The Madness of Crowds

CHAPTER 47

“The chamber was full,” Isabelle reported. “She meant to kill you.”

“No,” said Jean-Guy. “She meant for me to kill her.”

He was slumped in the back of the car, utterly drained and still trembling. Not from the cold, but from exposure.

“Suicide by cop,” said Gamache. It was one of the nightmares. One few cops had come out of without being forced to actually do it.

But Jean-Guy Beauvoir was far from the average cop.

They’d taken Abigail Robinson into the Sûreté station, where she was booked for possession of a dangerous weapon and assault on a police officer.

They hadn’t yet charged her with the murder of Debbie Schneider, or Maria. They didn’t know if they had enough evidence to convict. That might take some time. If ever. Though they still hoped for a confession.

By the time the booking was done, the statements taken, the paperwork completed, it was late afternoon.

Colette Roberge had been driven back home to Jean-Paul, and Vincent Gilbert and Haniya Daoud had returned to the Auberge.

Once there, Vincent had asked Haniya to walk down to the bistro with him, for a drink.

“I need some fresh air.”

“We’re going to walk?”

“It’s just down the hill,” he said. “You can see it from here.”

“You can see the horizon too. Doesn’t mean I want to walk there.”

The two Asshole Saints bickered all the way down the hill and into the bistro, where Gabri got them a table away from polite company and pumped them for information.

He left with an order for a double scotch and a hot chocolate, but no information.

Isabelle drove the Chief and Beauvoir back to Three Pines.

Jean-Guy sat in the back seat and passed a shaky hand over his face. He wondered if they realized how close he’d come. He thought they probably did.

What he didn’t know is why he hadn’t fired. And whether he’d live to regret it.

“So you didn’t take Abigail to your cabin to kill her?” Haniya asked.

“Me? Murder someone? I got a belly full of cruelty with Ewen Cameron. No. I asked Professor Robinson to join me, away from distractions, so I could apologize for what I allowed to happen to her mother. But I never got the chance.”

He looked down at his veined hands, clasped together on the table. His scotch was untouched in front of him.

Haniya picked up her bowl of hot chocolate topped with peaks of whipped cream. She’d felt the need for something soothing. Never having had hot chocolate, but watching the pleasure it gave others, she felt it might be just the thing.

She wondered why she was so upset. After all, she’d been through worse. Done worse. But she’d never actually witnessed the fallout. She’d thought of the men she’d killed as inhuman. And she knew that she’d had no choice but to do what she did.

But now she was beginning to realize a greater truth. That those men and boys had families. Had motives, however flawed. Had wounds of their own. They almost certainly had not been born with the desire to rape, to torture, to torment and murder.

Now, sitting in the quiet bistro in the quiet village, Haniya Daoud accepted that while the men she’d killed were horrific, were monsters, they were also human.

And maybe, maybe, in realizing the truth, she could finally find some measure of peace. Maybe that was the real prize.

“Would you like to?” Haniya asked. “Apologize, I mean. Maybe you can try it on me.”

Gilbert was about to dismiss the idea, but looking at her, he changed his mind.

“I’m deeply sorry for what happened to your mother. For my shameful part in it. I’m deeply sorry I didn’t do anything to stop it. I should have, and I didn’t. I’m sorry that it led to her death, and for what subsequently happened to your family, and all the families. I’m sorry for all the pain I’ve caused.”

The elderly Asshole Saint searched the face of the young Asshole Saint and noticed that the scars had disappeared. Or rather, they were no longer the first thing he saw when he looked at her.

“I forgive you,” she said quietly. “And I’m sorry too. That you were so hurt, driven mad with brown brown, that you did those terrible things. I’m sorry your life had to end as it did.”

While Vincent Gilbert tried to figure out what she was talking about, and what brown brown was, Haniya lifted the bowl with trembling hands and took her first sip of hot chocolate. And immediately understood its powers to soothe, if not heal. She also understood why Canadians might love winter, if this warm drink came with the snow and ice.

She lowered the mug and smiled at Vincent.

He wondered if he should tell her about the whipped cream mustache but decided not to. Seeing it somehow lifted his spirits.

Once an Asshole Saint …

“Before you go, there’s something I’d like to show you,” Clara said the next morning.

She’d asked Haniya over to her home to say goodbye. When she arrived, she found Myrna already there in the now familiar kitchen. Going into the familiar living room, Haniya stopped at the threshold and stared.

Gabri and Olivier stood up and turned to her. As did Reine-Marie. Ruth, holding Rosa, stood next to Stephen. Jean-Guy and Isabelle were there. As were Annie and Honoré and Idola. They’d driven down to Three Pines, to see her off.

