The Beautiful Mystery ciag-8

by Louise Penny

  “Think about what I said. Put it together. You’re smarter than that. Think. And while you’re at it, you might wonder why he promoted Isabelle Lacoste to inspector.”

  “Because she’s a fine investigator. She earned it.”

  Francoeur gave him that look again, as though Beauvoir was spectacularly stupid. Then he walked to the door.

  “What?” demanded Beauvoir. “What’re you trying to say?”

  “I’ve said far too much already, Inspector Beauvoir. Still, it’s out there now.” He gave Beauvoir an appraising look. “You’re actually a very good investigator. Use those skills. And feel free to tell Gamache exactly what I’ve just said. It’s about time he realized someone was on to him.”

  The door closed and Beauvoir was alone with his anger. And the laptop.

  * * *

  Frère Simon gaped at Gamache.

  “Do you think the prior was still alive when I found him?”

  “I think it’s possible. I think you knew he was dying and instead of going to get help, which would almost certainly mean he’d die alone, you stayed with him for the final moments. To comfort him. Give him last rites. It was an act of kindness. Of compassion.”

  “Then why wouldn’t I say anything? The rest of the congregation would’ve been relieved to hear that even in this terrible situation, at least the prior was given last rites.” He looked closely at the Chief Inspector. “You think I’d keep that quiet? Why?”

  “Now, that was the question,” Gamache crossed his legs and got comfortable, to Frère Simon’s obvious discomfort. The Chief was prepared for a long visit.

  “I haven’t had all that long to think about it,” the Chief admitted. “I only just read in the autopsy report that the coroner believes Frère Mathieu might have lived up to half an hour after the fatal blow.”

  “Could have doesn’t mean he did.”

  “Absolutely true. But suppose he did? He was strong enough to crawl to the wall. Maybe he fought off death to the very last second. Grabbed every moment of life available. Does that sound like something the prior would do?”

  “I didn’t think the hour and time of our death was our choice,” said Frère Simon, and Gamache smiled. “If it was,” the monk continued, “I suspect the prior would’ve chosen not to die at all.”

  “I think Dom Clément would still be walking these familiar halls, if we really had a choice,” agreed Gamache. “I’m not saying force of will can fight off a clearly lethal blow. But I am saying, from personal experience, a strong will can hold off death, by moments, sometimes minutes. And sometimes, in my job, those moments and minutes are crucial.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s that golden time, between this world and whatever you believe is the next. When the person knows they’re dying. And if they’ve been murdered, what do they do?”

  Frère Simon said nothing.

  “They tell us who killed them, if at all possible.”

  The monk’s cheeks reddened and his eyes narrowed slightly. “You think Frère Mathieu told me who killed him? And I’ve said nothing?”

  Now it was Gamache’s turn to be silent. He examined the monk. Taking in the full, round face. Not fat, but cheeks like chipmunks’. The shaved head. The short, pug nose. The near permanent scowl of disapproval. And hazel eyes, like the bark of a tree. Mottled. And rough. And unyielding.

  And yet, the voice of an archangel. Not simply a member of the celestial choir, but one of the Chosen. A favorite of God. Gifted beyond all others.

  Except the other men in this monastery. Two dozen of them.

  Was this place, Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, a golden moment? Between two worlds. It felt like it. Out of time, and place. A netherworld. Between the vibrant life of Québec. The bistros and brasseries, the festivals. The hardworking farmers and brilliant academics.

  Between the mortal world, and Heaven. Or Hell. There was here.

  Where quiet was king. And calm reigned. And the only sounds were the birds in the trees and plainchant.

  And where, a day ago, a monk was killed.

  Did the prior, at the very end, his back to the wall, break his vow of silence?

  * * *

  Jean-Guy Beauvoir propped the broken chair against the door into the prior’s office.

  It wouldn’t stop anyone, but it would slow them down just enough. And it would certainly give Beauvoir warning.

