The Beautiful Mystery (50 page)

“I should demand a warrant for medical records,” he said, but they both knew he wouldn’t. It would just be postponing the inevitable and neither man wanted that. Besides, the monk never again wanted to experience that cold, hard stare.

“It was the abbot. Dom Philippe.”

“
Merci
.” Gamache went over to Beauvoir once again and looked down at the face of his now-sleeping Inspector. After tucking the blanket snug around him, the Chief walked to the door. “Can you tell me what the prescription was for?”

“A mild tranquillizer. The abbot hasn’t slept well since the death of Frère Mathieu. He needed to function, so he came for help.”

“Have you ever prescribed tranquillizers for him before?”

“No, never.”

“And for the other brothers? Tranquillizers? Sleeping pills? Pain medication?”

“It happens, but I watch it closely.”

“Do you know if the abbot used the tranquillizers?”

The doctor shook his head. “No, I don’t. I doubt it. He prefers meditation to medication. We all do. But he wanted something, just in case. I wrote that note for him.”

*   *   *

Armand Gamache reached the Blessed Chapel but instead of walking through it, he paused. And sat, in the very last pew. Not to pray, but to think.

If the doctor was telling the truth, his note was found by someone and used to give Beauvoir the impression the pills were from the medical monk. Gamache wished he could convince himself that Beauvoir didn’t know what he was taking, but the bottle was clearly marked OxyContin.

Beauvoir knew. And he took them anyway. No one forced him. But someone had tempted him. Gamache looked at the altar, which had changed in just the few minutes he’d been sitting there. Strings of light were dropping, like luminous acrobats, from above.

The fog was clearing. The boatman would come for them. Gamache checked his watch. In two and a half hours. Did he have time to do what was needed? The Chief Inspector spotted someone else in the chapel, sitting quietly in a pew by the wall. Not, perhaps, trying to hide. But not sitting out in the open either.

It was the Dominican. Sitting in the reflected light. A book on his knees.

And in that moment, the Chief Inspector knew, with distaste, what he had to do.

*   *   *

Jean-Guy Beauvoir was aware of his mouth before anything else. It was huge. And lined with fur and mud. He opened and closed it. The sound was mammoth. A mushy, clicking sound, like his grandfather in later years, eating.

Then he listened to his breathing. It was also unnaturally loud.

And finally, he pried open one eye. The other seemed glued shut. Through the slit he saw Gamache sitting on a hard chair, pulled up to the bed.

Beauvoir felt a moment of panic. What had happened? The last time he saw the Chief sitting like that Beauvoir had been gravely, almost mortally, wounded. Had it happened again?

But he didn’t think so. This felt different. He was exhausted, almost numb. But not in pain. Though there was an ache, deep down.

He watched Gamache sitting so still. His glasses were on, and he was reading. The last time, in the Montréal hospital, Gamache had also been hurt. His face a shock to Beauvoir when he’d finally roused enough to take anything in.

It had been covered in bruises, and there was a bandage over the Chief’s forehead. And when he got up to lean over Beauvoir, Jean-Guy had seen the grimace of pain. Before it quickly turned into a smile.

“All right, son?” he’d asked, quietly.

Beauvoir couldn’t talk. He’d felt himself drifting off again, but he held those deep, brown eyes as long as he could, before he had to let go.

Now, in the monastery infirmary, he watched the Chief.

He was no longer bruised, and while there was and always would be a deep scar over his left temple, it had healed. The Chief had healed.

Beauvoir hadn’t.

In fact, it now seemed to Beauvoir that the healthier the Chief got, the weaker he himself became. As though Francoeur was right, and Gamache was sucking him dry. Using him until he could be discarded. In favor of Isabelle Lacoste, whom the Chief had just promoted to Beauvoir’s own rank.

But he knew it wasn’t true. He unhooked the thought from his flesh and could almost see it drift away. But thoughts that dreadful came with a barb.

“
Bonjour
.” The Chief looked up and noticed Jean-Guy’s eye open. “How’re you feeling?” He leaned over the bed and smiled. “You’re in the infirmary.”

Jean-Guy struggled to sit up, and managed it, with Gamache’s help. They were alone. The doctor had gone off to the eleven
A.M.
mass, leaving Gamache alone with his Inspector.

