The Madness of Crowds--A Novel

by Louise Penny

  * * *

  Vincent Gilbert had declined the invitation to Clara’s home, having had more than his fill of humanity to last him the balance of his life.

  As he approached his cabin, he heard the blue jays shrieking. In the past he’d chased them off, or at least tried to. But now he stopped at his front porch and opened the sack he’d bought at Monsieur Béliveau’s general store.

  Scattering the black sunflower seeds on the white snow, he watched the birds swoop down and pick them up. He went inside then, lit the fire, made a pot of tea, and opened the book Colette had lent him.

  Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

  He settled in, and read about the South Sea bubble, and the tulip crisis, and the Drummer of Tedworth.

  The birds still shrieked, of course. But now it sounded more like company.

  * * *

  “Oh, God,” sighed Ruth. “Not that fucking painting again. Brace yourself,” she said to Stephen.

  At Haniya’s request, Clara had made up a batch of hot chocolate with whipped cream. Stephen had poured brandy into his and Ruth’s.

  At least the two of them would be quite well braced.

  Gabri was practicing saying, “It’s wonderful. It’s brilliant.”

  Even Reine-Marie was bracing herself. Like the rest of them, she’d been privy to Clara’s latest effort. Their friend had taken to slapping layers of paint, apparently at random, onto the canvas. Occasionally breaking up the splatters with something hyper-recognizable.

  The last one was a banana. Reine-Marie wondered if it was a reference to all those monkeys, but suspected it had no meaning at all. Behind her, Myrna was trying to coax Billy Williams forward, but like the donkeys he raised, he’d put his head down and was refusing to budge.

  Smart man, thought Myrna, as she reluctantly followed the others into Clara’s studio.

  * * *

  “How much did you know, Colette?” asked Armand.

  The Chancellor and her husband were sitting in the Gamaches’ living room. Since Jean-Paul was calmer away from crowds, they’d stayed behind while the rest of them had headed over to Clara’s, to say goodbye to Haniya Daoud.

  Jean-Paul was taking books off the shelves and stacking them neatly on the floor in front of the fireplace, while Armand and Colette talked.

  “Paul never told me outright, but he knew that I knew. He’d never have given Maria a peanut butter sandwich by mistake. And if it was on purpose, it was murder. And I knew he wasn’t capable of that. But I have to say, I’d always hoped it was Debbie Schneider who’d done it. Not Abigail. For Paul’s sake. But when the letter came, I could tell that he thought it was Abby who’d done it. He knew his daughter. Knew what she was capable of.”

  “He wanted you to show the letter to Abigail, to let her know she was safe,” said Armand.

  Jean-Paul was holding a book and staring, then he walked over and gave it to Colette. He was now almost completely silent. Though he communicated in other ways.

  “Merci,” she said. “I’ve been looking for this.”

  He smiled and went back to work.

  Colette squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them and put the book down on the sofa beside her.

  “Vincent says you invited Abigail here so that you both could try to help her. To dissuade her from the path she was on.”

  “True.”

  “Did Vincent also plan to tell her about his involvement with Ewen Cameron?”

  “No. He didn’t realize her mother had been one of Cameron’s victims. Not until she told us.”

  “With Abigail’s arrest, will that end the debate over mandatory euthanasia?” Armand asked.

  “You’d think,” said Colette. “But I’m afraid the barb has gone in. She’s scared enough people into believing there won’t be enough resources to recover from the pandemic, never mind handle another. Unless the sick and elderly are allowed to die.”

  “Made to die,” said Armand. By lethal injection. Capital punishment for men and women whose crime wasn’t killing, but taking too long to die.

  Through the door to his study he could see the open files he’d been working on when the Roberges arrived.

  They contained the mounting evidence he was quietly and privately collecting against those responsible for abandoning the elderly and frail in care homes during the pandemic.

