pine table in their kitchen after dinner, as they’d had coffee and cognac and swapped stories.

  Had the same hands that had held her grandchildren held men and women down while Cameron tortured them?

  Jean-Guy Beauvoir asked for copies of some of the more damning documents, including the receipt for the animals. They thanked Mary Hague-Yearl, then left for home.

  The car was quiet, everyone lost in their own thoughts. The wipers lazily, rhythmically, sweeping the freshly fallen snow from the windshield.

  As the city disappeared into the rearview mirror and the peaceful countryside slipped by, Reine-Marie opened the file on her lap and looked again at the damning receipt for the rats and monkeys and actual guinea pigs.

  There would be people still alive who’d suffered Cameron’s torture. And the silence of his colleagues.

  She leaned her head against the cold window and stared out at the acres and acres of snow. At the lights just beginning to show in homes. At the forests and fields and mountains. At the wilderness. And Reine-Marie Gamache longed to get home to Three Pines.

  * * *

  Isabelle Lacoste found Haniya Daoud in the stables.

  She had a currycomb in one hand and a brush in the other.

  Lacoste stood in the wide aisle and watched as Haniya, a borrowed parka over her long abaya, made slow circular motions with the curry-comb, then brushed the horse’s flank down.

  Then did it again, and again. In long, flowing, rhythmic movements.

  And as she did it, Haniya muttered something Isabelle couldn’t make out, though she knew if she could, she probably wouldn’t understand the words. But she would understand the meaning.