  Then he walked around the desk and sat in the chair Francoeur had just left. It was still warm from the Superintendent. The thought made Beauvoir slightly queasy, but he ignored it and pulled the laptop toward him.

  It too was warm. Francoeur had been on it, but had closed it down when Beauvoir entered.

  After he’d rebooted the laptop, Beauvoir tried to connect to the Internet.

  It wouldn’t. There was still no satellite hookup.

  So what was the Superintendent doing? And why had he shut it down so quickly?

  Jean-Guy Beauvoir settled in to find the answer.

  * * *

  “Shall I tell you my thinking?” asked Gamache.

  Frère Simon’s face screamed no. Gamache, of course, ignored it.

  “It’s unorthodox,” admitted the Chief. “We generally like the people we’re talking to to do all the talking. But I think it might be sensible to be flexible, in this case.”

  He looked, with some amusement, at the mule-like monk. Then his face grew solemn.

  “This is what I think happened. I think Frère Mathieu was still alive when you went into the garden. He was curled against the wall, and it probably took you a minute or so to see him.”

  As Gamache spoke an image sprang up between the two men, a vision of Frère Simon entering the garden with his gardening gear. More bright autumn leaves had fallen since he’d last raked, and some of the flowers were in need of deadheading. The sun was out and the day was crisp and fresh and filled with the scent of wild crab apple trees in the forest, their fruit baking in the late-season sun.

  Frère Simon walked down the lawn, scanning the flower beds, looking at what needed to be cut down and put to bed for the harsh winter so obviously approaching.

  And then he stopped. The grass at the far end of the garden had been mussed up. Disturbed. It wasn’t obvious. A casual visitor would have probably missed it. But the abbot’s secretary was not a casual visitor. He knew every leaf, every blade of grass. He tended it as he would a child in his care.

  Something was wrong.

  He looked around. Was the abbot here? But he knew the abbot was going to the basement, to look at the geothermal.

  Frère Simon stood very still in the late September sunlight, his eyes sharp, his senses alert.

  “Am I right so far?” Gamache asked.

  The Chief Inspector’s voice had been so mesmerizing, his words so descriptive that Frère Simon had forgotten he was still sitting inside, in the office. He could almost feel the chill autumn air on his cheeks.

  He looked at the Chief Inspector, sitting so composed across from him, and thought, not for the first time, that this was a very dangerous man.

  “I’ll take your silence as assent,” said Gamache with a small smile, “though I realize that’s often a mistake.”

  He continued his story, and once again the image between the men sprang up and began to move.

  “You walked a few steps, trying to make out the lump at the far end of the garden, not yet concerned, but curious. Then you noticed the grass wasn’t just disturbed, but there was blood.”

  Both men saw Frère Simon bending over, looking at the bent blades, and here and there a smear of red, as though the fallen leaves had sprung a stigmata.

  Then he stopped and looked ahead of him, in the direction of the trail.

  At the end of the path lay a figure. Curled into a tight, black ball. With just a crest of distinctive white. Only it wasn’t all white. There was deep red there too.

  Frère Simon threw his gardening tools to the ground and leapt forward, wading t
hrough the bushes to get there. Stomping on his precious perennials. Killing the cheerful black-eyed Susans standing in his way.

  A monk, one of his brothers, was hurt. Badly hurt.

  “I thought,” said Frère Simon, not looking into Gamache’s eyes, but down at the rosary in his hands. His voice was low, not above a whisper, and the Chief leaned forward to grasp each rare word. “I thought…”

  Now Frère Simon did look up. The memory alone was enough to frighten him.

  Gamache said nothing. He kept his face neutral, interested. But his deep brown eyes never left the monk’s.

  “I thought it was Dom Philippe.”

  His eyes fell to the simple cross swinging from his rosary. Then Frère Simon brought his hands up, and dropped his head and held it there, so that the cross knocked softly against the monk’s forehead. And then stopped.

  “Oh, God, I thought he was dead. I thought something had happened to him.” Frère Simon’s voice was muffled. But while his words were obscured, his feelings couldn’t have been clearer.

