The Madness of Crowds

CHAPTER 29

“The langoustines are excellent,” said Vincent Gilbert, as they took their seats by the window.

On a clear day there was a splendid view of the village below and the hills beyond, rolling into Vermont. But the falling snow both obscured and softened it, giving the landscape a dreamlike quality.

To Dr. Gilbert, looking at the vista behind his companion, it was like something out of a storybook. Peaceful, calm.

But Gamache was looking in the opposite direction, and had a very different view. He saw the Sûreté agents, and the tent in the woods, and the crime scene tape.

To him it looked like something out of Grimms’ Fairy Tales, or one of the darker fables of La Fontaine.

How closely the two perspectives existed, coexisted, he thought. Side by side. The border between Heaven and Hell a sliver. Murder and mercy. Kindness and cruelty. And how very difficult it was, sometimes, to tell them apart. Or to know on which side of the border you stood.

“They brush them with garlic butter, then grill them over coals,” said Dr. Gilbert, taking the menu from the young man and grunting what might have been thanks.

“What a coincidence,” said Armand, scanning the menu. “Exactly what I plan to do with you.”

Gilbert laughed. “I doubt I’ll be as tasty, or as tender. Any progress on the murder last night?”

“Some.” Armand waited until they’d ordered and the young server poured Vincent a glass of Chablis. “But before I get into that I have a question about the other attack, the one at the auditorium.”

“Oui?”

“Why didn’t you tell us you were there?”

Vincent had reached for one of the rolls, still warm from the oven, and was tearing it in half, when he paused. Then continued, though now, as he twisted the roll, it looked like he was wringing a neck.

“Admit I was there when both attacks happened? Do I look that stupid?”

“It’s a matter of how you act, not how you look. You’re smart enough to know that.”

Vincent Gilbert, who was fairly sure he was smart enough to know nearly everything, smiled thinly.

“I was curious. I’d read her paper and knew the Royal Commission had refused to hear her. An extraordinary decision, given the study was commissioned by the federal government. I wanted to see just how crazy she and her followers are.”

“You could’ve watched one of the online videos. You didn’t have to go to the rally.”

“It’s not the same as being there. You’re smart enough to know that.”

Armand grinned. No one collected, and, when necessary, manufactured, resentments quite as efficiently as the Asshole Saint. But few, Armand knew, were kinder.

Kindness and cruelty, side by side. In the same person. The Asshole Saint.

“And?”

“And they’re pretty squirrelly.”

“What was it like, to be in the middle of the crowd?” Armand asked, after the waiter put down his bowl of cider-and-onion soup and Vincent’s grilled langoustines. “I was off to the side of the stage, so my experience was different.”

“Yes, I saw your experience.”

He squished a piece of bread into the garlic butter and considered.

“It was frightening. All those people chanting. Supporting her. Supporting killing others so they could be safe. How did it come to this? Were people like this before the pandemic, or did that bring it on? A long-Covid of fear? I don’t know, Armand. It made me sick. And sad. And glad I live far—”

“From the madding crowd?”

Vincent Gilbert smiled and nodded. “Yes. I peek out every now and then, then scuttle back to my little cabin, where I hope so-called civilization won’t find me.”

“Has it, though, Vincent? Found you?”

Armand’s companion was silent, dropping his eyes to his plate.

He slowly looked back up and sighed. “It’s hard, Armand. When you care, but try not to. Pretend not to. As long as I didn’t hear about anything, see anything, I was okay. I lived through the pandemic in my own little bubble. Safe from the world. But then Colette sent me the research paper, the statistics on what happened, and…”

He opened, then closed his hands.

“Your bubble burst.” Armand lowered his voice and asked again, softly, gently, as though coaxing a wounded fawn out of hiding. “Why did you go to her talk?”

“I needed to assess the damage she’d done. The damage I’d done by not trying to stop it when I had a chance. If I’d said something after reading her paper.”

“Professor Robinson’s university tried to stop it and couldn’t.”

“At least they tried. I didn’t. I just retreated into my little home and hid from the world.”

“But then you came out.” Armand paused. Examining the lean, leathery man in front of him.

“And found a plague of another sort, but just as deadly. Abigail Robinson isn’t just spreading death, she’s spreading despair. That chant of ‘Too late, too late.’ It needs to be stopped. You see that too. I know you do.”

“What did you decide to do about it?”

When the Asshole Saint was silent, Armand brought out his phone, swiped once, then tapped the screen a few times and hit play before turning it around.

The sound was off. No need to disturb the other diners.