They were standing in a semicircle, facing her.

Haniya stepped back. Paused. Then took one step forward. Then another. And completed the circle.

Vincent Gilbert had declined the invitation to Clara’s home, having had more than his fill of humanity to last him the balance of his life.

As he approached his cabin, he heard the blue jays shrieking. In the past he’d chased them off, or at least tried to. But now he stopped at his front porch and opened the sack he’d bought at Monsieur Béliveau’s general store.

Scattering the black sunflower seeds on the white snow, he watched the birds swoop down and pick them up. He went inside then, lit the fire, made a pot of tea, and opened the book Colette had lent him.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

He settled in, and read about the South Sea bubble, and the tulip crisis, and the Drummer of Tedworth.

The birds still shrieked, of course. But now it sounded more like company.

“Oh, God,” sighed Ruth. “Not that fucking painting again. Brace yourself,” she said to Stephen.

At Haniya’s request, Clara had made up a batch of hot chocolate with whipped cream. Stephen had poured brandy into his and Ruth’s.

At least the two of them would be quite well braced.

Gabri was practicing saying, “It’s wonderful. It’s brilliant.”

Even Reine-Marie was bracing herself. Like the rest of them, she’d been privy to Clara’s latest effort. Their friend had taken to slapping layers of paint, apparently at random, onto the canvas. Occasionally breaking up the splatters with something hyper-recognizable.

The last one was a banana. Reine-Marie wondered if it was a reference to all those monkeys, but suspected it had no meaning at all. Behind her, Myrna was trying to coax Billy Williams forward, but like the donkeys he raised, he’d put his head down and was refusing to budge.

Smart man, thought Myrna, as she reluctantly followed the others into Clara’s studio.

“How much did you know, Colette?” asked Armand.

The Chancellor and her husband were sitting in the Gamaches’ living room. Since Jean-Paul was calmer away from crowds, they’d stayed behind while the rest of them had headed over to Clara’s, to say goodbye to Haniya Daoud.

Jean-Paul was taking books off the shelves and stacking them neatly on the floor in front of the fireplace, while Armand and Colette talked.

“Paul never told me outright, but he knew that I knew. He’d never have given Maria a peanut butter sandwich by mistake. And if it was on purpose, it was murder. And I knew he wasn’t capable of that. But I have to say, I’d always hoped it was Debbie Schneider who’d done it. Not Abigail. For Paul’s sake. But when the letter came, I could tell that he thought it was Abby who’d done it. He knew his daughter. Knew what she was capable of.”

“He wanted you to show the letter to Abigail, to let her know she was safe,” said Armand.

Jean-Paul was holding a book and staring, then he walked over and gave it to Colette. He was now almost completely silent. Though he communicated in other ways.

“Merci,” she said. “I’ve been looking for this.”

He smiled and went back to work.

Colette squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them and put the book down on the sofa beside her.

“Vincent says you invited Abigail here so that you both could try to help her. To dissuade her from the path she was on.”

“True.”

“Did Vincent also plan to tell her about his involvement with Ewen Cameron?”

“No. He didn’t realize her mother had been one of Cameron’s victims. Not until she told us.”

“With Abigail’s arrest, will that end the debate over mandatory euthanasia?” Armand asked.

“You’d think,” said Colette. “But I’m afraid the barb has gone in. She’s scared enough people into believing there won’t be enough resources to recover from the pandemic, never mind handle another. Unless the sick and elderly are allowed to die.”

“Made to die,” said Armand. By lethal injection. Capital punishment for men and women whose crime wasn’t killing, but taking too long to die.

Through the door to his study he could see the open files he’d been working on when the Roberges arrived.

They contained the mounting evidence he was quietly and privately collecting against those responsible for abandoning the elderly and frail in care homes during the pandemic.

It was Sunday afternoon. The next morning Armand Gamache had an appointment with the Premier of Québec. To show him the files. And to let him know, quietly, confidentially, that if there was any move to adopt mandatory euthanasia, or anything vaguely smelling of eugenics, those files would go public.

It was, he knew, blackmail. But he and his conscience could live with that.

That was tomorrow. Today he could sit quietly and comfortably in his living room, talking to friends.

“Will you charge Abigail with the murders?” asked Colette.

“We’ll try.”

Her eyes fell on the framed family photographs on the bookshelf behind Armand. “I can’t believe he didn’t shoot.” Her gaze drifted over to Jean-Paul, carefully placing one book on top of another. “It was love, I suppose, that stopped him.”

“Oui.”

