by Louise Penny
“Merci.” Beauvoir sat down with a thump on one of the hard wooden chairs.
“Does it work?” Gamache nodded toward the laptop.
Beauvoir pressed some buttons. “The laptop works, but we can’t connect to the Internet.” Beauvoir continued to pound the connect button as though that would help.
“Perhaps you should pray,” suggested the Chief.
“If I was going to pray for anything it’d be food.” He gave up trying to connect. “When’s dinner, do you think?”
Then Beauvoir remembered something and brought a small wax paper packet from his pocket. He placed it on the desk between them and opened it up.
“What are those?” asked the Chief, leaning closer.
“Try one.”
Gamache picked up a chocolate and held it between his large fingers. It looked microscopic there. Then he ate it. And Beauvoir smiled to see the astonishment, and delight, on Gamache’s face.
“Blueberry?”
Beauvoir nodded. “Those tiny wild ones. Chocolate covered. They make them by the bucketload here. I found the chocolaterie when I was looking for the monks. Seems like the better find.”
Gamache laughed, and together they ate the few chocolates. They were, the Chief had to admit, without a doubt the best he’d ever tasted, and he’d tasted a few chocolates in his life.
“What’re the chances, Jean-Guy, that all two dozen monks here, all of them, would have good voices?”
“Pretty small.”
“And not just good voices, but great voices. And ones that work together, that fit together.”
“Maybe they were trained,” suggested Beauvoir. “Isn’t that what the choir director, the dead man, would’ve done?”
“But he had to have something to work with. I’m far from an expert on music but even I know a great choir isn’t just a collection of great voices. They have to be the right voices, complementary. Harmonious. I think these monks are here by design. I think they were specially chosen, to sing the chants.”
“Maybe they were specially bred for this,” said Beauvoir, his voice low and his eyes mock-mad. “Maybe this is some Vatican plot. Maybe there’s some mind control in the music. To lure people back to the Church. Produce a zombie army.”
“My God, man, that’s brilliant! It’s so obvious.” Gamache looked at Beauvoir with awe.
Beauvoir laughed. “You think the monks were specially chosen?”
“I think it’s a possibility.” The Chief got to his feet. “Keep working at that. It would be nice to be able to contact the outside world. I’m going to speak to the portier.”
“Why him?” asked Beauvoir as Gamache made for the door.
“He’s the youngest here, probably the most recent arrival.”
“And a murder happens because something changes,” said Beauvoir. “Something provoked the murder of Frère Mathieu.”
“It was almost certainly building for a while, most murders take years to actually happen. But finally something, or someone, tips the balance.”
That was what Gamache and his team did. They sieved for that often tiny event. A word. A look. A slight. That final wound that released the monster. Something had made a man into a murderer. Had made a monk into a murderer, surely a longer journey than most.
“And what was the most recent change?” asked Gamache. “Perhaps the arrival of Frère Luc. Maybe that somehow upset the balance, the harmony, of the abbey.”
The Chief closed the door behind him and Beauvoir went back to work. As he tried to figure out what was wrong with the connection, his mind went back to the evidence locker. His hell. But he also thought about the door with the word “Porterie” stamped on it.
And the young man relegated to it.
Was he hated? Surely you had to be, to be stuck there. Every other job made sense in the abbey. Except his. After all, why have a porter for a door that never opened?
* * *
Gamache walked through the halls, meeting a monk here and there. He was beginning to recognize them, though he couldn’t yet put names to all the faces.
Frère Alphonse? Frère Felicien?
The monks’ faces were almost always in repose, their hands thrust up their drooping sleeves in a mannerism the Chief realized was just something monks did. When he passed, they always caught his eye and nodded. Some ventured small smiles.
All looked, at a distance, calm. Contained.
But up close, at that moment when they passed, to a man Gamache saw anxiety in their eyes. A plea.
For him to leave? To stay? To help? Or to go away?
When he’d arrived, not that many hours ago, the abbey of Saint-Gilbert had seemed peaceful. Restful. It was surprisingly beautiful. Its austere walls not cold, but soothing. The daylight refracted by the imperfect glass, broken into reds and purples and yellows. Apart they were individual colors, but together they made giddy light.
Like the abbey. Made up of individuals. Alone they were no doubt exceptional, but together they were brilliant.
Except for one. The shadow. Necessary, perhaps, to prove the light.
Gamache approached another monk as he made his way through the Blessed Chapel.
Frère Timothé? Frère Guillaume?
They passed and nodded and again Gamache caught something in this anonymous monk’s passing glance.
Perhaps each man had a private plea, different from the rest, depending who he was and what was his nature.
This man—Frère Joel?—clearly wanted Gamache to go away. Not because the monk was afraid, but because Gamache had become a walking billboard, advertising the murder of the prior. And their failure as a community.
They were supposed to do only one thing. Serve God. But instead, this abbey had gone in the opposite direction. And Gamache was the exclamation mark that drove that truth home.
The Chief turned right and walked down the long corridor toward the closed door. He was growing familiar with the abbey, comfortable even.
