The Madness of Crowds--A Novel

by Louise Penny

  On the poster was a series of graphs showing comparisons of statistical studies.

  Isabelle stood up and turned to the Chief. “Is this a joke?”

  The top graph showed that there was a direct correlation between the per capita consumption of mozzarella and civil engineering doctorates awarded.

  “I’m not the one joking, if that’s what you mean,” said Gamache.

  The next graph showed a correlation between people who drowned after falling out of a fishing boat and the marriage rate in Kentucky.

  Lacoste and Beauvoir looked at each other.

  “But this’s ridiculous,” said Beauvoir. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Exactly,” said Gamache. “They’re spurious correlations, you can just make out the title of the poster. And I’m willing to bet Paul Robinson had a coauthor. The person taking the photograph. I think it’s Colette Roberge.”

  “The Chancellor?” asked Lacoste.

  “Yes. Chancellor Roberge mentioned the phrase ‘spurious correlations’ several times.”

  “Including last night,” said Beauvoir.

  “She also said they’d collaborated on several studies,” said Gamache.

  “Could that really be called a study?” asked Isabelle. “It’s more like a joke. How could this be important?”

  “If she was the coauthor, it means she was with Paul Robinson around the time his daughter died. She might have even been there.”

  “Are you saying you think the Chancellor killed Maria?” asked Jean-Guy.

  “They spent time coming up with jokes,” said Isabelle. “That shows a closeness. Even, maybe, an intimacy.”

  Beauvoir was tapping away on his laptop and now turned it around for them to see. “There’s a website called Spurious Correlations. It’s by some guy named Tyler Vigen.”

  Gamache got up to look closer but stopped. The name meant something. Something. And then he gave one small laugh.

  “What is it?” asked Isabelle.

  “Tyler Vigen. It’s the name Chancellor Roberge used on the request form when reserving the gym for the event. Is he a real person, or an alias Colette and Paul Robinson used?”

  They huddled around the site.

  “Looks like a real person,” said Beauvoir. “At the bottom he credits two professors, Paul Robinson and Colette Roberge, with giving him the idea.”

  “I think in repeating the phrase Colette was trying to guide me to this,” said Gamache. “If not the site, then the concept.”

  “What concept?” asked Isabelle.

  “That Abigail Robinson’s conclusions were no more legitimate than the connection between”—he bent down and read off Beauvoir’s screen—“per capita cheese consumption and people who died after being caught up in their bedsheets.”

  “Really?” Beauvoir leaned closer. He himself often woke up in the night, entangled. And he liked cheese.

  Gamache now wondered if the Chancellor had also been trying to warn him about making connections that did not exist. It was, of course, the bane of any investigator. To misinterpret, to overinterpret.

  Was he connecting two things that were not related? The death of Maria Robinson and the murder of Debbie Schneider forty years later. Was he making a spurious correlation?

  He didn’t know. What he did know was that yet another thread led back to the Chancellor.

  “We need a search warrant,” he said as he moved to the door. “For Colette Roberge’s home.”

  It was time to give that thread a tug.

  CHAPTER 41

  “Colette?” said her husband. “Who are these people? Why’re they searching our home?”

  He stood in the kitchen, a seventy-six-year-old man, bewildered.

  Armand, who hadn’t spoken to Monsieur Roberge in a few years, and had only seen him from a distance in his recent visits, looked from him to Colette. It was clear that Jean-Paul Roberge, who’d risen to the top of a large Montréal accounting firm, was now living with dementia.

  “I didn’t know,” Armand said to Colette.

  “Would it have changed anything if you had?” she asked.

  “It might have.”

  While Inspector Beauvoir led the search, Armand went for a walk outside with Jean-Paul and Colette, getting the older man away from the activity that was so clearly agitating him. Armand was on one side of Monsieur Roberge, taking his hand, while Colette took the other. Holding him steady and upright in case of ice underfoot.

