The Madness of Crowds

CHAPTER 45

It was just after half past six when Jean-Guy Beauvoir went over to the Sûreté agent in the vehicle outside the Auberge.

“Has anyone gone in or out?”

“Non, patron. Only the staff. Day shift starts at six thirty.”

“If anyone comes out, stop them. It might not be from the front door. They could come around the side. Your partner?”

“Patrolling the outside, like you ordered. We’re taking turns.”

“Bon.”

Once in the lobby Isabelle had the front desk clerk call Haniya, Abigail, and Vincent in their rooms. And invite them down for breakfast.

The receptionist got through to Haniya, but there was no answer from the other two.

“Probably in the dining room,” said Isabelle. But she returned a minute later. “Not there.”

“Did anyone come down?” Gamache asked the receptionist.

“No.”

“Can we have the keys to their rooms, please.”

Beauvoir took the stairs two at a time while Lacoste asked, “Is there a staff entrance?”

“Yes, around the side.”

She went off quickly to check it and returned at the same time as Beauvoir.

“Not in their rooms,” he reported.

“There’re back stairs, for the staff,” said Lacoste. “And an exit. Gilbert would know about both.”

“Search the place,” commanded Gamache.

While they did, he made some calls. His first was to the bistro, to make sure neither Vincent Gilbert nor Abigail Robinson was there. Olivier answered and said they were not.

Next, Gamache called Gilbert’s son, Marc, who had a home a couple of kilometers away.

As he listened to the phone ring Armand saw Haniya descend the sweeping stairway into the lobby, wearing a royal blue abaya and embroidered hijab.

“Marc? It’s Armand Gamache. I’m wondering if your father’s with you.”

“No, he should be at the Inn. He said he’d be leaving this morning but not until later.”

“Leaving for where?”

“His cabin. Why? Is there a problem?”

“Did you speak to him last night?”

“Yes, we had dinner there. Why?” Now his voice had risen.

“How did he seem?”

“How does Dad ever seem?”

“So the same as always?” asked Armand.

“Yes. What’s this about? Is something wrong?”

“I just need to speak to him.”

“At”—there was a pause—“twenty to seven in the morning?”

“Merci, Marc. Nothing to worry about.”

Move along, nothing to see here. Though there always was.

Just asking questions. No real reason. Though there always was.

Nothing to worry about. Though …

“Nothing,” said Beauvoir, when Gamache hung up.

Isabelle appeared from the other direction and agreed.

“What’s going on?” demanded Haniya, who was standing in the lobby beside Chancellor Roberge.

“Look outside,” Gamache said to Beauvoir and Lacoste, then turned to Haniya.

“Did you see or speak to Professor Robinson or Dr. Gilbert last night when you got back from our place?”

“No. I went right to my room.”

“And this morning? Did you hear or see anything?”

“I was asleep until you called. What’s happened?” She looked from the Chief Inspector to the Chancellor, who seemed troubled.

Beauvoir arrived back. “The agent saw the night shift leave at six thirty but didn’t check them.”

“There’re boot prints leading into the woods,” reported Lacoste, breathless.

“Toward the crime scene?” asked Gamache.

“No. Toward the cabin. Two sets.”

“Damn.” Gamache looked at his watch. “That was seventeen minutes ago.” He turned to Colette. “What’s his plan? What’s he going to do to her?”

The Chancellor was pale. Her breathing rapid. Her mind working. “Nothing. I’m sure of it.”

But of all the things she seemed, “sure” wasn’t one of them.

“There’re snowmobiles in the garage,” Gamache said to Beauvoir and Lacoste.

While they sprinted out, he turned to Colette and Haniya. “Stay here. Don’t follow us. I mean it, Colette. Do not follow us.”

They heard engines revving outside.

“Chief?” Lacoste called from the door.

At the door Gamache put on his gloves, then said to Colette, more gently now, “Paul Robinson was wrong. You know that.”

More revving.

“Was he?”

“Don’t follow us.”

The Chancellor noticed the emphasis and tilted her head.

Gamache pointed at Haniya. “Stay.”

She was clearly outraged at being spoken to like that. He couldn’t blame her. But it had to be done.

He plunged back into the cold, and after speaking quickly to the Sûreté agent in the car, he hurried over to Beauvoir and Lacoste, each astride their own snowmobiles.

