The Beautiful Mystery (15 page)

“But one of your subordinates?”

“That too has happened, as you know. And I don’t automatically fire them. I want to know where it’s coming from. Get at the root. That’s far more important.”

“So where’s this coming from, do you think?”

It was a good question. One Gamache had been asking himself as he’d left the dining hall, and walked through the church.

That this was an abbey divided was obvious. The murder wasn’t, in fact, an isolated event, but the latest in probably an escalating series of blows.

The prior had been attacked with a stone.

And the abbot had also just been attacked. With words.

One killed instantly, the other slowly. Were they both victims of the same person? Were the abbot and the prior on the same side of the divide? Or opposite sides? Gamache looked across the slate floor, past the altar, to the far side. Where the abbot sat.

Two men, of an age, staring at each other for decades.

One in charge of the abbey, the other in charge of the choir.

When they’d been in the garden that morning and Gamache had taken the abbot aside for a talk, he’d had the impression that the abbot and the prior were very close.

Closer, perhaps, than the Church would officially condone.

Gamache had no problem with that. Indeed, he completely understood and would find it surprising if some of these men didn’t find comfort in each other. It seemed perfectly natural to him. What he wanted to know, though, was what had started the rift. Where did the crack begin? What blow, minor or otherwise, had started it all?

And he wanted to know where the abbot and the prior stood. Together? Or apart?

The Chief’s mind went to what the young monk had said, just before Frère Simon had arrived to announce dinner. Gamache told Beauvoir about their conversation.

“So not everyone was happy about the recording,” said Beauvoir. “Why not, I wonder. It was a huge hit. Must have made a fortune for the abbey. And you can tell. New roof, new plumbing. Geothermal system. It’s incredible. As great as those chocolate-covered blueberries are, I can bet they didn’t pay for the heating system.”

“And Frère Mathieu was apparently planning a new recording,” said Gamache.

“Do you think he was killed to stop him?”

Gamache was quiet for a moment. And then he slowly turned his head. Beauvoir, sensing a new awareness in the Chief, also looked into the gloom. The only lights in the Blessed Chapel were sconces on the walls behind the altar. The rest was in darkness.

But in that darkness they could just make out small, white shapes. Like tiny vessels.

Slowly the armada took shape. They were cowls. The white hoods of the monks.

They’d come back into the chapel and were standing in the darkness. Watching.

And listening.

Beauvoir turned to Gamache. There was a very small smile on his face, only noticeable to someone very close. And in his keen eyes there was a gleam.

He’s not surprised, thought Beauvoir. No, it was more than that. He’d wanted them to come. To hear their conversation.

“You old…” Beauvoir whispered, and wondered if the monks had heard that too.

TWELVE

Beauvoir lay in bed. It was surprisingly comfortable. A firm single mattress. Soft flannel sheets. A warm duvet. Fresh air came in through the open window and he could smell the forest and hear the lapping of the lake on the rocky shore.

And in his hand he held his BlackBerry. He’d had to unplug the reading lamp in order to charge up the BlackBerry. It was a fair trade. Light for words.

He could have left the device in the prior’s office, plugged into a power bar.

He could have. But he didn’t.

Beauvoir wondered what time it was. He hit the space bar and the snoozing BlackBerry woke up and told him he had one message and that it was 9:33.

The message was from Annie.

Back from dinner with her mother. It was a chatty, happy message and Jean-Guy found himself falling into the words. Joining her. Sitting beside her as Annie and Madame Gamache had their omelette and salad. As they’d talked about their days. Reine-Marie telling Annie that her father had been called away on a case. In a remote abbey. The one with the chants.

And Annie having to pretend this was news.

She felt horrible, but also confessed to finding their clandestine relationship thrilling. But mostly, she longed to tell her mother.

Beauvoir had written Annie earlier, when he’d gotten back to his bedroom. His cell. And told her everything. About the abbey, the music, the recording, the dead prior, the insulted abbot. He’d been careful not to make it all sound easy or fun.

He wanted her to know what it was really like. How he felt.