  Armand listened as Jean-Paul told him about his recent visit with his mother. And his plans to take Colette to Prague for their honeymoon.

  Jean-Paul stopped and turned bright blue eyes on Armand. “Are you my brother?”

  “No, sir. I’m a friend.”

  “Are you? Really?” asked Monsieur Roberge.

  Standing beside her husband, Colette stared at Armand, clearly asking the same thing.

  “I hope so,” he said. He could see Beauvoir at the door, his hand up to get his attention. “Perhaps we should go inside.”

  “Yes,” said Jean-Paul. “We should pack.”

  “Good idea,” said his wife. “I’ve put the suitcases on the bed. Maybe you can start.”

  When they got inside, Armand gestured to Beauvoir to wait a moment while he walked with Monsieur Roberge to their bedroom. He was surprised to see that suitcases really were on the bed.

  “It gives him something to do,” Colette explained, as they watched Jean-Paul take socks out of a chest of drawers and carefully place them in one of the cases. “When he goes to bed, I unpack.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Armand.

  “Don’t be. He’s not doing any harm and it makes him feel useful.” She watched her husband for a moment. “We’re the lucky ones.”

  Armand followed her back down the hall and into the living room, where Beauvoir was waiting.

  “We found this.” He handed Armand a book.

  Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

  “Yes, I’ve seen it,” said Armand, a bit perplexed.

  “But have you seen this, patron?”

  Beauvoir opened it to the title page. “For Colette, with love and eternal gratitude, Paul.”

  He looked at Colette. “Paul?”

  “My husband, Jean-Paul.”

  “My name is Jean-Guy. No one calls me Guy.”

  “And I’ve never heard you call your husband Paul,” said Armand. “Even now, it was Jean-Paul.”

  “It was a joke between us,” she said. “Long ago. May I?” She reached out and Beauvoir gave her the book.

  Armand gestured toward a seating area by the window. There was activity all around them as Sûreté officers went through the home.

  “Who’s Paul, Colette?”

  “I’ve already told you.”

  “We can do a handwriting analysis you know.”

  She considered for a moment, looking at the book, closed on her lap. “Paul Robinson. As I think you guessed.”

  “So why lie?”

  “Because I can see what you’re thinking. He and I were close, but not that close.”

  “He signed the book, With love.”

  “Don’t you love your friends?”

  “Why was he eternally grateful? What had you done?”

  “I looked out for Abigail at Oxford. He appreciated that.”

  “Eternally?”

  When she didn’t reply, Armand nodded toward Jean-Guy, who showed her the picture on his phone.

  She smiled. “I haven’t seen that for years. Look at him. So happy. He always wore a bow tie, you know. A noeud papillon.” She stared at the photograph, mesmerized. “That was taken at the conference in Victoria. His last happy day, last happy few hours.”

  The last one, thought Armand. “Before?”

  “Before going home and giving Maria a sandwich for dinner. She choked to death on it. But you knew that too. You’re not thinking…”

  “What?”

  She cocked her head to one side and
studied him. “Why’re you interested in Paul? In that picture?” She paused. “You’re not thinking that there was more to it? You think Paul did it deliberately?” When both Gamache and Beauvoir continued to watch her, she gave a bark of laughter. “You think I did it?”

  “Did you take that picture?” Beauvoir asked.

  “I did. Paul and I worked on the poster together. We had a lot of fun doing it.”

  “You know what I see when I look at this photograph?” said Armand. “I see a happy, relaxed man looking at a woman he loves. Who loves him. I see an amusing, even silly, poster made for a serious scientific conference. About spurious correlations. A phrase you’ve repeated several times. Why did you do that?”

  “I wanted you to know that statistics can be manipulated, misinterpreted. They can be made to say anything.”

  “I already knew that,” said Armand. “I think most people do, don’t you? I think you wanted us to find this.” He nodded toward the phone and the photo.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “To muddy the waters,” said Armand. “To confuse us—”

  “You don’t seem to need my help for that.”