“Are you armed?” he asked, his voice raised above the roar.

When both shook their heads, he opened his glove to reveal a gun. “Here, take it.”

“Not yours,” said Beauvoir, zipping it into a pocket of his parka.

“Non. The agent’s. For God’s sake, don’t lose it. Gilbert has a rifle. It’s licensed. He has it for protection in case a bear attacks, though I doubt he’s ever fired it.”

“Only because he prefers bears to people,” said Lacoste.

Gamache got on the lead machine and, gunning it, he crossed the road and headed deep into the woods. With Beauvoir and Lacoste right behind.

The wind was full in their faces. Their eyes teared and their cheeks froze as they hunched over their machines. Banking around corners, and racing ahead, desperate to get to the cabin.

Just before the last curve, Gamache stopped and dismounted. As did the others.

They ran the rest of the way, slipping and skidding on the snow and ice. When one fell, the others ran back and dragged them up.

Sunlight bounced off the reds, blues, and greens of their coats, as the three of them plunged forward.

They could smell the cabin before they saw it. A fire had been lit in the hearth and the scent wafted to them through the thin air. Rounding the corner, they slowed to a walk. Then, at a signal from Gamache, they stepped off the path and into the woods. Their boots sank knee-deep into the snow as they waded through it, catching glimpses of the cabin through the forest.

It sat at the far side of the clearing, a wisp of smoke coming out the stone chimney. A propane lamp had been lit, throwing soft light from inside onto the pristine snow.

It was a peaceful scene. Like a Christmas card, or a snow globe before being shaken.

But it was time to shake it up.

Gamache pointed, and together they sprinted across the clearing, skidding to a stop at the cabin. Pressing themselves against the logs, they held their breaths.

Nothing. They hadn’t been heard.

Lacoste craned her neck and glanced through the window. Then ducked back down.

“They’re sitting by the fire,” she whispered. “One on either side. Talking.”

“Talking?” asked Beauvoir. He had his hand on his pocket. He hadn’t yet unzipped it, but he could feel the comforting outline through the goose down.

“Oui. I can’t see the rifle.”

She looked again, then ducked down quickly. “Gilbert’s gone.”

“Get back,” said Gamache. As Beauvoir and Lacoste went to scramble around the corner, the cabin door opened.

Armand threw out his arm, as a father did to instinctively protect a child in the passenger seat, when something unexpected happened.

They froze.

Vincent Gilbert stepped onto the small porch and looked around. He held something in his hands. Something long and metallic.

At the small sound of a pocket beginning to unzip, his eyes swung around and landed on Gamache.

Armand stood up and faced Gilbert.

“What’re you doing in there, Vincent?” he asked.

“What’re you doing out there, Armand?”

The Sûreté officers followed Vincent Gilbert into the cabin.

Gamache saw Jean-Guy’s hand on his still sealed pocket and made a small gesture.

Not yet.

Isabelle was the only one who hadn’t been in the Asshole Saint’s home before. She quickly took in the single room.

A brass bed, separated from the rest of the cabin by bookcases, was at one end. A small kitchen with worn wooden counters and an old pine table was at the other. And in between was a sitting area around a woodstove, which Gilbert was now tending with the poker he’d been carrying.

The cabin was warm and smelled of sweet pine and herbs. It smelled of the forest. As though the log walls were an illusion. Like so much else about this case.

Propane lanterns had been lit, and a coffeepot was perking on the woodstove.

It would have been a perfect domestic scene, if not for the rifle on the coffee table among the mugs, the cream jug, and the sugar bowl. Like a still life in Appalachia.

Two oversized armchairs were in front of the fire. One for solitude. Two for friendship.

Neither Henry David Thoreau nor Vincent Gilbert had anticipated so much society. Nor could the two people who’d been in the chairs be considered friends.

“May I?” Gamache asked, stepping forward and pointing to the rifle.

“Perhaps not,” said Gilbert, sitting back down, still holding the poker. “As you know, I have a license for it.”

“True, but you’re not licensed to point it at people.”

“It’s just sitting on the table, Armand. Not doing any harm.”

Not yet.

“Are you all right?” Lacoste asked Abigail.

“Yes.”

“Why wouldn’t she be?” asked Gilbert.

Isabelle looked from Gilbert to Abigail. She couldn’t make out who was the hostage and who was the taker. And she could see that Gamache and Beauvoir were having the same difficulty.