He told her about the interminable prayers. There’d been another service at a quarter to eight that night. After dinner. After the monks had overheard them in the Blessed Chapel.

Her father had gotten up, bowed slightly, acknowledging the monks, then left. Walking with measured pace off the altar and through the back door, to the prior’s office. Beauvoir beside him.

All the way, until they got through the closed door to the corridor, Beauvoir could feel their eyes on him.

Jean-Guy told Annie how that felt. And about getting back to the office and spending the next half hour wrestling with the laptop, while her father continued to go through the prior’s papers.

And then they’d heard the singing.

When they’d first arrived in the abbey that afternoon, the chanting had merely bored Beauvoir. Now, he told Annie, it gave him the willies.

*   *   *

“And then,” Gamache typed, “Jean-Guy and I went back into the Chapel. Another service. Compline they call it. I need to get a schedule of these things. Did I tell you about the blueberries? My God, Reine-Marie, you’d love them. The monks cover them in handmade dark chocolate. I’ll bring you some back, if there are any left. Jean-Guy’s in danger of finishing them off. I, of course, am my normal, reticent self. Self-denial,
c’est moi
.”

He smiled and imagined his wife’s delight at a small batch of the chocolates. He also imagined her in their home. She wouldn’t be in bed yet. Annie had gone over for dinner, he knew. She had dinner with them every Saturday, since her separation from David. She’d have left by now and Reine-Marie would probably be sitting in the living room, by the fireplace, reading. Or in the television room at the back of their apartment, set up in Daniel’s old room. It now had a bookcase, a comfortable sofa strewn with newspapers and magazines, and the television.

“Off to watch TV5,” she’d say. “A documentary on literacy.” But a few minutes later he’d hear laughter and wander down the hall to find her snorting at some ridiculous Québécois sitcom. He’d get sucked in and before long they would both be laughing at the broad and contagious humor.

Yes, she’d be in there, laughing.

He smiled at the thought.

*   *   *

“I swear to God,” Jean-Guy wrote, “the service went on forever. And they sing every word. Droning on and on. And we can’t even nap. It’s up and down, up and down. Your father is right there with them. I think he almost enjoys it. Is that possible? Maybe he’s just trying to mess with me. Oh, speaking of that, I have to tell you what he did with the monks.…”

*   *   *

“Compline was beautiful, Reine-Marie. They sang the whole thing. All in Gregorian chant. Think of Saint-Benoit-du-lac, and then some. Very peaceful. I think part of it’s because of the chapel. Simple. No adornments at all. Only one large plaque describing Saint Gilbert. There’s a room hidden behind it.”

Gamache paused in his typing. Thinking of that wall plaque, and the Chapter House hidden behind it. He’d have to get a schematic of the abbey.

Then he went back to his message.

“The chapel was in almost total darkness for the last service of the day, except for a few low lights on the walls behind the altar. Where candles or torches once were, I suppose. Jean-Guy and I sat in the pews, in darkness. You can imagine how much fun Jean-Guy was having. I could barely hear the chanting for all his snorting and huffing.

“There’s clearly something very wrong here, among the monks. An enmity. But when they sing it’s like all of that never happened. They seem to go to another place. A deeper place. Where no quarrels exist. A place of contentment and peace. Not even joy, I think. But freedom. They seem free from the cares of the world. That young monk, Frère Luc, described it as letting go of all thought. I wonder if that’s what freedom is?

“Either way, it was very beautiful. To hear those remarkable chants performed live, Reine-Marie. Amazing. And then, near the end, they slowly dimmed the lights until we were in complete darkness. But out of it, like a light we could only feel, came their voices.

“It was magical. I wish you were here.”

*   *   *

Then, Annie, it was finally over. When the lights came up the monks were gone. But that sneaky one, Frère Simon, came and told us it was bedtime. That we could do whatever we wanted, but they were all going to their cells.

“Your father didn’t seem displeased. In fact, I think he wanted them to have the long hours of the night to think about the murder. To worry.