  “What did you do?” asked Gamache, softly.

  His head still in his hands, the monk spoke to the floor. “I hesitated. God help me, I hesitated.”

  He lifted his head to look at Gamache. His confessor. Hoping for understanding, if not absolution.

  “Go on,” said Gamache, his eyes never wavering.

  “I didn’t want to see. I was afraid.”

  “Of course you were. Anyone would be. But you did go to him, finally,” said the Chief. “You didn’t run away.”

  “No.”

  “What happened?”

  Now Frère Simon held on to Gamache’s eyes as though they were a rope and he was dangling from a cliff.

  “I knelt and turned him a little. I thought maybe he’d fallen from the wall or the tree. I know, it’s ridiculous, but I couldn’t see how else it could’ve happened. And if he’d broken his neck I didn’t want to…”

  “Oui,” said Gamache. “Go on.”

  “Then I saw who it was.” The monk’s voice had changed. It was still filled with stress, with anxiety, reliving those terrible moments. But the degree had changed. “It wasn’t the abbot.”

  There was clearly relief.

  “It was the prior.”

  And even more relief. What had started as a dreadful tragedy had ended as almost good news. Frère Simon couldn’t hide it. Or chose not to.

  Still, he held the Chief’s gaze. Searching it for disapproval.

  He found none. Only acceptance, that what he was hearing was almost certainly, finally, the truth.

  “Was he alive?” Gamache asked.

  “Oui. His eyes were open. He stared at me, and grabbed my hand. You’re right. He knew he was dying. And I knew. I couldn’t tell you how I knew, but I did. I couldn’t just leave him.”

  “How long did it take?”

  Frère Simon paused. It had obviously taken an eternity. Kneeling in the earth, holding the bloody hand of a dying man. A fellow monk. A man this man despised.

  “I don’t know. A minute, maybe slightly more. I gave him last rites, and it calmed him a bit.”

  “What are the last rites, can you repeat them for me?”

  “Surely you’ve heard them?”

  Gamache had heard them, and knew them. Had given them himself, swiftly, urgently, while holding one dying agent after another. But he wanted Frère Simon to say them now.

  Simon closed his eyes. His right hand reached out just a little, and cupped just a little. Holding an invisible hand.

  “O Lord Jesus Christ, most merciful lord of earth, we ask that you receive this child into your arms, that he might pass in safety from this crisis, as thou hast told us with infinite compassion.”

  His eyes still closed, Frère Simon lifted his other hand and with his thumb he sketched a cross. On the dying monk’s forehead.

  Infinite compassion, thought Gamache, looking down at the young agent, his own specter in his own arms. In the heat of the moment, Gamache hadn’t had time to give the full last rites, so he’d simply bent down and whispered, “Take this child.”

  But the agent was already gone. And Gamache himself had to go.

  “This is where,” the Chief said, “a dying man, if he’s able, gives his confession.”

  Frère Simon was silent.

  “What did he say?” Gamache asked.

  “He made a noise,” said Frère Simon, as though in a trance. “Trying to clear his throat and then he said ‘homo.’”

  Now Simon focused. He came back from far away. The two men stared at each other.

  “Homo?” asked the Chief.

  Frère Simon nodded. “You can see why I didn’t say anything. It has nothing to do with his death.”

  But, thought Gamache, perhaps a lot to do with his life. The Chief considered for a moment.

  “What do you think he meant?” he finally asked.

  “I think we both know what he meant.”

  “Was he gay? Homosexual?”

  For a moment Frère Simon tried on his disapproving look, then abandoned it. They were far beyond that.

  “It’s hard to explain,” said Frère Simon. “We’re two dozen men here alone. Our goal, our prayer, is to find divine love. Compassion. To be consumed by the love of God.”

  “That’s the ideal,” said Gamache. “But in the meantime, you’re also human.”

  The need for physical comfort was, he knew, powerful and primal and didn’t necessarily go away with a vow of chastity.

