The Madness of Crowds

CHAPTER 13

They listened as Chief Inspector Gamache reported on his meeting with the President of the University and the Chancellor.

“Not much there,” he admitted when he’d finished. “Mostly I answered their questions.”

Then he told them about his private conversation with Chancellor Roberge and watched as both Jean-Guy’s and Isabelle’s expressions went from interested to astonished.

“She booked the gym?” said Beauvoir. “And didn’t tell you that before?”

“Non.”

“It’s more than booking the gym,” said Isabelle. “The event itself was her idea. What else isn’t she saying?”

Beauvoir picked up the receipt Gamache had placed on the table and studied it.

“She used a false name. Who’s he?”

“A name she made up. Go on, say it.”

“I know she’s a friend, patron,” said Jean-Guy, “but really, it’s looking more and more like the Chancellor’s in it up to her neck.”

“I agree. That’s how it looks. But isn’t that always our problem? Things that seem fairly reasonable, though perhaps a little odd, in normal life suddenly look a lot worse when a crime is committed. It’s easy to overinterpret.”

“She lied to you,” said Isabelle. “And put a false name on this paper. It would be hard to overinterpret that.”

“I have no desire to defend Colette Roberge. But do I think she’s behind the attempt on Abigail Robinson’s life? No. I think at worst she didn’t want it to come out that she was helping Professor Robinson, so she lied and covered her tracks.”

“Do you think she supports Robinson?” asked Jean-Guy.

Armand took a deep breath. “I don’t really know.”

“But she’s letting Robinson and her assistant stay at her home,” said Isabelle. “That’s gotta say something.”

“It says she’s a good friend,” said Gamache. “It does not say she agrees with the professor. In fact, she said it was more for the sake of her friendship with Robinson’s father that she was doing it.”

“We need to speak to him,” said Isabelle.

“Can’t,” said Gamache. “He died years ago.”

“So she’s doing all this for a dead man?” asked Jean-Guy. “That’s some relationship.”

The wooden chair squeaked as Gamache slowly leaned back. After a few beats he said, “Isabelle, if there was an attempt on the life of someone you knew but not well, would you take them into your home?”

She considered. “Yes, I would.”

“With your family there?”

“No, of course not. I’d get the family out.”

Gamache nodded and looked at Jean-Guy, who said, “Same.”

“And yet, when I told Colette about the accomplice and that there could very well be a second attempt, she didn’t say that the children would leave. I had to convince her.”

She thought for a beat. “The only way you’d invite the target of a possible attack into a home with children is if you knew, knew for sure, there wouldn’t be another one.”

Gamache was nodding. That was exactly what he was thinking.

Beauvoir put his elbows on the table and leaned toward them. “And the only way Chancellor Roberge would know that is if she was involved in the first one. If she was the accomplice.”

“Or knows who is,” said Gamache. “I’m beginning to think I was wrong earlier. Chancellor Roberge might be more deeply involved.”

“And she’s just invited Robinson into her home,” said Beauvoir. “Should we stop it?”

Gamache thought for a moment, then shook his head. “If she is involved, and that’s a big ‘if,’ there’s no way she’d allow another attack in her own home. No, I think this’s just about the safest place for Professor Robinson.”

Beauvoir met Lacoste’s eyes. They knew famous last words when they heard them.

“Is she gone?” Myrna asked, standing just inside the door of Clara’s cottage and craning her neck to see beyond the mudroom and into the kitchen. “I can still smell sulfur.”

“That’s probably Ruth.” Clara shut the door firmly against the cold, then turned to Myrna. “And yes, she’s moved up to the Inn and Spa. You’re a shitty friend, by the way.”

“Gâteau?”

Clara took the chocolate cake, but made it clear this didn’t mean they were even.

“I begged you to come over and you didn’t. She’s your guest, and you left me alone with her. All night. Do you know she ordered French toast for breakfast? I’ve never even made it for myself. But I figured it out, then she decided it was, in her word, ‘disgusting,’ and refused to eat it.”

“Did you?”

“Eat it? Yes. But that’s not the point.”

“You offered to put her up.”

“When I thought she was a remarkable person, yes.”

“She’s still that.” Myrna removed her boots and put on the slippers she kept at Clara’s.

“And a shit.”

“Well, yes. Things they don’t mention in the Nobel Prize citation.”