“I found some more chocolate-covered blueberries and brought them back to my cell. I’ll save some for you.”

*   *   *

“I miss you,” Armand wrote. “Sleep tight,
mon coeur.
”

*   *   *

“I miss you,” Jean-Guy wrote. “
Merde!
All the chocolates are gone! How did that happen?”

Then he rolled over, the BlackBerry held lightly in his hand. But not before typing, in the darkness, his final message of the day.

“
Je t’aime
.”

He carefully wrapped the chocolates and put them in the nightstand drawer. For Annie. He closed his eyes, and slept soundly.

*   *   *

“
Je t’aime
,” Gamache typed and placed the BlackBerry on the table by the bed.

*   *   *

Chief Inspector Gamache woke up. It was still dark, and not even the predawn birds were singing. His bed was warm around his body, but if he moved his legs even a millimeter they were in frigid territory.

His nose felt chilled. But the rest of him was toasty warm.

He checked the time.

Ten past four.

Had something awoken him? Some sound?

He lay there, listening. Imagining the monks in their tiny cells, all around him. Like bees in a honeycomb.

Were they asleep? Or was at least one of them awake? Lying only feet from Gamache. Not allowed to sleep. The noise too great in his head. The sounds and sights of a murder too disturbing.

For one of the monks, there would almost certainly never again be a quiet night’s sleep.

Unless …

Gamache sat up in bed. He knew only two things could give a killer a good night’s sleep. If he had no conscience. Or if he had a conscience, and that conscience had been an accomplice. Whispering to the killer, giving him the idea.

How could a man, a monk, convince himself that murder wasn’t a crime, and wasn’t even a sin? How could he be asleep, while the Chief Inspector was awake? There was only one answer. If this was a justified death.

An Old Testament death.

By stoning.

An eye for an eye.

Perhaps the murderer had believed he was doing the right thing. If not in the eyes of man, then in the eyes of God. Perhaps that was the tension Gamache was feeling in the abbey. Not that a murder had happened, but that the police might discover who did it.

Over dinner, that monk had accused the abbot of poor judgment. Not in failing to prevent a murder, but in calling in the Sûreté. Was there both a vow and a conspiracy of silence?

The Chief Inspector was wide awake now. Alert.

He swung his legs out of bed and found his slippers, then putting on his dressing gown he grabbed a flashlight and reading glasses and left his cell. He paused for a moment in the middle of the long corridor. Looking this way and that. Keeping the flashlight off.

The hall was lined with doors on either side, each into a cell. No light shone under the cracks. And no sound escaped either.

It was dark and silent.

Gamache had been in fun houses with his kids, many times. Seen the hall of distorted mirrors, seen the optical illusions, where a room appeared tilted but wasn’t. He’d also been in those deprivation rooms in the fun houses, where neither light nor sound penetrated.

He remembered Annie holding tight to his hand, and Daniel, invisible in the dark, calling for his daddy, until Gamache had found his little boy and held him. That, more than any of the other fun house effects, had terrified his children and they’d clung to him until he’d gotten them out.

That’s what the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups felt like. A place of distortion and even deprivation. Of great silence and greater darkness. Where whispers became shouts. Where monks murdered, and the natural world was locked out, as though it was at fault.

The brothers had lived in the abbey so long they’d grown used to it. Accepted the distortion as normal.

The Chief took a deep breath and cautioned himself. It was equally possible he was imagining things, allowing the darkness and silence to get under his skin. It was completely possible the monks weren’t the ones with the distorted perception, but that he was.

After a moment Gamache grew used to the lack of light and sight and sounds.

It’s not threatening,
he said to himself as he made his way toward the Blessed Chapel.
It’s not threatening. It’s just extreme peace
.

He smiled at the thought. Had peace and quiet become so rare that when finally found they could be mistaken for something grotesque and unnatural? It would appear so.

The Chief felt along the stone wall until he reached the door into the Blessed Chapel. He opened it, then gently closed the heavy wooden door behind him.

Here the darkness and silence were so deep he had the unpleasant sensation of both floating and falling.