The Beautiful Mystery

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.

Gamache switched on his powerful flashlight. The beam cut through the darkness and rested on the altar, on the benches, on the stone columns. This wasn’t simply an early morning stroll by a sleepless man. There was a goal. And he found it easily, on the eastern wall of the chapel.

His light shone on the huge plaque, illuminating the story of Saint Gilbert.

Gamache smoothed his free hand over the plaque. Looking for the catch, the handle, into the Chapter House. Finally he found it by depressing the illustration of two sleeping wolves, etched into the top left corner of the plaque. The stone door opened and Gamache shone his flashlight in.

It was a small, rectangular room, with neither windows nor chairs, though a stone bench ran around the wall. The room was completely bare, barren.

After shining the flashlight into the corners to be certain, Gamache left and replaced the door. As the sleeping wolves popped back into place, the Chief put on his glasses and leaned forward, to read the inscription on the plaque. The life of Gilbert of Sempringham.

Saint Gilbert did not seem to be the patron saint of anything. Nor were any miracles mentioned. The only thing this man seemed to have done was create an order, name it after himself, and die at the staggering age of 106, in 1189.

One hundred and six years of age. Gamache wondered if that could possibly be true, but suspected it probably was. After all, if whoever made this plaque had wanted to lie, or exaggerate, surely they’d choose something more worthy than Gilbert’s age. His accomplishments, for example.

If anything was going to put the Chief Inspector to sleep it would be reading about the life of Saint Gilbert.

Why, he wondered, would anyone choose to join this order?

Then he remembered the music, the Gregorian chants. Frère Luc had described them as unique. And yet this plaque mentioned nothing at all about music or chanting. It didn’t appear to be a vocation of Saint Gilbert’s. In 106 years, not once did Gilbert of Sempringham feel a song coming on.

Gamache scanned the plaque again, for something subtle. Something he might have missed.

He moved the bright circle of light slowly over the engraved words, squinting, looking at the plaque this way and that. In case some symbol was etched lightly into the bronze. Or worn down over the centuries. A staff. A treble clef. A neume.

But there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to suggest the Gilbertines were renowned for anything, including Gregorian chants.

But there was one illustration. The sleeping wolves, curled together, intertwined.

Wolves, thought the Chief, stepping back from the wall and slipping his glasses back into his dressing gown pocket. Wolves. What did he know about wolves in the bible? What was their symbolism?

There were Romulus and Remus. They were saved by a she-wolf. Suckled. But that was Roman mythology, not the bible.

Wolves.

Most biblical imagery was more benign. Sheep, fish. But, of course, “benign” depended on your perspective. The sheep and fish were generally killed. No, wolves were more aggressive. If anything, they did the killing.

It was a strange image to have not only on this plaque but in the very name of the monastery. Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups. Saint Gilbert-Among-the-Wolves.

Especially odd given the banal, though interminable, life of Saint Gilbert. How could he possibly be associated with wolves?

The only thing that came to mind was “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” But was that even from the bible? Gamache thought it was, but now he wondered.

A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Perhaps the monks of this abbey were sheep. A humble role. Just following the rules. Just following the shepherd. Working and praying and singing. Hoping for peace and quiet, to be left alone behind their locked door. To go about the business of praising God.

Except for one. Was there a wolf in the fold? Wearing a long black robe, with a white cowl and a rope around his middle. Was he the murderer, or the victim? Had the wolf killed the monk, or had the monk killed the wolf?

Gamache turned back to the plaque. He realized he hadn’t actually read it all. He’d skimmed over the footnote at the very bottom. How important, after all, could a footnote be, to a man whose entire life was a footnote? He’d read it quickly. Something about an archbishop. But now he knelt, almost getting onto his hands and knees, to get a better look at the words. Taking out his reading glasses once again, he leaned toward the bronze afterthought.

It explained that Gilbert had been a friend to the archbishop of Canterbury, and had come to his aid. Gamache stared at it, trying to find the significance. After all, why mention this?

Finally he got to his feet.

Gilbert of Sempringham had died in 1189. He’d been an active member of the Church for sixty years. Gamache did the math.

That meant …

Gamache looked back at the plaque and the words almost scraping the floor. That meant his friend, the archbishop, the one he’d helped, was Thomas Becket.

Thomas à Becket.

Gamache turned his back to the plaque, and faced the Blessed Chapel.

Thomas à Becket.

Gamache stepped forward, picking his way slowly between the pews, lost in thought. He stepped onto the altar, and swung the flashlight in a slow arc around him until it came back to where it began. And then he turned it off. And let the night, and the silence, close back in.

Saint Thomas Becket.

Who was murdered in his cathedral.

Wolf in sheep’s clothing. It was from the bible, but was famously quoted by Thomas à Becket, who’d called his killers “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”

T. S. Eliot had written a play about those events. Murder in the Cathedral.

“Some malady is coming upon us,” Gamache quoted under his breath. “We wait. We wait.”

But the Chief Inspector didn’t have long to wait. Within moments the silence was broken.

Chanting. Getting closer.

The Chief took a few steps, but couldn’t get all the way off the altar before he saw the monks, hoods up, filing toward him. Each carrying a candle. They walked right by him as though he wasn’t there, and took their accustomed places at the benches.

Their chanting stopped and as a man they removed their hoods.

And twenty-three pairs of eyes stared at him. A man in pajamas and dressing gown, standing in the middle of their altar.