While Gilbert held, gripped really, the poker, the rifle was actually closer to Abigail.

“We were just talking,” said Abigail. “Two scientists comparing notes. But looks like the time has come for some sort of conclusion, don’t you think, Dr. Gilbert?”

“I do, Professor Robinson. Armand, you look worried.”

In fact, he was hyper-alert. Trying to fathom what was going on.

This extreme politesse was masking a brutal aggression, he could tell that much. Violent emotion was radiating off both Abigail and Gilbert. The place might smell like the forest in high summer, but it felt like a courtroom, nearing the end of a long and dreadful trial.

What had Abigail said? Scientists might appear rational, but they were in fact completely at the mercy of their emotions. Because most never learned to face them.

And it seemed to Gamache that, now faced, their emotions would have no mercy. Not today. Not in this courtroom.

“Why did you come here?” asked Gamache.

“We wanted to talk in private,” said Abigail. “No one was forced. There were things that needed to be said.”

“And done,” said Gilbert. “We hadn’t expected company.”

“What did you expect?” asked Beauvoir.

He slowly, carefully unzipped his pocket. He could feel the weight of the gun and knew that he could get to it long before either Abigail or Gilbert could grab the rifle.

He hoped it would be Abigail Robinson who tried.

“We expected to finally have it out,” said Abigail. She turned to Gilbert. “What’s that line from Ruth Zardo’s poem? I’m sure you know it.”

“Or will it be,” he said, “as always was, too late?”

“No, though that would fit too.”

“And now it is now,” said Beauvoir, “and the dark thing is here.”

Abigail shifted to him and nodded. “That’s the one.”

Gamache and Lacoste were staring at Beauvoir in disbelief.

“Why are you here?” asked Gilbert.

“For the same reason,” said Gamache. “To have it out.”

They’d collected the evidence. The facts. Now they needed the feelings.

The dark thing.

There was a sound outside, and then, incongruously, a polite knock on the door.

Gilbert started for it, but Gamache stepped in front of him and nodded to Lacoste, who opened the door.

“Oh, thank God.” Colette Roberge practically fell inside. Her face was bright red, her eyes and nose running, and her speech slurred by frozen lips and cheeks.

“What the hell are you doing here?” demanded Gilbert.

“I couldn’t stay away.” She stomped her feet to get the circulation back and glared at Vincent for a moment before turning to Gamache. “But you knew that. Did you tell the agent in the car to let us by?”

“Us?” asked Isabelle. She opened the door again and saw Haniya Daoud trudging to the porch. Her head down, her beautiful blue abaya sodden and dragging behind her, like a long teardrop.

Pushing past Lacoste, she muttered through chattering teeth, “Fucking snow.” Once inside she shivered uncontrollably and looked around the cabin. “Fucking Canada.”

Colette had gone straight to the woodstove and stood with her hands outstretched toward the warmth.

“You got your meeting after all, Armand,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “Though maybe not where you’d planned.”

She stood almost exactly midway between Abigail and Vincent. Her allegiance as yet undeclared.

“We’re used to adjusting when things don’t go as we planned,” said Gamache.

“I wonder.” Her eyes were shrewd, calculating. “Was this your plan?”

“How could it be? I had no idea Professor Robinson and Dr. Gilbert had left the Auberge.”

“True, but once that was clear, I think you manipulated both Madame Daoud and me. You wanted us here, all together, but you also needed time to manage the situation.”

Gamache raised his brows. “I’m not sure you could call this ‘managed’ and I doubt either of you is that easily manipulated.”

“Everyone can be manipulated. Even you.”

There was a stillness in the air, and Gamache wondered if that was what had happened. What was happening still. Was he being manipulated?

He looked again at the rifle and thought maybe he had been, this whole time. From the first moment that call had come through, asking him to provide security for an obscure little event. All the way along. To this moment.

The case was bookended by this woman, Chancellor Roberge. Who’d requested he head up security at the gym, and now stood warming herself by the woodstove.

“You could’ve had that agent in the car stop us, but you didn’t,” Colette said. “Instead you pivoted. Moved the meeting to here. By your emphasis to me, and your tone to Haniya, you knew we’d come. Very clever. That flexibility, that creativity, is something not encouraged in scientists. We plod along, following facts to a conclusion. Then we stick the landing.”