  “—to make us question, doubt, the connections we were making. Between the death of Maria Robinson and the murder of Debbie Schneider. Between Abby and Maria.”

  “The connection,” Beauvoir said, “between you and Paul Robinson.”

  “There was a connection,” Colette said. “A very deep one. But there was no affair. He was older, a mentor. Like with Vincent, there was a powerful intellectual attraction, but that’s all. And yes, I loved him. And he loved me. But—”

  “Colette?” called Jean-Paul Roberge from somewhere in the house.

  She jumped to her feet, the book almost falling to the floor. She put it on the table, then took a step toward the voice, before turning to them. Both men were also on their feet.

  “But he”—she looked behind her—“is my soul mate. The only man I’ve ever wanted to be with. And still do.”

  They watched her go, but only after Armand asked her to leave the book.

  “Keep looking, Jean-Guy.”

  “You don’t believe her, patron?”

  “I think she’s telling the truth when she says there was no affair, but I think there’s a lot she isn’t saying. Like what she did that made Paul Robinson eternally grateful. Notice the date above the inscription.”

  “A day before he died,” said Jean-Guy.

  * * *

  Isabelle Lacoste asked the young man at the reception desk if he’d seen Professor Robinson.

  “I think I saw her go into the living room.”

  Lacoste looked in there. A few guests, including Vincent Gilbert, were relaxing. Most reading. They looked up at her, then away. Not wanting to catch the cop’s eye.

  Only Dr. Gilbert continued to stare. Interested but not worried. But then he wouldn’t be, she thought as she left the room. He thinks he’s smarter than everyone else.

  She got a few steps away, stopped, turned, and returned to the living room.

  “May I join you?” she asked.

  He half rose, in a halfhearted invitation. “Please.”

  “Dr. Gilbert, can I confide in you?”

  He closed the magazine and set it aside. “Of course.”

  “Chief Inspector Gamache has asked me to interview Professor Robinson again because, well, we have our suspicions.”

  Gilbert raised his bushy gray brows. “Like?”

  “I think you can guess,” she said, lowering her voice and looking at the other guests, too far away to hear.

  “You think she killed her friend?” he also whispered.

  “I’d rather not say, but before I speak with her yet again, I’m wondering if you know anything that could be helpful?”

  “Like?”

  “Like anything about her father, for instance.”

  Now the brows drew together. “Her father? Don’t you mean her mother? And Cameron?”

  “No, we already know about that. I mean her father and her sister.”

  “She had a sister?”

  Lacoste smiled tightly, “Yes. Badly disabled. She died under strange circumstances.”

  “Poor one,” he said, by rote.

  “And then the father, it seems, might have taken his own life.”

  “Really? A tragic family.”

  “Yes. It all seems to go back to the mother being in treatment with Cameron and her own suicide.”

  “That seems a bit of a leap.”

  “A spurious correlation?”

  He studied her. “Yes, I suppose so. Why’re you telling me this?”

  “I just wondered if Abigail said anything to you,” said Lacoste. “Accused you of being responsible for the deaths of her sister and father, as well as her mother.”

  Now he glared at her. “She did not. Are you?”

  “Blaming you, sir? No, of course not. You can’t be held responsible for what someone does decades later and thousands of kilometers away. And all you really did at the Allan Memorial was look after the monkeys, is that right?”

  “All the animals, yes. I was never involved in the actual experiments.”

  “But you knew what was happening.”

  “What’s this got to do with your suspicions about Professor Robinson and the death of her friend?”

  She got up. “You’ve been very helpful, sir. Merci.”

  Isabelle Lacoste left Vincent Gilbert looking far less smug than when she’d arrived.

  * * *

  Jean-Guy Beauvoir found it an hour later. Not in the basement of the Roberge home. Not in the boxes in the attic.

  It was in plain sight and, as a result, completely overlooked.

  When he realized what it was, he placed it in a plastic cover and took it to Gamache, who was in the process of opening and shaking out the thousands of books in the Roberges’ collection.