  It was Sunday afternoon. The next morning Armand Gamache had an appointment with the Premier of Québec. To show him the files. And to let him know, quietly, confidentially, that if there was any move to adopt mandatory euthanasia, or anything vaguely smelling of eugenics, those files would go public.

  It was, he knew, blackmail. But he and his conscience could live with that.

  That was tomorrow. Today he could sit quietly and comfortably in his living room, talking to friends.

  “Will you charge Abigail with the murders?” asked Colette.

  “We’ll try.”

  Her eyes fell on the framed family photographs on the bookshelf behind Armand. “I can’t believe he didn’t shoot.” Her gaze drifted over to Jean-Paul, carefully placing one book on top of another. “It was love, I suppose, that stopped him.”

  “Oui.”

  Jean-Guy couldn’t be the father he wanted to be for his children if he’d pulled that trigger.

  * * *

  Clara walked right by the mess on the easel and over to a canvas leaning against the wall.

  Haniya watched her host and wondered if she should say something about Clara’s whipped cream mustache, but decided not to.

  Once a finalist for the Nobel Peace Prize …

  Clara lifted the paint-stained sheet, and there was silence.

  “It’s wonderful,” muttered Gabri.

  “It’s brilliant,” said Olivier.

  * * *

  When Colette and Jean-Paul left, Armand went across to Clara’s.

  The others were in the living room, but he found Haniya in the studio. Staring at the painting.

  She had her coat on and her Louis Vuitton suitcases were by the door.

  Armand and Haniya stood side by side in silence, staring at Clara’s painting.

  Then, still looking at it, he asked, “Are you sure you want to leave?”

  She turned and, for the first time, she saw not the deep lines down his face, or the scar at his temple, but the kindness in his eyes.

  Then she turned back to the painting. “Sudan is my home. I think you understand that, Monsieur Gamache. It’s where I belong.”

  “You and your machete?”

  “Are you judging me?”

  “Non. I’m asking.”

  Armand heard Haniya Daoud, the Hero of the Sudan, sigh.

  “Sudan’s awful. There’s poverty, unspeakable violence. Women, girls aren’t safe. But there’s unimaginable courage too. And beauty.” She smiled as she stared at the painting in front of her. “My village was rebuilt. I have a small home there. It isn’t far from the White Nile.”

  She told him about the scents in summer. About the rain hitting the water. About the sound of the breeze through the savannah. All the little things that add up to home. To belonging.

  “When I’m home, I walk there every day. I sit on the shore and pray.”

  “What for?”

  She turned to him. “Probably the same thing you pray for. The same thing we all do.”

  She walked past him, out of the studio.

  Reine-Marie was in the mudroom, putting on her boots and coat.

  “I’ll drive you to Montréal,” she said.

  “That’s all right. I’ve called a taxi.”

  “There’re taxis?” asked Myrna.

  “Yes. I’m not sure what language the guy was speaking, but I’m pretty sure he said he’d meet me here.”

  They looked at Billy Williams, who grinned and put up his hand. Then he dropped it and took Myrna’s.

  “I think we can probably cancel the taxi,” said Reine-Marie, and saw Billy nod.

/>   “We’re coming too,” said Clara, and Myrna nodded.

  “Why?” asked Haniya.

  Clara turned to her, surprised. “Because that’s what friends do.”

  Haniya’s last glimpse of Three Pines was of two elderly people standing on the village green, one with a single finger raised, waving goodbye.

  * * *

  Jean-Guy had asked Armand to look after Honoré while he took Idola and Annie into their kitchen.

  They sat by the woodstove.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” he said to Annie. “About how I once felt about Idola. About our decision.”

  * * *

  Armand sat on the bench, with Fred at his feet. They watched Honoré play with some of the other village children as Henri danced around them.

  Armand thought about what Clara had painted. It looked like a landscape. At least that’s what a casual observer would see. But if they were not quite so casual? They’d see it was actually a topographical map. One orienteers might use.

