The Madness of Crowds

CHAPTER 11

“Explain yourself,” said Haniya Daoud, staring at Roslyn, whose eyes were wide and getting wider. “You spend your days designing clothing for rich people?”

“Explain yourself,” said the President of the Université de l’Estrie, staring at Gamache.

Otto Pascal sat behind his large desk while Colette Roberge, the Chancellor, was in a high-back chair that looked uncomfortable. The President had not invited Gamache to sit.

“Oui. How could this happen?” the Chancellor asked.

Gamache turned to stare at her.

“Let me explain,” said Éric Viau, the building superintendent, as he stood in the old gym with Inspectors Beauvoir and Lacoste. “All the doors are kept locked and are attached to alarms that sound in my home”—he waved toward the road and the small house by the entrance to the University—“and at campus security. They also give off a god-awful siren.”

“The alarms didn’t go off in the last week?” asked Isabelle Lacoste.

“No. Nothing.”

“And there were no other events here over Christmas?” Beauvoir asked, looking around at the hats and mitts, the bags and boots that lay where they’d fallen.

They were standing where the firecrackers had gone off. The floor there was charred.

“Nothing. It’s not exactly anyone’s first choice for a venue. We only use this place if all the other venues are booked. But not recently, non. Not over the holidays.”

“So why was it booked for the event yesterday?” asked Lacoste. “And at short notice? Was every other place already taken?”

Monsieur Viau looked at her in surprise. “You’re asking me? I just try to keep the old place standing. I have no idea why someone would choose it.”

“Wait a minute, Armand,” said the Chancellor, getting up from her chair by the President’s desk. “Are you saying this all might’ve been planned and carried out by Professor Robinson herself? For publicity?”

“What I’m saying is that it’s a possibility, one of many we’re looking into.” He’d gone through the various theories they were pursuing. It interested him that the Chancellor had landed on that one.

President Pascal had also gotten to his feet. He came around his desk and stood beside and slightly in front of the Chancellor as they confronted the Chief Inspector.

Otto Pascal was looking more and more agitated. This was far beyond his understanding, which stopped sometime around 600 BC and the Sack of Thebes.

The twenty-first century was a cipher to the Egyptologist. He studied the Sûreté officer’s face, as though hoping he’d found the Rosetta Stone.

“You’ve arrested the man who took the shots. So why keep digging?”

“Why do you?” asked Gamache. “In case there’s something you missed. In case there’s something else to be found. Like you, we need to be thorough.”

Dr. Pascal was pale and looked like he wanted to sit back down. He also looked like he’d spent most of his life sitting down. Which he had.

As an authority on hieroglyphic literature, when he hadn’t been sitting for the last forty years, he’d been bending over. Some would say backward. Trying to first see, then convince the rest of the world, that such a thing as hieroglyphic literature existed.

Which is to say Dr. Pascal, now President Pascal, believed that some of what had been presumed to be nonfiction accounts of ancient Egyptian lives and events, etched carefully into stone, were actually the ancient equivalent of novels. Mostly thrillers.

Which is to say he’d spent his career, pinned his career, on the ability to turn truth into fiction. Which he seemed desperate to do in this meeting.

“Well, I,” stammered Roslyn. “Yes, I suppose that’s … I also design children’s—”

“Clothes for children?” asked Haniya. “Presumably children of the privileged. And what do they cost?”

Roslyn mumbled.

“Sorry, what?” said Haniya.

“Well…” Roslyn looked to Clara for help, but her friend and host had been through the wringer herself, several times that morning, and was already deflated.

She’d gotten out of bed partly reluctantly, partly excitedly.

Haniya Daoud, the toast of the Free World, was asleep in the next room.

Except she was not. Clara found her in her studio, going through the oil paintings propped against the wall.

“They’re from an earlier show,” Clara said from the doorway. “I haven’t gotten around to hanging them.”

Haniya, now in a splendid deep green silk caftan, turned to Clara and said, “I can see why not.”

It was then, as her scalp went cold but her cheeks burned, that Clara had composed the text to Myrna, Reine-Marie, Annie, and Roslyn. The SOS. To save her soul from the Asshole Saint.

Now she dropped her eyes to the phone in her lap and sent off a quick message to Myrna.

Where are you?

Sorry. Can’t come.

Can’t or won’t?

Yes.

Bitch, Clara typed and got a smiley face back.

“That’s a beautiful sari you’re wearing,” Annie said.

Roslyn turned a grateful face to her sister-in-law, who’d just distracted the ogre. But Clara suspected there was more to it than that.

It was a subtle rapier thrust, pointing out to Haniya the hypocrisy of criticizing Roslyn while enjoying the fruits of similar labor.

That sari must’ve cost a pretty penny, was probably a gift from a wealthy benefactor, and might even have been made by child laborers in some hellhole sweatshop in India.

“It’s called an abaya,” said Haniya. “It comes from a network of women’s co-ops I formed in Nigeria. It’s funded by a banking system I set up which is also run by…”

Clara thought she might throw up, and Annie looked light-headed.

Roslyn, on the other hand, was leaning forward, taking in every word.

“Did you see anyone hanging around the building in the last week or so?” asked Isabelle.

“I thought you caught the gunman,” said Monsieur Viau.

“We have,” said Jean-Guy. “We just need to make sure no one else was involved.”

As he said that he watched Monsieur Viau for any reaction. A slight change in skin tone, in breathing. A sprint for the door.

But the caretaker was just listening.

“Did anyone set up an appointment to see the place in the last couple of weeks?” Beauvoir asked. “Were there any workers? Repairs?”