  It was something he’d learned early on in his career with the Sûreté. Not from his first Chief and mentor. He’d learned it from his fiancée, Reine-Marie Cloutier.

  The trainee librarian had told him that people put all sorts of things between the leaves of books. Stashes of money. Dried and pressed flowers. Letters.

  Some they want to keep. Some they want to hide.

  “Where did you find it?” Armand asked, taking the letter in the plastic sleeve and putting on his reading glasses.

  “In this.” Jean-Guy held up the book. “Extraordinary Popular Delusions—”

  “—and the Madness of Crowds,” said Armand, grinning and shaking his head. He looked around at all the volumes he’d just spent an hour shaking out. Having ignored the most obvious one.

  “It was at the beginning of a section on ‘The Drummer of Tedworth.’ About a ghost.”

  Jean-Guy looked anything but pleased about the find, and as Armand read it, over by the window in the natural light, he knew why.

  When he’d finished, he slowly removed his glasses, heaved a sigh, and turned to Jean-Guy.

  “Where is she?”

  “In the kitchen with her husband.”

  They found the Roberges having a cup of tea, heads bowed over a jigsaw puzzle. It was, Armand saw, the one he’d assumed was for the children.

  The image was a basket of puppies.

  “Can we have a word, please?” he asked, and held the document in such a way that the Chancellor would see it.

  She pressed her lips together, paused, then got up. Kissing her husband on the top of his head as he bent over the puzzle, engrossed, she said, “I’ll just be over by the woodstove.”

  He didn’t answer.

  Once they sat down, Armand handed her the letter in the plastic cover.

  “So you found it.”

  “Inspector Beauvoir did.”

  She looked at him, and for some reason Jean-Guy felt he’d done something wrong.

  “Evidence, Armand?” She sounded almost amused as she noted the tag.

  “Would you
like a lawyer?”

  Now she did laugh. One humorless grunt. “No need.”

  “Tell us about the letter.”

  “Isn’t it self-explanatory?”

  “Please, Colette.”

  She looked at it, then carefully placed it on her lap and folded her hands over it.

  “I haven’t seen this in years. Not since he died. Well, that’s not completely true.” She looked directly into Armand’s eyes. “I got this in Oxford, along with the book. It arrived the day after Paul died. The mail was much faster then, but not fast enough. Have you read it?”

  Armand nodded, as did Jean-Guy.

  “Then you know what it says. Paul admits to killing Maria. Smothering her with a pillow while Abigail and Debbie were out riding their bikes. Then he put a peanut butter sandwich down her th—” She stopped and took a series of short breaths, but seemed unable to catch it. She dropped her eyes, then slowly, deliberately, with trembling hands she moved the letter off her lap, to the sofa. Banished.

  With what seemed a supreme effort, she raised her eyes. “He loved that child. Can you imagine?”

  She managed to take a deep breath, while across from her the two men tried not to imagine.

  Tried to remain police officers, while the father in them fought to get out.

  It was a losing battle. The father would always win. And both were swept away by the thought, the very idea, of doing what Paul Robinson had done that day. Putting a pillow over their child’s face. But perhaps especially, grotesquely, the sandwich.

  It was what they’d suspected happened, since seeing the word “petechiae” in the autopsy. That the sandwich was postmortem.

  That Maria’s death wasn’t some terrible accident.

  Gamache had toyed with the idea that either Abigail, or more likely Debbie, had done it. But the letter made it clear. Maria’s own father, driven by desperation, had killed her.

  To read it in his own handwriting, stated so simply without embellishment, made it all the more horrific.

  Colette removed her glasses and wiped her eyes, then startled slightly when a hand landed unexpectedly on her shoulder.

  “It’s all right. I’m here,” said Jean-Paul. He turned mild eyes on their visitors. “Have you upset her?”

  Colette put her hand on top of his. “No. They’re friends. Here to help.”