  And if they paused a little bit longer? If they stopped trying to see it with their eyes, then they’d see what it really was. What really mattered.

  They’d see the roads and rivers, hills and vast fields, the stone walls and forests and meadows come together. To form an image. Of a young woman whose face was scored. But not scarred. The deep lines were the route home.

  “Papa, Papa,” cried Honoré, though his words were indistinct.

  Armand shot to his feet and ran to his grandson.

  As he got closer, he saw that all the children, every one of them, had their tongues frozen to the goalpost.

  A few minutes later, as he and Gabri knelt and poured warm water over their tender tongues, he wondered why they’d do such a thing. But Annie and Daniel had done it. And so had he, when he was their age. He suspected his father and mother probably had too, when they were children.

  Some things were just inexplicable.

  “Hold on,” whispered Armand. “It’ll be all right.”

  * * *

  Haniya put her feet up on the footstool of her business class seat and gazed out the window.

  As the miles piled up, as she got ever closer to Sudan, to home, she felt herself relax. Her body might not be altogether safe there, but it was where her spirit belonged.

  Bringing out the small package Reine-Marie had pressed into her hand at the Montréal airport, Haniya unwrapped it.

  Then she looked at the card. It was actually a worn and yellowed piece of paper. It still had Scotch tape on it, where it had been attached to the windowpane.

  On one side it was signed by everyone, with cheerful messages. On the other was a rainbow and the words, in bright pink crayon.

  Haniya Daoud clutched the card and the tiny framed photograph it came with, and looked out the plane window at the acres and acres of snow. At the landscape covered in millions and millions of works of art.

  Ça va bien aller.

  She thought maybe it was true.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I started writing The Madness of Crowds at the end of March 2020, as I sat at home in quarantine. I’d made it across the Canadian border, and into my home, just as the border closed.

  A day earlier I’d had dinner with a friend in New York City. Next thing I knew, I was racing to get home to a two-week quarantine that turned into a three-month lockdown. Then, then, then …

  We all know what happened. No need to repeat it here. You lived exactly the same thing, whether your home is in Crete or São Paulo, Birmingham or Saskatoon. It was the first global shared experience.

  People wrote to ask if I’d put the pandemic into the next Gamache book. How would it affect Three Pines? I wrote back to say that I thought the last thing anyone would want to read about, and relive, was the coronavirus pandemic. And I meant it.

  But halfway through the first draft I realized I needed to talk about it. But how?

  And so I decided to set The Madness of Crowds post-pandemic. As the world returned to “normal.” But the bruising remained. The sorrow, the tragedies, but also the oddly rich blessings.

  I wanted, as I suspect you did too, to believe that we would emerge. That families, friends, strangers could get together again, unafraid. Unmasked. That we could embrace, and kiss, hold hands and have meals together.

  And so that’s how the pandemic is handled in this book, as you probably know by now. And you’ll also know that the experience, the theme of a contagion, reverberates throughout the book.

  How crowds of decent people can be infected by a certain madness. How extraordinary delusions become popular.

  And that brings me to the title. It’s taken from a book, which is real and is also in Gamache’s library, called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. It was first published in 1841 by Charles Mackay. It’s a series of nonfiction essays looking at why sane people believe the nuttiest things. Things that, in normal times, they’d easily dismiss. Like Tulipmania. The South Sea Bubble. Like stories of hauntings. Witches.

  What happens to tip people over into madness?

  I’d first come across the book as a teenager when my mother, who’d gone back to work in her late forties and qualified as an investment dealer in Toronto, began reading it. It was suggested reading, and probably still is, for stockbrokers since so much of what they deal with is “smoke and mirrors.” Perception rather than reality. And how perception can shape and actually become reality. A self-fulfilling prophecy.

  That’s what is visited on the village of Three Pines.

  In order to write this book I needed help.

