The Madness of Crowds

CHAPTER 10

“You’ll never believe it.”

Annie came bounding down the stairs the next morning. They could hear her heavy tread—thump, thump, thumpity thump—and looked toward the door as she practically danced into the kitchen.

Her face flushed, her eyes bright with excitement, she looked at them around the large pine table enjoying their breakfast of pancakes and bacon.

“Haniya Daoud is here.”

“What?” said Roslyn, looking up from trying to dab maple syrup off Florence’s sweater. “Here? In Three Pines? I thought she wasn’t coming until tomorrow.”

“Well, she’s here now. Jean-Guy and Dad met her last night in the bistro,” said Annie. “Didn’t Dad tell you, Mama?”

“No,” said Reine-Marie. “I was asleep by the time he came in and got up before he did. He’s showering now.”

It was just after seven on New Year’s Eve and still dark outside.

When Reine-Marie had dressed and gone downstairs, she found the lights on and Daniel already in the kitchen. He’d started the fire in the woodstove and put the coffee on.

She also found Honoré sprawled by the front door. He’d gotten himself into his snowsuit, and was struggling to put his boots on the wrong feet.

His trusty toboggan lay at his side, and Henri and Fred were circling and nudging him, anxious to go out. Little Gracie, the ratmunk, was still in Stephen’s room, both fast asleep.

Reine-Marie and Honoré had taken the dogs for a walk around the village green. Henri and Fred played in the snow while Honoré dragged his toboggan on a rope behind him and asked his grandmother questions.

What’s a year? Why do we need a new year? Is the old one broken?

How many pancakes can I have?

He showed her the Big Dipper, which was really just a random star still visible in the early-morning sky, and they went inside.

By the time they got to the kitchen, others were already up, coffee was poured, the maple-smoked bacon was sizzling in the huge cast-iron pan.

Reine-Marie cooked up the first batch of blueberry pancakes.

Armand had come down and gone, unnoticed, to his study. Standing at the window, he’d watched Reine-Marie and Honoré on their walk.

It was going to be a brilliant, bitterly cold day. A day where it felt like the air itself was crystalizing.

Then he sat at his laptop and read the messages that had come in overnight.

Sûreté patrols were out on snowmobiles, looking for Édouard Tardif’s brother. Without luck so far. It was a huge area, with many trails and cabins in the forests.

The videos sent in by spectators so far revealed nothing useful. No indication yet who might be an accomplice. Who might have set off the fireworks, if not Tardif himself.

And Tardif was refusing to talk. Gamache would go in and interrogate him later that day.

He heard Reine-Marie and Honoré return and his granddaughters race downstairs on their way to breakfast.

After reviewing all his messages and making notes on the day ahead, he joined the others in the kitchen.

When she’d woken up that morning, Annie had known, instinctively, that she was alone in the bed. Drowsily sneaking her hand over, to confirm, she felt the bedding cool. Not cold. He hadn’t been gone long.

Throwing on a dressing gown, she went to the room next door and found Jean-Guy at Idola’s crib, looking down at her.

“Where’s Honoré?” she asked, sleepily.

Jean-Guy nodded toward the window.

“On the roof?” she asked as she strolled over. “Brilliant.”

There was just enough light for Annie to make out the two figures.

She smiled as she watched little Honoré walking beside his grandmother. The two deep in conversation. And she remembered doing the same thing with her mother. Walking hand in hand through the park near their apartment in Montréal. Telling her mother how the world worked.

It wasn’t until she was in her twenties, and at the Université de Montréal law school, that she’d begun to listen.

“I know it’s your turn to get her up,” said Jean-Guy, “but do you mind if I do it this morning?”

“Are you kidding,” said Annie, turning back to him. “I’d pay you. But”—she looked at him more closely—“are you okay?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I was just wondering if you’re getting a cold. Is your nose blocked?”

Since the pandemic, even though they’d all had the vaccine, even though there hadn’t been a new case in months, they still worried every time someone coughed.

“Why do you ask? Oh, God, don’t tell me. Is it that bad?” He bent over Idola and inhaled. “I don’t smell anything.”

“Not even bacon?”

“It smells like bacon?”

Now that would be a miracle, he thought before he realized what Annie was saying.

She was smiling at him. “If anyone could have a child whose merde smelled of smoked meat, it would be you, but no. It comes from downstairs. Normally when you smell bacon, it’s all I can do to get you decent before you head down.”

She watched as he finished what he was doing and picked their daughter up, protecting her floppy head as the doctors had shown them. It now came naturally.

Holding Idola secure in his arms, he looked at Annie, who was staring at him with those thoughtful eyes, so like her father’s.

“Everything okay?” she asked again.

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

“About Idola?” asked Annie, her voice rising in timber.

“Non. Not really.” He sat on the side of Honoré’s bed.

Annie joined him. “What is it? Is it bad? Did something happen yesterday? You seemed so distracted.”

Jean-Guy brought Idola closer to him. Smelling her hair. Feeling her tiny fingers grasping his collar.

“Last night, in the bistro,” he said, not looking at her. “Your father and I talked.”

“Yes…?”

This was it. He’d tell her about disobeying orders and abandoning his post. He’d tell her how he felt, sometimes, about their daughter. About their decision.

He’d tell Annie everything.

And that’s when he told her.

About Haniya Daoud.

“News?” Jean-Guy asked when he arrived in the kitchen with Idola.

He’d put her into a pretty little onesie, a Christmas gift from Stephen. It was covered in cavorting pink mice, each holding what looked like a wedge of cheese, or lemon meringue pie.

“Non. Nothing,” said Armand, kissing Idola’s head. “She smells nice. New powder?”

