The Madness of Crowds

CHAPTER 34

Vincent Gilbert watched as Chief Inspector Gamache closed the door to the library. That was expected, in a private conversation.

What happened next was not.

Gamache turned the key in the lock. And pocketed it.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir sat in one of the leather chairs across from Gilbert, while Gamache took the other.

A chill crept over the doctor and he looked at the hearth. There was no fire. Not even one laid and ready to be lit. Instead it was just a dark hole, with ash in the grate and a slight smell of burning.

Gamache brought a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and handed it to him.

Gilbert unfolded it, saw the letterhead, and let it go. It fell to the coffee table, unread. Had there been a fire in the grate, he might have tried to throw the letter in. Consign it to where it belonged. Though he wasn’t sure it would burn.

But there was no fire. There was no escape. Not into an illustrious career. Not onto boards of charities. Not deep into the woods.

Vincent Gilbert had known for years, decades, that this day would come. That one day he’d be found.

He’d been through the files in the Osler and quietly, over the years, removed all reference to his time with Ewen Cameron. But he couldn’t retrieve the letters sent to the patients. He just had to hope they’d destroyed them. After all, who would keep something that grotesque?

But at least one person had. He glanced down at the name. Enid Horton.

It meant nothing to him.

But this Enid Horton had found him. And brought the head of homicide with her.

“You knew” was all Gamache said.

Gilbert nodded. “Yes. I knew what Ewen Cameron was doing.”

He could have left it at “yes.” But he had to say the words. To say out loud what he had never even admitted to himself.

I knew what Ewen Cameron was doing.

“Tell us,” said Gamache.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir shot a glance at the Chief Inspector. Surely, he thought, there were specific questions to be asked. Ones that would nail Gilbert. Trap him and lead to his arrest. Because that was where this was heading.

Vincent Gilbert killed, or tried to kill, Abigail Robinson not to save others, but to save himself. To stop her from revealing the one thing he’d spent his life hiding from. His complicity in the torture of hundreds of men and women. Then sending them home crippled, shattered. With a bill for their services.

The Asshole Saint. What, Beauvoir wondered, were saints called in Hell?

He remembered now, from his brief time in Sunday school before the nuns expelled him, that there was a concept of the “wicked angel.” The idea had stuck with little Jean-Guy. Somehow, for a binary-minded boy who thought in black and white, the idea that an angel could be wicked was terrifying. Because it suggested chaos.

Were they locked in with, trapped with, not an Asshole Saint but a Wicked Angel?

And Jean-Guy understood, in a moment of complete clarity, why Armand Gamache had not asked a question, but had simply invited Dr. Vincent Gilbert to explain.

It was perhaps to trap the Wicked Angel.

But more likely to free him. To give him an opening, one last shot at redemption.

“Like so much else,” Gilbert began, “it started innocently. I needed a part-time job, and all the good ones were taken. No one wanted to work in that place, and no one wanted that job. Looking after lab animals at the Allan.” He stopped and looked directly at Gamache. “Have you ever been there? To the Allan Memorial?”

When Gamache shook his head, Gilbert looked at Beauvoir, who also indicated he hadn’t.

“It’s in what used to be called Ravenscrag, this old stone mansion on the top of Mont Royal, built by one of the robber barons. They say it’s haunted and I can believe it. If it wasn’t before Cameron, it was after. Terrible place. Probably still is. Terrifying. Caretakers were afraid to go into the basement. I wouldn’t stay there at night.”

He lowered his head as the shrieks of the animals mixed with the screams of the people, until they were indistinguishable. They’d chased him down the hallways and out the door. They’d chased him into the gathering darkness. They’d chased him all over the world. And finally, they’d chased him deep into the woods.

Beauvoir could feel the hairs on his forearms rising and glanced at Gamache, who looked perfectly calm. As though suspects told them ghost stories every day.