It was in the form of a cross, with the Blessed Chapel in the middle and arms out four sides.
It was now dark outside. The halls were dimly lit. It felt like midnight, but when he glanced at his watch the Chief saw it wasn’t yet six thirty.
The door marked “Porterie” was closed. Gamache knocked.
And waited.
Inside he heard a small sound. A paper, a page turned. Then silence again.
“I know you’re in there, Frère Luc,” said Gamache, lowering his voice. Trying to make himself sound less like the Big Bad Wolf. He heard more paper shuffling, and then the door opened.
Frère Luc was young, in his early twenties, perhaps?
“Oui?” the monk asked.
And Gamache realized it was the first time he’d heard this boy speak directly to him. Even in that short word, Gamache could hear that Frère Luc’s voice was full and rich. A lovely tenor almost certainly. While the man was reedy the voice was not.
“May we talk?” Gamache asked. His own voice was deeper than this boy’s.
Frère Luc’s brown eyes flicked this way and that, over Gamache’s shoulder.
“I believe we’re alone,” said the Chief.
“Oui,” he repeated, folding his hands in front of him.
It was a parody of the composure of the other monks. There was no calm here. This young man seemed torn between being afraid of Gamache and being relieved to see him. Wanting him to both leave and stay.
“I’ve already been interviewed, monsieur.”
It was, even in simple speech, a beautiful voice. A shame to hide it in a vow of silence.
“I know,” said Gamache. “I read the report. You were here when Frère Mathieu was found.”
Luc nodded.
“Do you sing?” the Chief asked.
In any other setting it would be a preposterous first question to a suspect. But not here.
“We all do.”
“How long have you been at Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups?”
“Ten
months.”
There was a hesitation and Gamache felt this young man could have told him the days, hours and exact minutes since he’d walked past that heavy door.
“Why did you come here?”
“The music.”
Gamache didn’t know if Frère Luc was being deliberately unhelpful by giving terse answers, or if the rule of silence came naturally to him and words did not.
“I wonder if you could be a little fuller in your answers, mon frère?”
Frère Luc looked petulant.
A young man trying to hide a temper beneath monks’ robes, thought Gamache. So much can hide in silence. Or at least try. Gamache knew most emotions eventually found their way out, especially anger.
“I’d heard the recording,” said Luc. “The chants. I was a postulant in another monastery, down south, by the border. They also do chants, but this was different.”
“How?”
“It’s hard to say what’s different.” Frère Luc’s face changed as soon as he thought about the music. That calm he’d only pretended to became genuine. “As soon as I heard the monks from Saint-Gilbert I knew I’d never heard anything like it.”
Luc actually smiled. “I suppose I should say I came here to be closer to God, but the truth is, I think I can find God in any abbey. But I can’t find the chants just anywhere. Only here.”
“The death of Frère Mathieu must be a great loss.”
The boy opened his mouth, then shut it. His chin dimpled just a bit, his emotions almost breaking through.
“You have no idea.”
And Gamache suspected that might be right.
“Was the prior one of the reasons you came here?”
Frère Luc nodded.
“Will you stay?” Gamache asked.
Frère Luc dropped his eyes to his hands, and kneaded his robe. “I’m not sure where else I’d go.”
“This is your home now?”
“The chants are my home. They happen to be here.”
“The music means that much to you?”
Frère Luc cocked his head to one side and examined the Chief Inspector.
“Have you ever been in love?”
“I have,” said Gamache. “I still am.”
“Then you’ll understand. When I heard that first recording I fell in love. One of the monks at my old monastery had a recording. This was a couple of years ago, when it first came out. He came into my cell and played it for me. We were both in the choir at the abbey and he wanted to know what I thought.”
“And what did you think?”
“Nothing. For the first time in my life I had no thoughts. Just feelings. I listened to the recording over and over, in all my spare time.”
“What did it do for you?”
“What did falling in love do for you? Can you ever really explain it? It filled empty spaces I never knew were empty. It cured a loneliness I never knew I had. It gave me joy. And freedom. I think that was the most amazing part. I suddenly felt both embraced and freed at the same time.”
“Is that ecstasy?” Gamache asked, after thinking about what the monk had said for a few moments. “Was it a spiritual experience?”
Again, Frère Luc regarded the Chief Inspector.
“It wasn’t having ‘a’ spiritual experience. I’d had them before. We all have here, otherwise we wouldn’t be monks. This was ‘the’ spiritual experience. Completely separate from religion. From the Church.”
“What do you mean?”
“I met God.”
Gamache let that sit for a moment.
“In the music?” he asked.
Frère Luc nodded. Lost for words.
* * *
Jean-Guy stared at the laptop screen saver. Then at the portable satellite dish they took with them into remote areas.
Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t.
Why it would work and why it would fail were mysteries to Beauvoir. He made the same connections every time. Made the same adjustments. Did the same thing at every investigation.
Then waited for the inexplicable to happen. Or not.
“Merde,” he mumbled. Still, all was not completely lost. He had his BlackBerry.