Jean-Guy couldn’t be the father he wanted to be for his children if he’d pulled that trigger.

Clara walked right by the mess on the easel and over to a canvas leaning against the wall.

Haniya watched her host and wondered if she should say something about Clara’s whipped cream mustache, but decided not to.

Once a finalist for the Nobel Peace Prize …

Clara lifted the paint-stained sheet, and there was silence.

“It’s wonderful,” muttered Gabri.

“It’s brilliant,” said Olivier.

When Colette and Jean-Paul left, Armand went across to Clara’s.

The others were in the living room, but he found Haniya in the studio. Staring at the painting.

She had her coat on and her Louis Vuitton suitcases were by the door.

Armand and Haniya stood side by side in silence, staring at Clara’s painting.

Then, still looking at it, he asked, “Are you sure you want to leave?”

She turned and, for the first time, she saw not the deep lines down his face, or the scar at his temple, but the kindness in his eyes.

Then she turned back to the painting. “Sudan is my home. I think you understand that, Monsieur Gamache. It’s where I belong.”

“You and your machete?”

“Are you judging me?”

“Non. I’m asking.”

Armand heard Haniya Daoud, the Hero of the Sudan, sigh.

“Sudan’s awful. There’s poverty, unspeakable violence. Women, girls aren’t safe. But there’s unimaginable courage too. And beauty.” She smiled as she stared at the painting in front of her. “My village was rebuilt. I have a small home there. It isn’t far from the White Nile.”

She told him about the scents in summer. About the rain hitting the water. About the sound of the breeze through the savannah. All the little things that add up to home. To belonging.

“When I’m home, I walk there every day. I sit on the shore and pray.”

“What for?”

She turned to him. “Probably the same thing you pray for. The same thing we all do.”

She walked past him, out of the studio.

Reine-Marie was in the mudroom, putting on her boots and coat.

“I’ll drive you to Montréal,” she said.

“That’s all right. I’ve called a taxi.”

“There’re taxis?” asked Myrna.

“Yes. I’m not sure what language the guy was speaking, but I’m pretty sure he said he’d meet me here.”

They looked at Billy Williams, who grinned and put up his hand. Then he dropped it and took Myrna’s.

“I think we can probably cancel the taxi,” said Reine-Marie, and saw Billy nod.

“We’re coming too,” said Clara, and Myrna nodded.

“Why?” asked Haniya.

Clara turned to her, surprised. “Because that’s what friends do.”

Haniya’s last glimpse of Three Pines was of two elderly people standing on the village green, one with a single finger raised, waving goodbye.

Jean-Guy had asked Armand to look after Honoré while he took Idola and Annie into their kitchen.

They sat by the woodstove.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he said to Annie. “About how I once felt about Idola. About our decision.”

Armand sat on the bench, with Fred at his feet. They watched Honoré play with some of the other village children as Henri danced around them.

Armand thought about what Clara had painted. It looked like a landscape. At least that’s what a casual observer would see. But if they were not quite so casual? They’d see it was actually a topographical map. One orienteers might use.

And if they paused a little bit longer? If they stopped trying to see it with their eyes, then they’d see what it really was. What really mattered.

They’d see the roads and rivers, hills and vast fields, the stone walls and forests and meadows come together. To form an image. Of a young woman whose face was scored. But not scarred. The deep lines were the route home.

“Papa, Papa,” cried Honoré, though his words were indistinct.

Armand shot to his feet and ran to his grandson.

As he got closer, he saw that all the children, every one of them, had their tongues frozen to the goalpost.

A few minutes later, as he and Gabri knelt and poured warm water over their tender tongues, he wondered why they’d do such a thing. But Annie and Daniel had done it. And so had he, when he was their age. He suspected his father and mother probably had too, when they were children.

Some things were just inexplicable.

“Hold on,” whispered Armand. “It’ll be all right.”

Haniya put her feet up on the footstool of her business class seat and gazed out the window.

As the miles piled up, as she got ever closer to Sudan, to home, she felt herself relax. Her body might not be altogether safe there, but it was where her spirit belonged.

Bringing out the small package Reine-Marie had pressed into her hand at the Montréal airport, Haniya unwrapped it.

Then she looked at the card. It was actually a worn and yellowed piece of paper. It still had Scotch tape on it, where it had been attached to the windowpane.

On one side it was signed by everyone, with cheerful messages. On the other was a rainbow and the words, in bright pink crayon.

Haniya Daoud clutched the card and the tiny framed photograph it came with, and looked out the plane window at the acres and acres of snow. At the landscape covered in millions and millions of works of art.

Ça va bien aller.

She thought maybe it was true.