“It’s the bacon, Dad,” said Annie, and turned to Roslyn. “Men.”

“I know. For years Daniel thought our children smelled of croissants.”

“They don’t?” asked Daniel, and looked cross-eyed at Zora, who laughed.

“I’ve spoken to Isabelle,” said Jean-Guy, pouring himself a coffee. “We’re set to interrogate Tardif later this morning. His lawyer will be there, of course.”

“Of course.”

Idola sat on Armand’s knee as he listened to Zora, Florence, and Honoré describe the day ahead.

Just then there was a flurry of dings, pings as texts arrived for Annie, Roslyn, and Reine-Marie. All with the same message from Clara, inviting them over for breakfast with Haniya Daoud. It seemed slightly more than an invitation, Reine-Marie noticed. More like a plea.

Roslyn composed an excited reply.

Yes, plenty. So exited. Can I binge the girds? Mercury.

Not her best composition, but Clara understood and immediately sent back a text saying, best not to bring the grills.

“I wonder why not,” said Roslyn.

“Too scary,” said Jean-Guy, catching Armand’s eye.

“You’re right,” said Annie. “We don’t want to overwhelm Haniya. She must be a little fragile.”

Reine-Marie, who’d declined the invitation with regret, saying she had work to do, walked over to her husband.

“I saw that look. What’s up?”

“I’ll tell you later,” he whispered.

The breakfast dishes were cleared away so that Annie and Roslyn could go and have their second breakfast with the honored visitor.

Stephen was up by then and dressed as always in a crisp shirt, sweater, and gray flannels. Ready for a board meeting, should one arise.

“Still finding monkeys?” he asked Reine-Marie, after getting a mug of coffee.

She was now sitting by the woodstove at the far end of the kitchen and bending over a large cardboard box. “Oui.”

“What’s the count?” he asked, joining her.

“Fifty-seven, so far.”

“What a weird person, collecting monkeys,” said Stephen, cradling Gracie, his ratmunk.

“Wish I could say it’s the strangest thing I’ve found going through people’s things.”

Having risen to chief archivist in Québec, Reine-Marie had recently decided to retire and take on consulting work.

This was a commission from a local family to go through their mother’s things. The matriarch had recently died, leaving them far less wealth than expected, a rambling old house, and boxes and boxes of clothes, papers, knickknacks, and a completely unexpected collection of monkey dolls, monkey postcards, stuffed, painted, and illustrated monkeys. All in boxes in the attic.

Though by far the largest collection of monkeys were hand-drawn on all sorts of documents.

It was a puzzle, and one Reine-Marie hoped to solve.

“Any of them valuable?” asked the old financier.

“Not that I know of,” she said, holding a moth-eaten monkey doll by an ear.

Armand had joined them, carrying a dossier.

“All right,” said Reine-Marie. “Before you lose yourself in work, what did that look between you and Jean-Guy mean, when we were talking about Haniya Daoud?”

“It’s just that if Annie and Roslyn are expecting a saint, they’re going to be disappointed.”

“Why? What’s she like?”

When he didn’t answer, her eyes grew serious and she understood.

“It’s a miracle she survived at all,” said Reine-Marie, “and that she turned her own pain into doing so much good. Not surprising she’d be…” What was the right word? “Difficult.”

“Oui,” said Armand. “And then some. Certainly wounded, maybe even unbalanced, in that she sees quite clearly what’s wrong with the world but can’t seem to see what’s right.”

Though Haniya Daoud had certainly seen into him. If not his head, then she’d seen through the cracks, into his broken heart.

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Armand wondered if Florence understood that line from The Little Prince.

He hadn’t, as a child. It was only as he got older that he knew it to be true. And now he thought about Haniya Daoud, and what she had seen. With her own broken heart.

“An Asshole Saint,” said Stephen. “Not the first. I think most were, weren’t they? In fact, she wouldn’t even be the first around here.”

“You’re not talking about yourself, are you, Stephen?” asked Reine-Marie. “Because, at least according to Ruth, only one of those words applies to you.”

“Really? You’d take the word of a madwoman who carries around a duck? Treats that thing like it’s her child, isn’t that right, Gracie?” He kissed the ratmunk on her whiskered nose.

But both Reine-Marie and Armand knew who Stephen meant. Their resident Asshole Saint lived in a cabin in the woods, preferring his own company to that of anyone else on earth.

Everyone else on earth felt the same way.

They’d grown so used to calling him that, and he even introduced himself as the Asshole Saint, that the villagers had almost forgotten who he really was.

“I haven’t met him yet,” said Stephen. “So what makes him an asshole?”

“If he’s there tonight, you’ll probably see,” said Reine-Marie. “The saint part is a little more hidden.”

Armand smiled. That was true. But it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. The man had actually devoted much of his life to improving conditions for the vulnerable. For the forgotten and dismissed. Though whether he actually liked those people was a matter of debate.

“Well, now I’m really curious,” said Stephen. “Do you think he’ll be at the party tonight?”

“Probably,” said Reine-Marie. “It’s at his son’s place.”

“The Auberge,” said Stephen. “Will you be going?”

The question was directed at Armand.

“I hope to. Have to see.”

Actually, he hoped not to. Not that he didn’t want to be there. But he hoped he’d be arresting and interrogating a suspect. The accomplice. And closing this case.

“Isabelle just called,” said Jean-Guy, leaning against the doorway into the kitchen. “She’ll be at the University auditorium in twenty minutes.”

“Bon.” Gamache got up and looked at the clock. “I’ll come with you. The President and Chancellor have asked to meet with me.”

“In the principal’s office, Armand?” asked Stephen.

“Feels a bit like that.”