Opening the door to the prior’s office, he looked out. No one coming.
Then he sat and, using his thumbs, laboriously typed a message. Where once his emails had been single words and symbols, now they were whole sentences. He wrote “you” instead of “u.” He never used the punctuation for a smile or a wink, preferring to make it clear, in language, how he felt.
It wasn’t hard. With Annie. His feelings were always clear, and very simple.
He was happy. He loved her. He missed her.
Besides, even had he wanted to use contractions and symbols, none had yet been invented to convey his feelings. Even words couldn’t do it. But they were the best Jean-Guy had.
Every letter, every space, brought him closer to her and gave him not just pleasure, but joy.
Annie would see what he’d created, for her. What he’d written.
He loved her, he wrote. He missed her, he wrote.
And she wrote to him. Not simply in reply, but her own messages. About her day. So full. But still empty, without him.
She was having dinner with her mother, but would wait until he and her father returned so they could tell them together.
Hurry home, she wrote. I miss you, she wrote. I love you, she wrote.
And he felt her presence. And he felt her absence.
* * *
“So you came to the monastery of Saint-Gilbert,” said Gamache.
“Well, that’s the short version,” said Frère Luc. “Nothing with the Church is ever short.”
He was relaxed, but having, with that question, strayed slightly from the discussion of music, Luc appeared to grow more guarded.
“And the long version?”
“It actually took a while to find out who’d produced the recording. I thought they must have been an order somewhere in Europe.”
“And even so, you’d have been willing to go there?”
“If the woman you loved lived in France, would you have gone?”
Gamache laughed. The young monk had got him. A direct and accurate hit.
“My wife,” said the Chief. “And I’d have gone to Hell to get her.”
“I hope that wasn’t necessary.”
“Well, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. But you had to search?”
“All I had was the CD, but it doesn’t say anything on it. I have it in my cell still, somewhere.”
Gamache had the CD. He’d bought it over a year ago. And he too had searched for the liner notes, to find out who the monks were. But there were none. Just a list of the chants. The CD cover showed simply monks in profile. Walking. It was stylized, seeming at once very abstract and very traditional. There were no credits. The CD didn’t even have a name.
It looked, and was, amateurish. The sound echoey and tinny.
“So how did you find out who it was?”
“Like everyone else, I found out on the radio, when those reporters tracked them down. I couldn’t believe it. Everyone in my monastery was shocked. Not just because they were Québécois, but mostly because they were Gilbertines. They’re not listed among the living orders. According to Church records, they died out, or were killed off, four hundred years ago. There are no more Gilbertine monasteries. Or so everyone thought.”
“But how did you come to join them?” Gamache persisted. He could get the history lesson later.
“Father Abbot visited my monastery and heard me sing.…” Frère Luc suddenly looked quite bashful.
“Go on,” said Gamache.
“Well, I have an unusual singing voice. A strange timber.”
“And what effect does that have?”
“It means I can sing with virtually any choir, and fit in.”
“You harmonize well?”
“We sing in plainchant, which means we all sing the same note at the same time. Bu
t with different voices. We don’t actually harmonize, but we need to be in harmony when we sing.”
Gamache thought about that distinction for a moment, then nodded.
“I am the harmony.”
It was such an extraordinary thing to say that the Chief merely stared at this young monk, with the simple robes. And the grandiose statement.
“Pardon? I don’t understand what that means.”
“Don’t get me wrong, the choir doesn’t need me. The CD proves that.”
“Then what did you mean?” It seemed to the Chief a little late for humility.
“Any choir would be better with me in it.”
The two men stared at each other. It now struck Gamache that this might not be pride or bragging. It might be a simple statement of fact. Just as monks might learn to accept their failings, maybe they also learned to accept their gifts. And not pretend, for the sake of a false humility, not to have them.
This man didn’t hide his gift. And yet, he did hide his voice. In a vow of silence. In a monastery far, far away from people. From an audience.
Unless.
“So, you weren’t on this first disk—”
Luc shook his head.
“—but were there more recordings planned?”
Frère Luc paused. “Oui. Frère Mathieu was excited about it. He had all the pieces chosen.”
Gamache pulled the paper from his satchel. “Is this one of them?”
Luc took it from the Chief. He was totally focused. Completely still. His brows drew together and he shook his head, handing the paper back.
“I can’t tell you what this is, monsieur. But I can tell you what it isn’t. It’s not a Gregorian chant.”
“How can you tell?”
Luc smiled. “There’re very clear rules to a chant. Like a sonnet, or haiku. Things you must do, and things you mustn’t. A Gregorian chant is about discipline, and simplicity. The humility to submit to the rules, and the inspiration to rise above them. The challenge is to use the rules and transcend them at the same time. To sing to God, and not impose your own ego. That,” he gestured to the paper, now back in Gamache’s hand, “is nonsense.”
“You mean the words?”
“I don’t understand the words. What I mean is the rhythm, the meter. It’s way off. Too fast. Not even close to a Gregorian chant.”