  “But what we need isn’t physical love,” said Frère Simon, correctly interpreting Gamache’s thoughts, and correcting him. The monk didn’t sound at all defensive. He was simply struggling to find the right words. “I think most, if not all of us, have left that far behind. We’re not highly sexed or sexual.”

  “What do you need then?”

  “Kindness. Intimacy. Not sexual. But companionship. God should replace man in our affections, but the reality is, we all want a friend.”

  “Is that how you feel, with the abbot?” Gamache asked the question baldly, but his voice and his manner were gentle. “I saw how you reacted when you thought he was the one hurt and dying.”

  “I love him, it’s true. But I have no desire for physical relations. It’s hard to explain a love that goes so far beyond that.”

  “And the prior? Did he love another?”

  Frère Simon was silent. Not a mulish silence, but a contemplative one.

  After a minute or so he spoke. “I wondered if he and the abbot…”

  It was as far as he could go, for the moment. There was another pause.

  “There were many years when they were inseparable. Besides myself, the prior was the only other person ever invited into the abbot’s garden.”

  For the first time, Gamache began to wonder if the garden existed on different planes. It was both a place of grass and earth and flowers. But also an allegory. For that most private place inside each one of them. For some it was a dark, locked room. For others, a garden.

  The secretary had been admitted. And so had the prior.

  And the prior had died there.

  “What do you think the prior meant?” asked Gamache.

  “I think there’s only one possible interpretation. He knew he was dying and he wanted absolution.”

  “For being a homosexual? I thought you just said he probably wasn’t.”

  “I don’t know what to think anymore. His relationships might’ve been platonic, but he might’ve privately yearned for more. He knew it. And God knew it.”

  “Is it the sort of thing God would condemn him for?” Gamache asked.

  “For being gay? Maybe not. For breaking his vow of chastity, probably. It’s the sort of thing that would need to be confessed.”

  “By saying ‘homo’?” Gamache was far from convinced, though when a person was dying reason played a very small part, if any. When the end came and there was time for only one word, what would that be?

 
; The Chief Inspector had no doubt what his last words would be. And were. When he’d thought he was dying he’d said two words, over and over until he could speak no more.

  Reine-Marie.

  It would never occur to him to say “hetero.” But then, he carried no guilt about his relationships. And maybe the prior did.

  “Do you have his personal records I might see?” asked Gamache.

  “No.”

  “‘No,’ you don’t want to show me, or ‘no,’ you really don’t have files.”

  “We really don’t have files.”

  On seeing the Chief Inspector’s expression, Frère Simon explained. “When we enter the religious life we’re rigorously tested and screened. And our first abbey would’ve kept records. But not Dom Philippe, not here at Saint-Gilbert.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it can’t possibly matter. We’re like the French Foreign Legion. We leave the past behind.”

  Gamache stared at this religieux. Was he really that naïve?

  “Just because you want to leave your past at the gate doesn’t mean it stays there,” said the Chief. “It has a way of creeping through the cracks.”

  “If it comes all this way, then I suppose it was meant to find us again,” said Frère Simon.

  By this logic, thought Gamache, the prior’s death was also God’s will. Meant to happen. God clearly had his hands full with the Gilbertines. The French Foreign Legion of religious orders.

  It fit, Gamache thought. No retreat was possible. There was no past to go back to. Nothing outside the walls but wilderness.

  “Speaking of cracks, do you know about the foundations?” Gamache asked.

  “The foundations of what?”

  “The abbey.”

  Frère Simon looked confused. “You need to speak to Frère Raymond about them. But give yourself half a day and be prepared to come away knowing more about our septic system than is probably healthy.”

  “So the abbot didn’t say anything to you about the foundations of the abbey? And the prior didn’t either?”

  Now it dawned on Frère Simon. “Is there something wrong with them?”

  “I was asking if you’d heard anything.”

  “No, nothing. Should I have?”

  So the abbot had kept it to himself, as Gamache had suspected. Only the abbot and Frère Raymond knew that Saint-Gilbert was crumbling. Had, at best, a decade of life left.