The Chief raised the head of the bed, put some pillows behind Beauvoir and helped him drink a glass of water, all without saying a word. Beauvoir began to feel human again. His daze cleared, slowly at first then with a rapid succession of memories.

The Chief was sitting again, his legs crossed.

Gamache wasn’t stern, wasn’t censorious, wasn’t angry. But he did want answers.

“What happened?” the Chief finally asked.

Beauvoir didn’t say anything but watched with dismay as the Chief reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a handkerchief. And opened it.

Jean-Guy nodded, then closed his eyes. So ashamed, he couldn’t look Gamache in the face. And if he couldn’t face the Chief, how was he ever going to face Annie?

The thought made him so sick he thought he’d vomit.

“It’s all right, Jean-Guy. It was a slip, nothing more. We’ll get you home and get help. Nothing that can’t be put right.”

Beauvoir opened his eyes and saw Armand Gamache looking at him not with pity. But with determination. And confidence. It would be all right.

“
Oui, patron
,” he managed. And he even found himself believing it. That this could be put behind him.

“Tell me what happened.” Gamache put the bottle away and leaned forward.

“It was just there, on the bedside table, with the note from the doctor. I thought…”

I thought it was a prescription. I thought it was all right since it was from the doctor. I thought I had no choice.

He held the Chief’s eyes and hesitated.

“… I didn’t think. I wanted them. I don’t know why, but I had a craving and they appeared and I took them.”

The Chief nodded and let Beauvoir gather himself.

“When was this?” Gamache asked.

Beauvoir had to think. When was it? Weeks ago, surely. Months. A lifetime.

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“It wasn’t the doctor who put them there. Do you have any idea who else might have?”

Beauvoir looked surprised. He’d given it no thought, completely accepting they were from the medical monk. He shook his head.

Gamache got up and got Beauvoir another glass of water. “Are you hungry? I can get you a sandwich.”

“
No, patron. Merci
. I’m fine.”

“The abbot’s called the boatman and he’ll be here in just over an hour. We’ll leave together.”

“But what about the case? The murderer?”

“A lot can happen in an hour.”

Beauvoir watched Gamache leave. He knew the Chief was right. A lot could happen in an hour. And a lot could fall apart.

THIRTY-FOUR

Armand Gamache sat in a front pew and watched the monks at their eleven
A.M.
mass. Every now and then he closed his eyes and prayed that this would work.

Less than an hour now, he thought. In fact, the boatman might already be at the dock. Gamache watched the abbot leave his spot on the bench and walk to the altar, where he genuflected and sang a few lines of Latin prayer.

Then, one by one, the rest of the community joined in.

Call, response. Call. Response.

And then there was a moment when all sound was suspended and seemed to hang in mid-air. Not a silence, but a deep and collective inhale.

And then all their voices came in together in a chorus that could only be described as glorious. Armand Gamache felt it resonate in his core. Despite what had happened to Beauvoir. Despite what had happened to Frère Mathieu. Despite what was about to happen.

Unseen behind him, Jean-Guy Beauvoir arrived in the chapel. He’d drifted in and out of sleep since the Chief had left, then had finally surfaced. He’d ached all over, and far from getting better, it seemed to be getting worse. He’d walked down the long corridor as though he was an elderly man. Shuffling. Joints creaking. Breath shallow. But every step took him closer to where he knew he belonged.

Not in the Blessed Chapel necessarily. But beside Gamache.

Once in the chapel, he saw the Chief at the very front.

But Jean-Guy Beauvoir’s body had taken him as far as it could, and he slumped into the pew at the very back. He leaned forward, his hands hanging loosely on the pew in front. Not quite in prayer. But in a sort of netherworld.

The world seemed very far away. But the music didn’t. It was all around him. Inside and out. Supporting him. The music was plain and simple. The voices in unison. One voice, one song. The very simplicity of the chants both calmed and energized Beauvoir.

There was no chaos here. Nothing unexpected. Except their effect on him. That was completely unexpected.

Something strange seemed to come over him. He felt out of sorts.

And then he realized what it was.

Peace. Complete and utter peace.