“Maybe if statistics carried guns, you’d learn to pivot,” said Haniya.

Colette smiled. “Probably true.”

“But statistics are a weapon,” said Gamache. “Isn’t that why we’re here?”

“I wonder how much you really know about why we’re here,” said Abigail.

“I know,” said Haniya. “I know that Gilbert brought you here to finish what he started.”

“And what was that?” asked the Asshole Saint.

“To kill you,” Haniya said to Abigail.

“Why would he want to do that?”

“Why did I slit men’s throats in the middle of the night? To prevent an even bigger outrage.”

Half the people there gaped at Haniya in surprise.

“You did?” asked Abigail.

“You make it sound noble, Madame Daoud, the Hero of the Sudan,” said Gilbert. “The truth is, you did it to escape. To survive.”

“Of course I did. Who wouldn’t,” said Haniya. “You think it’s easy? It’s sometimes a necessity, but that’s all. You can’t tell me you haven’t sighted another person and pulled the trigger. Was it easy? Or did it add another measure of bile to your cup?”

Isabelle Lacoste began to speak, to defend him, but Gamache raised his hand to request quiet. To let Haniya continue. To see if she’d plunge right over the edge. She might take him with her, but at least then they’d know.

“I warned you, when we first met,” said Haniya. “That it takes courage to stop a monster. Courage you clearly don’t have.”

“But you do.”

“Why do you think they’re going to give me the Peace Prize? It’s for the courage to do what’s necessary. There’s no peace without courage.”

Isabelle couldn’t take it anymore. “What works at night with a machete in Sudan doesn’t work here. There’s no moral high ground in Canada for murder.”

Haniya turned to Isabelle, her stare intense.

“Because you’re so much more civilized, is that it? The true north, strong and free. You just bash each other over the head at parties. And shoot each other in bistros. Must be nice to be so evolved. But just so you know, your high ground is actually a hole.”

“Jesus,” said Abigail. “Do we live in the Dark Ages? Where a scientist is condemned to death for telling the truth? I’m just compiling statistics from the pandemic. The study was commissioned by the federal government, for God’s sake.”

“So was Ewen Cameron’s,” said Gilbert.

“Yes,” said Abigail, turning to him. “Let’s talk about Ewen Cameron. He killed my mother, my sister, my father. And you’re just as guilty of their deaths.”

As she spoke she leaned closer to Gilbert, closer to the rifle. Beauvoir moved his hand to his pocket and rested it there.

Come on. Come on.

“Did you come to Québec to kill Dr. Gilbert?” Gamache asked her.

“No. I came here to look him in the eye. To make him admit what he did.”

“You came here to ruin him,” said Colette.

“He’s already ruined,” said Abigail. She looked around the cabin. Outside, they could hear the blue jays shrieking in the morning sun. “I came here to expose him. I wanted the rest of the world to see what a monster he really is.”

“And to blackmail him,” said Beauvoir. “To force him to support your work.”

“This whole thing started a few weeks ago, didn’t it?” Gamache said to Abigail. “When you found the letter Dr. Gilbert wrote to your father demanding payment. That’s when you realized what had happened to your mother.”

“And that he”—she glared at Gilbert—“was part of it. Yes.”

“You brought the letter with you, of course,” said Gamache, feeling his way forward now.

She nodded. “Debbie had it. I didn’t even want to touch it.”

Gamache turned to Gilbert. “How did you know she had it on her?”

“I didn’t. I had no idea that letter still existed. Not until we were at Colette’s and you brought out the other letter. The one sent to the local woman. That’s when she”—he nodded toward Abigail—“said she’d found a similar one. Before that I had no idea her mother had been part of Cameron’s experiments.” His gaze moved on to Colette. “Aren’t you going to say something? You’re going to let them accuse me of a crime you know I didn’t commit?”

“Do I know that, Vincent?”

“Of course you do.” The Asshole Saint was beginning to lose it.

Colette was quiet for a moment, then turned to Gamache.

“You said that this started a few weeks ago, when Abigail found the letter from Vincent among her father’s things. That might’ve been, to use your analogy, the hundredth monkey. The final push. But it started long before that.”