Anyone who was watching the two men by the bay window would have seen the younger and sturdier of the two holding out a phone and the other staring into it, the blood draining from his face.

It would have been disturbing.

Jean-Guy drove over the new Samuel de Champlain Bridge, the Montréal skyline ghostly through the snow.

Within minutes they were at McGill University. The campus buildings circled a parklike setting, right in the middle of Montréal. Thanks to Reine-Marie’s contacts, the head of the Osler Library met them at the main door into the McIntyre Building and let them in.

“Bonne année,” said Mary Hague-Yearl, as the women kissed on both cheeks.

“Bonne année,” said Reine-Marie. “Thank you for opening the library for us.”

“You said it’s important.”

Reine-Marie introduced her companions. “This is Myrna Landers. Dr. Landers is—”

“A prominent psychologist, yes, we’ve met,” said Dr. Hague-Yearl, taking Myrna’s hand.

“I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”

“It was at a cocktail party in the library to celebrate the naming of a chair in Women’s Studies,” said Dr. Hague-Yearl. “It’s wonderful to see you again. I’d heard you’d retired to the country but didn’t realize you knew the Gamaches.”

“Neighbors. Friends,” said Myrna.

Reine-Marie introduced Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir, of the Sûreté.

“So this’s about the attack on Abigail Robinson at the Université de l’Estrie a few days ago,” said Dr. Hague-Yearl, leading them up to the third floor of the modern building.

“And the murder last night,” said Inspector Beauvoir.

Dr. Hague-Yearl paused in the corridor outside the entrance to the Osler Library. “Murder? Someone killed her?”

It was impossible not to see the mix of disgust at the violence and relief at the victim.

“You haven’t seen the news?” Reine-Marie asked.

“No. I try not to on holiday. What happened?”

“It wasn’t Professor Robinson who was killed,” said Beauvoir. “It was her assistant and friend. A woman named Deborah Schneider.”

They’d paused in front of the closed doors that led into the library.

They were immense, more suited to a fortress than a library. Fifteen feet tall at least, and made of heavy, worn wood. They were in stark contrast to the rest of the concrete-and-glass building.

This was, Beauvoir knew from watching movies late at night, how most horror stories began. With naïve people standing in front of huge, old, locked doors.

How often had he whispered at the screen, Don’t go in, don’t go in?

But of course, they always did.

Dr. Hague-Yearl unlocked the doors, and in they went.

The Asshole Saint sat back in his chair and pressed his bony knuckles against his lips.

Armand had paused the video and lowered the phone. Dr. Gilbert stared past him and out the leaded glass window, to the forest and hills spread out before them.

“Finished, Dr. Gilbert?” The waiter startled Vincent, bringing him back to the present. He looked down at his empty plate.

“Oui.”

When the young man took their dishes away, Vincent Gilbert refocused on Gamache.

But he said nothing. Not because he was waiting for his companion to speak, but because he didn’t know what to say. Where to start.

He opened his mouth, took a deep, deep breath, sighed. Then closed it again.

Finally, when the coffee had been poured, he spoke.

“I was there.”

It was, Armand knew, not said to state the obvious. It was the pause before the leap.

“What I said earlier was true. I didn’t go to her talk with any particular agenda. Certainly not to cause harm.”

Do no harm. For years Armand had thought that the phrase was part of the Hippocratic Oath all doctors swore. It was only recently he learned that wasn’t true at all.

Do no harm was part of Hippocrates’s writing, but from a different text. On epidemics.

“You know what the video shows,” said Gamache. “Not just that you were there.”

“Yes.”

The video that Jean-Guy had discovered, taken by the lighting technician in his booth above the floor of the old gymnasium, showed quite clearly what had happened.

They could see Vincent Gilbert, Canadiens tuque shoved far down his head to hide his identity as much as possible. When the fireworks went off right next to him, he ducked. Clearly surprised.

Then he stood back up and looked at the stage, along with the rest of the crowd, as Gamache calmed them, reassured them it was not gunfire.

And then those telltale few seconds.

The man beside Gilbert raised his arm. Slowly. And in his hand, seen clearly on the video, was a gun.

Everyone else was still staring at the stage. At Gamache.

Except Vincent Gilbert. He was looking at the gun. Then he turned his head, to look at the man holding it.

Aiming it. Taking his time before he pulled the trigger.

And firing.

The Asshole Saint had seen it all. Been close enough to reach out and knock the hand up. So that the shot missed.

“It’s not that you did no harm,” said Armand. “It’s that you did nothing.”