He closed his eyes and let the neumes lift him, out of himself, out of the pew, out of the Blessed Chapel. They took him out of the abbey and out over the lake and the forest. He flew with them, free, unbound.

This was better than Percocet, better than OxyContin. There was no pain, no anxiety, no worry. There was no “us” and no “them,” no boundaries and no limits.

And then the music stopped, and Beauvoir descended, softly, to the earth.

He opened his eyes and looked around, wondering if anyone had noticed what had just happened to him. He saw Chief Inspector Gamache in one of the front pews, and across from him sat Superintendent Francoeur.

Beauvoir looked around the chapel. Someone was missing.

The Dominican. What had become of the man from the Inquisition?

Beauvoir turned to the altar and as he did he intercepted a brief glance from Gamache to Superintendent Francoeur.

Christ
, thought Beauvoir.
He really does despise the man
.

*   *   *

Armand Gamache brought his gaze back to the monks. The chanting had stopped and the abbot was again standing front and center in the quiet church.

Then, into the silence, there came a single voice. A tenor. Singing.

The abbot looked at his monks. The monks looked at their abbot, then at each other. Their eyes wide, but their mouths shut.

And yet, the clear voice continued.

The abbot stood over the host and the goblet of wine. The body and blood of Christ. A wafer frozen in mid-blessing, offered to the air.

The beautiful voice was all around them, as though it had glided down the shafts of thin light and taken possession of the chapel.

The abbot turned to face the tiny congregation. To see if one of them had lost his wits and found his voice. But all he saw were the three officers. Scattered. Watching. Silent.

Then, from behind the plaque to Saint-Gilbert, the Dominican appeared. Frère Sébastien walked slowly, solemnly, to the center of the Blessed Chapel. There he paused.

“I can’t hear you,” he sang in an upbeat tempo, much faster, lighter, than any Gregorian chant ever heard in the chapel. The Latin words filled the air. “I have a banana in my ear.”

The music the prior died with had come to life.

“I am not a fish,” the Dominican chanted, as he walked down the center aisle. “I am not a fish.”

The monks, and the abbot, were paralyzed. Little rainbows danced around them as the morning sun burned through more mist. Frère Sébastien approached the altar, his head up, his arms thrust into his sleeves, his voice filling the void.

“Stop it.”

It wasn’t so much a command as a howl. A baying.

But the Dominican stopped neither his singing nor his progress. He continued, unhurried and unrelenting, toward the altar. And the monks.

Armand Gamache slowly rose to his feet, his eyes on the one monk who had finally separated himself from the rest.

The lone voice.

“Nooo!” the monk cried in pain. It was as though the music was sizzling his skin, as though the Inquisition had one final monk to burn.

Frère Sébastien came to a halt just below the abbot, and looked up.

“
Dies irae
,” Frère Sébastien sang. Day of wrath.

“Stop,” the monk pleaded. He’d stepped toward the Dominican and sank to his knees. “Pleeease.”

And the Dominican stopped. All that filled the chapel was sobbing. And giddy light.

“You killed your prior,” said Gamache quietly. “
Ecce homo
. He is man. And you killed him for it.”

*   *   *

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

The abbot crossed himself.

“Go on, my son.”

There was a long pause. Dom Philippe knew this old confessional had heard many, many things over the centuries. But none as disgraceful as was about to come out.

God, of course, already knew. Had probably known before the blow was struck. Probably even knew before the thought was formed. This confession wasn’t for the Lord, but for the sinner, the sheep who’d wandered too far from the fold. And been lost in a land of wolves.

“I have committed murder. I killed the prior.”

*   *   *

Bugs were crawling all over Jean-Guy Beauvoir’s skin and he wondered if the infirmary might’ve been infested with bedbugs or cockroaches.

He wiped his hand over his arms and tried to get at the ones crawling down his spine. He and the Chief were in the prior’s office, doing the paperwork, making notes. Packing up. The final preparations before leaving with the boatman.

Superintendent Francoeur had officially made the arrest, taken possession of the prisoner, and called for the floatplane to pick them up. Francoeur was now sitting in the Blessed Chapel while the murderer monk made his confession. Not to the police, but to his confessor.