  As always, the first person I want to thank is Lise Desrosiers, my great friend and assistant. Thank you to Linda Lyall (Linda in Scotland), who answers many of your letters (though I read them all) and manages much of the internet presence.

  Thank you to Jennifer Enderlin and her son, Nick, for helping me to at least begin to understand about having a child who is so much more than their Down syndrome.

  Thank you to Danny and Lucy and Ben McAuley, who run Brome Lake Books in my village of Knowlton, Québec, and who are great friends.

  Thank you to Rocky and Steve Gottlieb. To Sally and Cynthia and Sarah. To Kirk and Walter. Brendan and Oscar. To Hardye and Don, Bonnie and Kap, Sukie, Patsy, Tom, Hillary, for your presence, virtual and otherwise. To Dorie Greenspan for the Gamache lemon cookies and your support as we both finished our books, and commiserated. Her new book, out in October, is called Baking with Dorie. To Chelsea and Marc, for the Zooms with family. To Will Schwalbe, for your friendship and cheery messages, from one writer to another. From one friend to another. Thank you, Tom Corradine, for keeping me from becoming a complete blob—bastard.

  To so many people who make life livable. And, of course, to the frontline workers locally and beyond, who really did make life livable.

  To my brother Doug, who sheltered in place with me. We actually built a screen porch while in lockdown!

  And when it came to the actual writing, thank you to Allida Black for her guidance. To TJ Rogers, who has, for more than a decade, defended and served survivors of torture and who helped me to understand what Haniya Daoud might have experienced. To Sam Wijay. To Dr. David Rosenblatt and Dr. Mary Hague-Yearl (who isn’t entirely fictional) for help with the remarkable Osler Library at McGill, and the stain that was Ewen Cameron.

  Thank you, Tyler Vigen, who really does have a site called Spurious Correlations and allowed me to use it and his name. And my friend, the gifted writer and thinker Andrew Solomon. At one stage I considered calling this book Far from the Tree—which was a nod to his own brilliant book. I wrote and asked how he’d feel about that, and he could not have been more generous.

  Thank you to Kelley Ragland, my U.S. editor with Minotaur Books. To Paul Hochman and Sarah Melnyk and, of course, the man who leads them all, Andy Martin, the publisher. To Don Weisberg, who heads up Macmillan U.S. and is both smart and wise, and a fine man. To John Sargent, one of the great
publishers of our generation.

  Thank you to Louise Loiselle of Flammarion Québec, Jo Dickinson of Hodder UK, and all the publishers worldwide who work so hard to get these books into people’s hands.

  A huge, heartfelt thank-you to my amazing agent, David Gernert, and his wonderful team at The Gernert Company. And to the legendary Mike Rudell, who passed away and is missed every day.

  Speaking of that, each day when I sit at the dining table in front of the laptop, I close my eyes and ask for help and guidance. For courage. I thank my own Michael, for never really leaving me. For always being here and helping me along the way. I thank my good friend Betsy. And I thank Hope Dellon—my longtime editor and friend.

  I feel their presence every day. Guiding me along as I navigate life. Helping me as I write.

  All this to say, if you didn’t like the book, it’s their fault.

  ALSO BY LOUISE PENNY

  All the Devils Are Here

  A Better Man

  Kingdom of the Blind

  Glass Houses

  A Great Reckoning

  The Nature of the Beast

  The Long Way Home

  How the Light Gets In

  The Beautiful Mystery

  A Trick of the Light

  Bury Your Dead

  The Brutal Telling

  A Rule Against Murder

  The Cruelest Month

  A Fatal Grace

  Still Life

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Louise Penny is the author of the #1 New York Times, USA Today, and Globe and Mail bestselling series of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novels. She has won numerous awards, including a CWA Dagger and the Agatha Award (seven times), and was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. In 2017, she received the Order of Canada for her contributions to Canadian culture. Louise lives in a small village south of Montréal. You can sign up for email updates here.

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