“But I kept the job, because it paid well and I was learning a lot. I was a resident and Dr. Cameron was a god. The God. The eminent head of psychiatry. Doing important work, vital work. They were beginning to understand how the mind worked. Not the brain, but the mind. It was exciting.”

Jean-Guy’s lips pressed together in an effort not to say something, and he noticed that, beside him, Armand’s hand was moving, very slightly. His fingers were caressing the leather chair. And then Gamache slowly closed his right hand into a fist.

And Jean-Guy knew why. It was to stop the trembling that had plagued Gamache from that moment in the factory. From the moment his whole body had been lifted off the ground, as though levitating, propelled by the bullets.

And then slammed back down.

Gamache had had the scar at his temple from that day forward. And a slight limp and a tremble in his right hand, whenever he was stressed or fatigued. Far from being a mark of weakness, Jean-Guy Beauvoir understood it was, in fact, a sign of strength.

“It was a terrible job,” Vincent Gilbert was saying. “But it didn’t take long before I discovered something far worse. What was happening on the other side of the wall. In the next room, and the room beside that. And so on and so on.”

“Ad nauseum,” said Gamache.

Gilbert gave a curt nod. “We’d heard rumors, of course, of the CIA involvement. But we’d thought that was a myth. And if we believed it, it just added to Cameron’s luster. It seemed romantic. That he was helping the Free World in its fight against Communism. Against the Red Tide. It seems laughable now, but it was real back then. You have to remember, this was right around the Cuban missile crisis. The world was on the brink of nuclear war. Anything that could be done to prevent that was considered fair.”

He looked from one to the other of them, to judge their reactions. But all he got were stares.

Gilbert took a deep breath. “That’s what I told myself, anyway, when I realized what Cameron and the others were doing to those men and women.”

He sat back and folded his hands together on his lap, interlocking the fingers. Then he brought them to his face so that his chin rested on the top of his clasped hands. Like a child at prayer.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

“Most of Cameron’s experiments had to do with brainwashing and sleep deprivation,” said Gilbert. “He’d keep them awake for days at a time. Part of my job was making sure they got food and water.”

“Them? They?” asked Gamache, his voice terrifying in its calm. “The animals or the people?”

“Both,” Gilbert said, quietly. “The people begged me to let them sleep. To untie them. To let them go home. But I didn’t.”

If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

“Not because I thought what Cameron was doing was right. I knew it wasn’t. But because I was afraid if I said or did anything I’d be kicked out of medical school. He was that powerful.” He stared at Gamache for a moment before saying, “And I was that weak.”

Vincent Gilbert screwed his eyes so tightly shut they all but disappeared into his face.

“I spent the rest of my life trying to make amends,” he said, his eyes still shut. “I was still an asshole.” He opened his eyes and smiled. “That, I’m afraid, is hardwired. But I’m hoping I’m also…”

Gamache now let his feelings, his thoughts, be known. In the sickened expression on his face as he greeted this sally by Vincent Gilbert. Who seemed to be inviting them, him, to agree that besides being an ass he’d also, magically, become saintly. His soul cleansed of an early misdemeanor.

Armand Gamache was having none of that. Though he remained mute.

And now Jean-Guy Beauvoir saw what he was doing. He was giving Vincent Gilbert rope. To either escape his prison or hang himself.

Gilbert, by his last statement, appeared to be fashioning a noose.

“I did try, Armand,” said Gilbert, softly. Pleading for forgiveness that was not Armand’s to give.

“Did you know Mrs. Horton?” Gamache asked, his eyes not wavering from Gilbert’s face.

There was a pause. Then Gilbert shook his head. “I can’t remember. Maybe if I saw a photograph…”

“Why the monkey?”

“Pardon?”

“The drawing on the letter,” said Beauvoir. “What does it mean?”

“How should I know?”

