The Beautiful Mystery

SEVEN

The chair beside Dom Philippe was empty.

It had been years, decades, since the abbot had looked to his right in the Chapter House and not seen Mathieu.

Now he didn’t look to his right. Instead, the abbot kept his steady eyes straight ahead. Looking into the faces of the community of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups.

And they looked back at him.

Expecting answers.

Expecting information.

Expecting comfort.

Expecting him to say something. Anything.

To stand between them and their terror.

And still he stared. At a loss for words. He’d stored up so many, over the years. A warehouse full of thoughts and impressions, of emotions. Of things unsaid.

But now that he needed words, the warehouse was empty. Dark and cold.

Nothing left to say.

Chief Inspector Gamache leaned forward, his elbows on the worn wood desk. His hands casually holding each other.

He looked across at Beauvoir and Captain Charbonneau. Both men had their notebooks out and open and were ready to report to the Chief.

After the medical examination, Beauvoir and Charbonneau had interviewed the monks, fingerprinting them, getting initial statements. Reactions. Impressions. An idea of their movements.

While they did that, Chief Inspector Gamache had searched the dead man’s cell. It was almost exactly the same as the abbot’s. Same narrow bed. Same chest of drawers, only his altar was to a Saint Cecilia. Gamache had not heard of her, but he determined to look her up.

There was a change of robes, of underwear, of shoes. A nightshirt. Books of prayers and the psalms. And nothing else. Not a single personal item. No photographs, no letters. No parents, no siblings. But then, perhaps God was his Father, and Mary his mother. And the monks his brothers. It was, after all, a large family.

But the office, the prior’s office, was a gold mine. Not, sadly, of clues to the case. There was no bloody stone. No threatening, signed letter. No murderer waiting to confess.

What Gamache did find in the prior’s desk were used quill pens and a bottle of open ink. He’d bagged and put them in the satchel along with the other evidence they’d collected.

It had seemed a major find. After all, that sheet of old paper that had fallen from the prior’s robes had been written with quill pen and ink. But the more the Chief thought about it the less certain he was that this would prove significant.

What were the chances the prior, the choirmaster, a world authority on Gregorian chant, would write something almost unintelligible? The abbot and the doctor had both been baffled by the Latin, and those neume things.

It seemed more the work of some unschooled, untrained amateur.

And it was written on very old paper. Vellum. Sheepskin. Stretched and dried, perhaps hundreds of years ago. There was plenty of paper, but no vellum in the prior’s desk.

Still, Gamache had been careful to bag and label the quills and ink. In case.

He also found scores. Sheets and sheets of sheet music.

Books filled with music, and histories of music. Learned papers on music. But while Frère Mathieu was Catholic in his belief, he was not small “c” catholic in his taste.

Only one thing interested him. Gregorian chant.

There was a simple cross on the wall, with the crucified Christ in agony. And below and surrounding that crucifix was a sea of music.

That was the passion of Brother Mathieu. Not Christ, but the chants he floated above. Christ might have called Frère Mathieu, but it was to the tune of a Gregorian chant.

Gamache had had no idea so much had been, or could be, written about plainchant. Though, to be fair, he’d given it no thought. Until now. The Chief had settled in behind the desk and while waiting for Beauvoir and Charbonneau to return, he’d begun reading.

Unlike the cell, which smelled of cleaning fluid, the office smelled of old socks and smelly shoes and dusty documents. It smelled human. The prior slept in his cell, but he lived here. And Armand Gamache began to see Frère Mathieu as simply Mathieu. A monk. A music director. Perhaps a genius. But mostly a man.

Charbonneau and Beauvoir eventually returned and the Chief turned his attention to them.

“What did you find?” Gamache looked at Charbonneau first.

“Nothing, patron. At least, I didn’t find the murder weapon.”

“I’m not surprised,” said the Chief, “but we had to try. When we get the coroner’s report we’ll know if it was a stone or something else. What about the monks?”

“All fingerprinted,” said Beauvoir. “And we did the initial interviews. After the seven thirty service they go to their chores. Now,” Beauvoir consulted his notes, “there’re four main areas of work at the monastery. The vegetable garden, the animals, the physical repairs to the monastery, which are endless, and the cooking. The monks have an area of expertise, but they also rotate. We found out who was doing what at the crucial time.”

At least, thought Gamache, listening to the report, the time of death was fairly clear. Not before Lauds finished at quarter past eight, and not after twenty to nine, when Frère Simon found the body.

Twenty-five minutes.

“Anything suspicious?” he asked.

Both men shook their heads. “They were all at their work,” said Charbonneau. “With witnesses.”