“Oui. I see that now. I’ve made a few mistakes. Some in judgment.” He held her eyes. “And some in logic. I thought of the murder of Debbie Schneider as a puzzle, like Jean-Paul’s. A jigsaw. I watched him do what we all do with jigsaws. We separate out the pieces, into colors, into patterns that match. Then we frame it. But this seemed to be two or three different puzzles mixed together. It didn’t make sense, until I changed the analogy. Until the rational puzzle became a thread of emotions. One end is tied to Debbie Schneider, the other to Ewen Cameron. And the thread that runs through everything that happened in between has a name. Abby Maria.”

Abigail sat back in her chair and stared at him. “Did Colette tell you?”

“Non. She kept your father’s confidence. All Colette would say is that he loved both his daughters, equally. More than life itself. I didn’t see it, couldn’t quite get there, even after we found the note he wrote you.”

Abigail turned to Colette. “You showed them?”

“No. They searched the house and found it.”

“It seemed to contradict what everyone said about your father,” said Gamache. “The letter appeared cruel, even vindictive. It seemed to lay part of the blame on you. You were, he said, part of the reason for what happened to Maria, and for his own suicide. He did what he did to free you.” Gamache shook his head. “I couldn’t reconcile the two. A loving father who kills one child and burdens another with a lifetime of guilt? How could this be love? How could love, real love, ever be a reason to murder?”

“I know how,” said Haniya.

Gamache looked at her and nodded. “Yes, you do. You survived for love. And you did what you did for love. And now, I think, I also understand.”

“Now it is now, and the dark thing is here,” said Gilbert, quietly.

“It’s not dark yet,” said Gamache. “But it’s getting there.”

Haniya gave a snort of laughter. “A cop who quotes Bob Dylan. You are dangerous.”

“Colette was right,” Gamache continued. “What Paul Robinson did, he did for love. But it wasn’t murder. Inspector Beauvoir here understood that before anyone else. He knew Paul Robinson could never kill his daughter. In fact, he died protecting his family. Abby Maria.”

Colette Roberge nodded. “Abby Maria.”

“Are you saying ‘Abby Maria’ or ‘Ave Maria’?” asked Haniya. “I don’t understand.”

“My mother called us that,” said Abigail. “Abigail and Maria. Abby Maria. It was a nickname, a term of endearment.”

Colette muttered something, and when everyone looked at her, she spoke up. “It was more than that. It was a bond. It bound you.”

“Yes. It meant our fates, our lives, were intertwined. I thought it could be broken, but I was wrong.”

Abigail looked exhausted. Drained. An animal tired of the plague. Of what had been plaguing her for decades.

“What’s this about Maria?” asked Haniya. “What happened to her?”

“Maria is, was, Professor Robinson’s younger sister,” Colette explained. “She was severely disabled. After Maria was born, Madame Robinson suffered postpartum depression. Her husband, Abigail’s father, was a scientist and had heard that Ewen Cameron was the best psychiatrist in the country, doing landmark research. So he got his wife in.”

“What Paul Robinson didn’t know,” said Beauvoir, “was that Cameron was conducting experiments on his patients, for the CIA and the Canadian government.”

“What sort of experiments?”

“Mind control. Brainwashing. He used LSD. Sleep deprivation. Electric shocks.”

Haniya’s mouth dropped and the scars deepened, as though maws had opened across her face. “He tortured his patients? This was allowed? Here? In Canada?”

“Tortured them, then sent them a bill,” said Lacoste. “Signed by Vincent Gilbert. One of Cameron’s residents.”

Haniya turned to Gilbert. “You knew?”

Vincent Gilbert stared at the planks of his floor.

“Madame Robinson, Abigail’s mother, eventually took her own life,” said Colette.

“Madame Robinson would refer to her daughters as Abby Maria,” said Gamache. “As though they were one person. It was meant as a sign of affection. And perhaps slightly more than that. She was, I’m guessing, a devout Catholic.”

“Yes,” said Abigail.

“And she committed suicide?” said Haniya. “Isn’t that a mortal sin?”

“Yes,” said Gamache, when Abigail didn’t answer. “A testament to just how broken she was. To the pain she suffered. She’d been driven out of her mind, out of her faith. She’d been driven to despair.”

“By you.” Abigail glared at Vincent.

In a swift movement, Gilbert bent down and grabbed the fireplace poker.

While everyone was momentarily distracted by that, Abigail picked up the rifle. And aimed it at him.