“I think, Dr. Gilbert,” said Gamache, “you’ve proven there’s a great deal you do know that you’re not admitting. Madame Horton died recently. In the attic the family found boxes filled with, among other things, monkeys. Dolls. Books. Drawings. Why this fixation on monkeys?”

Gilbert was silent for a moment. Sullen. But as the silence went on, his expression changed. His face opened, in realization.

“There was a woman in the room next to where the animals were kept. She was part of the sleep-deprivation trials. She must have heard…”

They looked down at the drawing, the first one. Of the terrified animal with the human eyes.

The monkeys, their screaming, must have, in her muddled near-demented state, become part of her nightmares. Become part of her. The lab monkeys had fused to her shattered mind and stayed there.

In drawing them, she freed them. An act of compassion that the great Dr. Gilbert could never achieve.

“Do you also hear them?” Armand asked.

Had Gilbert also conflated the animals and the people? And convinced himself it wasn’t people he’d heard screaming? Begging for help. Searching, with wild eyes, for one decent person to free them.

“Not monkeys, no.” Gilbert paused before going on. “Have you ever heard a blue jay shriek?”

And they had their answer. Vincent Gilbert thought he’d find refuge, peace, deep in the forest. But all he’d done was go deeper into the nightmare. Where all the wild creatures, the forest itself, screamed at him. Every day and all night long.

But if he could just do one magnificent thing, maybe he and they would be free.

Maybe, thought Beauvoir, the Wicked Angel would be redeemed.

Maybe, thought Gamache, the era of prominent madmen would end.

“When Abigail Robinson threw Ewen Cameron in your face last night,” he said, “what did you think?”

“I thought she knew.”

“And?”

“And I was afraid.”

“And?”

Gilbert shifted in his seat. “And you want me to say I tried to kill her? To keep her quiet? But that I killed her friend by mistake?”

“Tell us, Vincent,” said Gamache, leaning forward.

“The truth? Yes, I saw a chance to redeem myself. Not because she knew about my work with Cameron, but because what she’s proposing is wrong, on every level. It was too late to stop her with intellectual arguments. I’d missed my chance. I should have done something when Colette sent me the paper. But now I could make it right. I’d failed to save those men and women years ago, I’d failed to help in the pandemic. I’d failed to condemn her work when I first read it, but now, maybe I could make up for it. Abigail Robinson has to be stopped. I knew that. You know that.” He stared at Gamache.

Beauvoir looked over at Gamache. They had him. It was over.

“And?” said Gamache. They needed to hear him say it.

“And nothing. Someone got there first. Except they messed it up. Killed the wrong person.” He held Gamache’s eyes. “I wouldn’t have made that mistake. I’m not the one you’re looking for, Armand.”

“Were you and Colette Roberge in this together?” Gamache asked. “Did she know what you had planned?”

“All she knew is that I was determined to stop Professor Robinson.”

“She brought Professor Robinson to the party so you could kill her,” said Beauvoir.

“No, no. It was Abigail Robinson’s idea to go to the party, not Colette’s. But we decided it was a good idea. It would give me a chance to try to reason with Abigail. Get her to stop this madness. Colette thought, I thought, that the reason she wanted to meet me was because she respected me. Not…”

“So Colette Roberge also wanted Abigail Robinson stopped? And she’s alone with Professor Robinson?” said Gamache.

“No. Well, yes, but she didn’t know how far I was willing to take it.”

“And maybe you don’t know how far she’s willing to take it,” said Gamache.

He turned to Beauvoir, who grasped the situation immediately. Getting up, he took a few steps away and placed a call.

“You’re coming with us,” Gamache said to Gilbert.

Gamache grabbed the letter off the coffee table and put it back in his pocket before taking Gilbert’s arm and maneuvering him to the door.

Jean-Guy had reached the agents guarding the Chancellor’s home and told them to go inside and find Professor Robinson.

“And stay with her. We’re on our way.”

The flurries had stopped, and the stars were just coming out while around them the creatures in the dark forest watched.