“But that’s not possible,” said Gamache, calmly. “Frère Mathieu didn’t kill himself. One of the brothers wasn’t doing what he was assigned to do. At least, I hope it wasn’t an assignment.”

Beauvoir raised a brow. He presumed the Chief was joking, but perhaps it was worth considering.

“Let’s try to get at this another way,” suggested the Chief. “Did any of the monks tell you about a conflict? Was anyone fighting with the prior?”

“No one, patron,” said Captain Charbonneau. “At least no one admitted there was conflict. They all seemed genuinely shocked. ‘Unbelievable’ was the word that kept coming up. ‘Incroyable.’”

Inspector Beauvoir shook his head. “They believe in a virgin birth, a resurrection, walking on water and some old guy with a white beard floating in the sky and running the world, but this they find unbelievable?”

Gamache was quiet for a moment, then nodded. “It is interesting,” he agreed, “what people choose to believe.”

And what they’d do in the name of that faith.

How did the monk who’d done this reconcile the murder with his faith? What, in his quiet moments, did the murderer say to the old man with the white beard floating in the sky?

Not for the first time that day, the Chief Inspector wondered why this monastery had been built so far from civilization. And why it had such thick walls. And such high walls. And locked doors.

Was it to keep the sins of the world out? Or to keep something worse in?

“So,” he said, “according to the monks, there were no conflicts at all.”

“None,” said Captain Charbonneau.

“Someone is lying,” said Beauvoir. “Or all of them are.”

“There is another possibility,” said Gamache. He brought the yellowed page toward him, from the middle of the table. Examining it for a moment he lowered it again and looked into their faces.

“Maybe the murder had nothing to do with the prior himself. Maybe there really was no conflict. Maybe he was killed because of this.”

The Chief placed the page on the table again. And again he saw the body, as he’d first seen it. Curled into a shady corner in the bright garden. He hadn’t known then, but he did now, that at the very center of that dead body was a piece of paper. Like a pit in a peach.

Was this the motive?

“None of the monks noticed anything odd this morning?” Gamache asked.

“Nothing. Everyone seemed to be doing what they were meant to do.”

The Chief nodded and thought. “And Frère Mathieu? What was he meant to be doing?”

“Be here, in his study. Working on the music,” said Beauvoir. “And that’s the only interesting thing that came up. Frère Simon, the abbot’s secretary, says he returned to the abbot’s office right after Lauds, then he had to go to his work at the animalerie. But on his way he stopped by here.”

“Why?” Gamache sat forward and removed his glasses.

“To deliver a message. The abbot apparently wanted to meet with the prior this morning after the eleven A.M. mass.” The words sounded strange on Beauvoir’s tongue. Abbots and priors and monks, oh my.

They weren’t part of the vocabulary of Québec anymore. Not part of daily life. In just a generation those words had gone from respected to ludicrous. And soon they’d disappear completely.

God might be on the side of the monks, thought Beauvoir, but time wasn’t.

“Frère Simon says when he came to make the appointment, no one was in.”

“That would’ve been at about twenty past eight,” said the Chief, making a note. “I wonder why the abbot wanted to see the prior?”

“Pardon?” asked Inspector Beauvoir.

“The victim was the abbot’s right-hand man. It seems likely he and the abbot had regularly scheduled meetings, like we do.”

Beauvoir nodded. He and the Chief met every morning at eight, to go over the previous day and to review all the homicide cases currently being investigated by Gamache’s department.

But it was just possible a monastery wasn’t quite the same as the homicide department of the Sûreté. And it was just possible the abbot wasn’t quite the same as the Chief Inspector.

Still, it seemed a good bet the abbot and prior would have held regular meetings.

“That would mean,” said Beauvoir, “that the abbot wanted to talk to the prior about something other than normal monastery business.”

“It could. Or that it was urgent. Unexpected. Something had suddenly come up.”

“Then why not ask to see the prior right away?” asked Beauvoir. “Why wait until after the eleven o’clock mass?”

Gamache thought about that. “Good question.”

“So, if the prior didn’t return to his office after Lauds, where did he go?”

“Maybe he went straight to the garden,” said Charbonneau.

“Possibly,” the Chief said.

“Then wouldn’t Frère Simon, the abbot’s secretary, have seen him?” asked Beauvoir. “Or passed him in the corridor?”

“Maybe he did,” said the Chief. He lowered his voice and stage-whispered to Beauvoir. “Maybe he lied to you.”

Beauvoir stage-whispered back, “A religious? Lie? Someone’s going to Hell.” He looked at Gamache with exaggerated concern, then smiled.

Gamache smiled back and rubbed his face. They were collecting a lot of facts. And probably more than a few lies.

“Frère Simon’s name keeps coming up,” said Gamache. “What do we know about his movements this morning?”