“Not a worker, but some fellow came by. Wanted to hold a fundraising dance and had heard this place was cheap.”

“Did you ever leave him alone?” Lacoste asked.

“No.”

“Did you take him anywhere else in the building?”

“No. Just here.”

“Could he have hidden anything without you seeing?” asked Beauvoir.

Monsieur Viau considered, then shook his head. “No. I was with him the whole time. I’d have noticed that.”

“Is this the man?”

Isabelle showed him their photo of Édouard Tardif.

As Monsieur Viau studied it, the blood drained from his face. “Oui.” He looked up at them. “I let the gunman in?”

“You couldn’t have known,” said Isabelle. “Did he rent the place?”

“You’ll have to ask someone in Administration about that.”

“The Chief’s over there now,” said Beauvoir, taking out his phone. “Meeting with the President and Chancellor.”

“Lucky man,” said Viau.

“I’ll see if he can get the information.” As he sent off the text, Lacoste turned back to the caretaker.

“Just to be clear, this man you met here was alone?”

“Oui.”

“You’re sure?”

Now Viau hesitated. “Well, I didn’t see anyone else, but I suppose someone could have been with him. Waiting outside.”

“You unlocked the door when this man arrived,” said Isabelle. “Could someone else have come in after him, without you seeing?”

Viau considered, then nodded. “Yes, I guess so.”

Lacoste and Beauvoir looked at each other.

“Do most people who rent this place see it first?” Beauvoir asked.

“I’d say almost all.”

“Then who from Professor Robinson’s group toured it? And when?”

Viau’s brows drew together. “They didn’t. At least not as far as I know.”

“How did they know about this place?” asked Beauvoir. “And who rented it for her?”

Gamache could see the old gymnasium building from the President’s office.

He returned his gaze from the window back to President Pascal and Chancellor Roberge.

He’d gone through what had happened the day before. Step by step. A report. Facts.

“What’s the most likely scenario?” President Pascal asked.

“At this stage, I can’t say.”

“Can’t or won’t?” asked the Chancellor.

Gamache remained silent.

“Basically, Chief Inspector, you’re saying you’re considering every option,” said the President.

“Except space aliens, yes.”

“Including that Professor Robinson herself orchestrated it,” said Pascal.

“That’s one scenario, oui.”

“That sounds like one small step up from space aliens,” said the Chancellor, with a weary smile. This had not been her, or anyone’s, favorite twenty-four hours. “Sounds to me like a spurious correlation. Connecting things that don’t actually go together.”

“We need to look at everything, no matter how unlikely,” Gamache reiterated. Though the more he thought about it, the more Professor Robinson orchestrating an attempt on her own life seemed unlikely. Too many variables. Too many things could go wrong.

As a statistician, she would know that. Would she take the risk?

He doubted it.

“How did the gun get into the place?” asked the President. “I’m assuming he didn’t walk in with it.”

“No. It must’ve been hidden there before the event.” He decided not to tell them that they believed Tardif had an accomplice.

Gamache looked at the President with some sympathy.

Otto Pascal led a small, even sleepy university, and had woken up this morning to chaos. The campus was overrun with police, with journalists from around Québec, soon from around the country and even the world.

The Administration must, by now, be fielding awkward questions from frightened parents. Wondering if their children should return. And not just because of the shooting.

All the journalists, and many of the parents, would be asking how any academic institution could possibly allow a talk by Abigail Robinson, a person many, most, considered a lunatic.

President Pascal looked longingly at his desk, where the latest photos from a find in the Valley of the Kings was awaiting his interpretation.

Otto Pascal had come up with his theory on hieroglyphic fiction in his postdoc work, only because no one else had thought of it. Then he’d spent the last four decades slowly realizing why that was.

Still, it had gotten him some notice. Granted, not as much as his roommate, who had, as a joke and, given this conversation, somewhat ironically, decided to declare that the hieroglyphs, and the pyramids themselves, were the work of ancient aliens.

It pissed Pascal off. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Now he was stuck with the dumb literature theory.

“Mr. President?”

“What?”

The senior Sûreté officer was nodding toward the window.

Through it, President Pascal could see the offending gymnasium. A carbuncle of a building if there ever was one.

“You have a good view of the site,” said Gamache. “I don’t suppose you saw anything in the last week?”

“Me? No. I haven’t been in.”

Gamache noticed Pascal’s quick glance at his desk and took a step over. On it were printouts dated two days earlier.

Pascal noticed him noticing. “Well, only to get those. I took them home, then brought them back here when I realized I’d have to spend most of today putting out fires.”

He looked at Gamache as though he’d personally put a match to the University.

Gamache fought the impulse to point out he’d asked, begged, both the President and the Chancellor to cancel the event.

His phone vibrated and he glanced at the message from Beauvoir.

“We need to know,” he said, replacing his phone in his pocket, “who rented the auditorium for Professor Robinson.”

“The Administration offices are closed for the holidays,” said President Pascal.

Gamache raised his brows. “I think maybe whoever’s in charge can come in, don’t you? It shouldn’t take long. I’d hate to have to get a warrant.”

“No need for that,” said the President. “I’ll make sure you get the information you need within the hour.”

“Bon, merci,” said Gamache. “If there are no further questions…”

“I just wish you’d canceled the event, Armand, after we spoke,” said President Pascal as they walked him to the door. “Still, I’m grateful to you for what you and your people did.”

Gamache caught Colette Roberge’s smile of sympathy.

“I think I can get you the information you need,” she said. “My office is in the Administration Building. I have the key.”