They cut the cake into five equal pieces and took them into the living room, where Reine-Marie, Annie, and Ruth were gathered around the fire.

“Where were you?” Annie demanded. “You coward.”

“Cake?”

Annie took it and seemed at least somewhat mollified. Or at least distracted. As a diversion, few things were as effective as chocolate cake.

“I wanted to come,” said Myrna, plopping onto the sofa and sending Ruth and Rosa, at the other end, bouncing into the air. “But I had urgent business.”

“A used-book emergency?” asked Clara. Though, with her mouth filled with cake and creamy icing, it came out as “Uh oozed ook emerenthy?”

“This’s all your doing,” said Ruth. “Bringing that woman here. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that she’s a brave woman who should be supported and celebrated.”

“From a distance,” said Annie. “Of say a continent or two.”

“May the Lord bless her, and keep her,” said Clara, “far away from us.”

“Fiddler on the Roof?” asked Annie. “Isn’t Gabri hoping to do that for this year’s production?”

“Yes. He’s trying to convince your father to play Tevye.”

“He won’t do it?” asked Myrna.

“Have you ever heard Armand sing?” Reine-Marie asked.

“And where were you?” Clara turned to her. “You could’ve come over.”

“I’m actually sorry I didn’t. I’d like to have met her. I suspect now I won’t. Madame Daoud will be gone soon, right?”

“One way or another,” said Ruth.

“Now, Ruth,” said Annie. “Remember what we talked about.”

“I’m not allowed to kill anyone.”

“Good. Remember that.”

“I think what we all need to remember,” said Reine-Marie, as she looked at the semicircle of friends, “is what Haniya Daoud has been through in her life. She’s younger than you,” she said to Annie. “She lost her own children, but has saved thousands of others. She’s been sold into slavery. Raped and tortured. Imagine, try to imagine the horrors she’s been through. And out of that she’s started a movement that has saved and empowered women around the world. And we expect her to make small talk? To be polite? And when she isn’t, when she’s impatient and angry, we joke about killing her?” Her eyes, her voice, her expression had turned hard. “Killing her?”

There was silence.

Clara sighed. “You’re right. I think she moved to the Auberge because she could tell that I didn’t want her here.”

“After all she’s gone through, how could we expect her to be like us?” asked Annie.

“No,” said Ruth. “Not like us. Better than us. We really were expecting a saint.”

“Not flesh and blood with feelings of her own,” said Myrna. “She might’ve been unpleasant, but we were mean. Cruel even. Letting her know she wasn’t wanted.”

Myrna Landers knew there were few things worse than being excluded, shunned. It was seen in some communities as a punishment worse than death.

“Why didn’t you come over?” Clara asked Reine-Marie.

But Reine-Marie wasn’t listening. She was thinking of her conversation with Armand, about Haniya Daoud. How he’d described her. There was respect, compassion, but there was also concern. An awareness of the damage damaged people could do.

“Maman?” Annie interrupted her thoughts.

“Oh, sorry.” Reine-Marie turned to Clara. “Work got in the way, I’m afraid.”

“More monkeys?” asked Myrna.

“Oui.”

“My favorite was always Davy Jones,” said Clara.

“You really are a daydream believer,” said Myrna.

“What’s the count now?” asked Ruth.

“Sixty-three. What could they mean?” Reine-Marie asked Myrna, their resident psychologist. “Why would someone spend more than half a century secretly collecting monkeys?”

“The question isn’t why monkeys,” said Ruth. “The question is why a secret?”

“She’s right,” said Myrna, turning astonished eyes on the mad poet at the other end of the sofa.

“She was bound to be right eventually,” said Clara. “Law of averages.”

“Is there such a thing?” asked Annie. “Can’t math, numbers, be interpreted, massaged to mean just about anything? To predict any outcome?”

They all knew what Annie was really thinking.

It wasn’t about Ruth’s chances of finally being right. Nor was it about the chances Haniya Daoud, a distinguished but disappointing stranger, and her insults would finally hit a nerve.

Annie Gamache was thinking about statistics. About graphs. About a law of averages that seemed to have predicted that a lunatic theory would take hold. Eventually.

And that probability grew by the day, by the click-through, by the event.

It grew every time Professor Abigail Robinson opened her mouth.