“Well, this is what he says,” Beauvoir flipped a few pages in his notebook and stopped. “Right after Lauds, at quarter past eight, he returned to the abbot’s office. There the abbot asked him to make an appointment for after the eleven o’clock mass with the prior. The abbot left to look at the geothermal and Frère Simon left to do his job at the animal place. On his way he stopped by here, looked in. No prior. So he went away.”

“Was he surprised?” asked Gamache.

“Didn’t seem surprised or concerned. The prior, like the abbot, pretty much came and went as he liked.”

Gamache thought about that for a moment. “What did Frère Simon do then?”

“He worked for twenty minutes or so with the animals, then returned to the abbot’s office to work in the garden. That’s when he found the body.”

“Do we know for sure Frère Simon went to the animalerie?” asked the Chief.

Beauvoir nodded. “His story checks. Other monks saw him there.”

“Could he have left earlier?” asked Gamache. “Say at half past eight?”

“I wondered the same thing,” Beauvoir smiled. “The other monks working there say it’s possible. They were all busy with their own chores. But it’d be hard for Brother Simon to do what he had to do in so short a time. And all his chores were done.”

“What were they?” asked Gamache.

“He let the chickens out of their cages and gave them all fresh food and water. Then he cleaned the cages. Not the sort of thing you can pretend to do.”

Gamache made a few notes, nodding to himself. “The door to the abbot’s office was locked when we arrived. Is it usually?”

The men looked at each other. “I don’t know, patron,” said Beauvoir, making a note. “I’ll find out.”

“Good.”

It was clearly important. If it was usually locked then someone had had to let the prior in.

“Anything else?” asked Gamache, looking from Beauvoir to Charbonneau and back again.

“Nothing,” said Beauvoir, “except that I tried to hook up this piece of shit and of course, it doesn’t work.” He waved a disgusted hand at the satellite dish they’d lugged all that way from Montréal.

Gamache took a deep breath. That was always a blow to a remote investigation. They brought state-of-the-art equipment into primitive surroundings, and then were surprised when it didn’t work.

“I’ll keep trying,” said Beauvoir. “There’s no telecommunication tower, so our cell phones won’t work either, but we can still get text on our BlackBerrys.”

Gamache looked at the time. It was just after four. They had an hour before the boatman left. A murder investigation was never a leisurely pursuit, but there was even more urgency about this one. They were chasing daylight and the boatman’s deadline.

Once the sun set, they would all be trapped in the monastery. Along with the evidence and the body. And Chief Inspector Gamache didn’t want that.

Dom Philippe made the sign of the cross over his community. They crossed themselves.

And then he sat. And they sat. Like shadows, mimicking his every move. Or children, he thought. More charitable, and perhaps more accurate.

Though some of the monks were considerably older than the abbot, he was their father. Their leader.

He was far from convinced he was a very good one. Certainly not as good as Mathieu. But he was all they had right now.

“As you know, Frère Mathieu has died,” began the abbot. “Unexpectedly.”

But it got worse. More words were appearing. Lining up. Crushing forward.

“He was killed.”

Dom Philippe paused before that last word.

“Murdered.”

Let us pray, he thought. Let us pray. Let us chant. Let us close our eyes and chant the psalms and lose ourselves. Let us retreat to our songs and our cells, and let that police officer worry about this mess.

But this was not the time for retreating. Nor was it the time for plainchant. It was the time for plain speech.

“The police are here. Most of you have been interviewed by them. We must cooperate. We must have no secrets. That means letting them not only into our cells and our workplaces, but into our thoughts and hearts.”

As he spoke these unfamiliar words he noticed a few nods. And then a few more. And the flat faces of concealed panic began to give way to understanding. To agreement even.

Should he go further? Dear Lord, he silently pleaded, should I go further? Surely this was far enough. Did the rest really need to be said? And done?

“I’m lifting the rule of silence.”

There was a sharp intake of breath. His brother monks looked as though he’d just stripped them of their clothing. Left them naked, exposed.

“It must be done. You’re free to talk. Not idle chatter. Not gossip. But to help those officers get at the truth.”

Now their faces were filled with anxiety. Their eyes holding his. Trying to grab his glance.

And while their fear was painful for him to see, he knew it was far more natural than the guarded, empty expressions he’d seen before.

And then the abbot took that last, irrevocable step.

“Someone in this monastery killed Brother Mathieu,” said Dom Philippe, feeling himself plunging. The problem with words, he knew, was that they could never be taken back. “Someone in this room killed Brother Mathieu.”

He’d wanted to comfort them, but all he’d managed to do was strip them naked and terrify them.

“One of us has a confession to make.”