The Beautiful Mystery (22 page)

So if it wasn’t to meet the abbot, then why had the prior been here? Who was he meeting?

His killer, obviously. Though equally obviously, the prior couldn’t have known that was on the agenda. So what had brought Frère Mathieu to this garden?

“Why did you want to see the prior yesterday?”

“Abbey business.”

“An argument could be made that everything is abbey business,” said Gamache. The two men continued their stroll around the garden. “But I’d rather you didn’t waste my time making that argument. I understand that you and Frère Mathieu met twice a week to discuss abbey issues. The meeting you wanted to set up yesterday was extraordinary.”

Gamache’s voice was reasonable, but firm. He was tired of this abbot, of all the monks, giving them facile answers. It was like copying someone else’s neumes. It might be easier, but it got them no closer to their goal. If their goal was the truth.

“What was so important, Dom Philippe, that it couldn’t wait until your next scheduled meeting?”

The abbot took another few steps in silence, except for the slight swish as his long black robe brushed the grass and dried leaves.

“Mathieu wanted to talk about making another recording.” The abbot was grim-faced.

“The prior wanted to talk about it?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You said Mathieu wanted to talk about it. Was the meeting his idea, or yours?”

“The topic was his idea. The timing was mine. We needed to resolve the issue before the community met again in Chapter.”

“So it wasn’t yet decided if there’d be another recording?”

“He’d decided, but I hadn’t. We’d discussed it in Chapter, but the outcome was—” The abbot searched for the right word. “Inconclusive.”

“There was no consensus?”

Dom Philippe took a few paces and slipped his hands into his sleeves. It made him look contemplative, though his face was anything but thoughtful. It was bleak. An autumn face, after all the leaves had fallen.

“I can ask others, you know,” said the Chief.

“I suspect you already have.” The abbot took a deep breath then exhaled with a puff in the early morning chill. “As with most things in the monastery, some were for it, some against.”

“You make it sound as though this was just one more issue to be resolved. But it was more than that, wasn’t it?” said Gamache. His words pressed but his tone was gentle. He didn’t want the abbot to put up his defenses. At least, not any higher than they already were. Here was a guarded man. But what was he guarding?

Gamache was determined to find out.

“The recording was changing the abbey,” the Chief pressed further, “wasn’t it?”

The abbot stopped then, and cast his eyes over the wall, to the forest beyond and a single, magnificent tree in full autumn color. It shone in the sunlight, made all the brighter for the dark evergreens surrounding it. A living stained-glass window. More magnificent, surely, than anything found in a great cathedral.

The abbot marveled at it. And he marveled at something else.

How he’d actually forgotten what Saint-Gilbert had been like just a few years ago. Before the recording. Everything now seemed measured by that. Before and after.

Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups had been poor, and getting poorer. Before the recording. The roof leaked and pots and pans were put out by hurrying monks every time it rained. The woodstoves barely gave off enough heat. They had to put extra blankets on their cots in winter and wear their robes to bed. Sometimes, on the bitterest of nights, they’d stay up. In the dining hall. Gathered around the woodstove. Feeding it logs. Drinking tea. Toasting bread.

Warmed by the stove, and by each other. Their bodies.

And sometimes, waiting for the sun to rise, they’d pray. Their voices a low rumble of plainchant. Not because some bell had tolled and told them they had to. Not because they were afraid, of the cold, or the night.

They’d prayed because it gave them pleasure. For the fun of it.

Mathieu was always beside him. And as they sang Dom Philippe would notice the slight movement of Mathieu’s hand. Privately conducting. As though the notes and words were part of him. Fused.

Dom Philippe had wanted to hold that hand. To be a part of it. To feel what Mathieu felt. But, of course, he never took Mathieu’s hand. And never would now.

That was before the recording.

Now, all that was gone. Killed. Not by a stone to Mathieu’s head. It had, in fact, been killed before that.

By that damned recording.

The abbot chose his words, even the ones he kept to himself, carefully. It was a damned recording. And he wished with all his heart it had never happened.

This large, quiet, quite frightening man from the police had asked if he was ever wrong. He’d answered glibly that he was always wrong.

What he should have said was that he was wrong many times, but one mistake overshadowed all the rest. His error had been so spectacular, so stunning it had become a permanent wrong. In indelible ink. Like the plan of the abbey. His error had soaked into the very fabric of the monastery. It now defined the abbey and had become perpetual.

What had appeared so right, so good, on so many levels, had turned into a travesty. The Gilbertines had survived the Reformation, survived the Inquisition. Survived almost four hundred years in the wilderness of Québec. But they’d finally been found. And felled.

And the weapon had been the very thing they’d wanted to protect. The Gregorian chants themselves.

Dom Philippe would die before he’d make that mistake again.

*   *   *

Jean-Guy Beauvoir stared at Frère Antoine.

It was like peeking into an alternate universe. The monk was thirty-eight years old. Beauvoir’s age. He was Beauvoir’s height. Beauvoir’s coloring. They even shared the same lean and athletic build.

And when he spoke, Frère Antoine’s voice had the same Québécois accent. From the same region. The streets of east end Montréal. Imperfectly hidden under layers of education and effort.

The two men stared, neither sure what to make of the other.

“
Bonjour
,” said Frère Antoine.

“
Salut
,” said Beauvoir.

The only difference was that one was a monk and the other a Sûreté officer. It was as though they’d grown up in the same home, but in different rooms.

Beauvoir could understand the other monks. Most were older. They seemed of an intellectual, contemplative nature. But this lean man?

Beauvoir felt a slight vertigo. What could possibly have led Antoine to become Frère Antoine? Why not a cop, like Beauvoir. Or a teacher. Or work for Hydro-Québec. Or a bum, or a vagrant, or a burden to society?

Beauvoir could understand the path to all those things.

But a religious? A man of his own age? From the same streets?

No one Beauvoir knew even went to church, never mind dedicated his life to it.

“I understand you’re the soloist for the choir,” said Beauvoir. He stood as tall as he could, but still felt dwarfed by Frère Antoine. It was the robes, Beauvoir decided. They were an unfair advantage. Gave the impression of height and authority.

Perhaps the Sûreté should consider it, if they ever redesigned the uniforms. He’d have to put it in the suggestion box, and sign Inspector Lacoste’s name to it.

“That’s true. I’m the soloist.”

Beauvoir was relieved this monk hadn’t called him “my son.” He wasn’t sure what he’d do if that happened, but he suspected it wouldn’t reflect well on the Sûreté.

“I also understand you were about to be replaced.”

That got a reaction, though not the one Beauvoir expected and hoped for.

Frère Antoine smiled.

“You’ve been talking to Frère Luc, I see. I’m afraid he’s mistaken.”

“He seems quite certain.”

“Frère Luc is having difficulty separating what he hopes will happen from what actually will. Expectations from reality. He’s young.”

“I don’t think he’s much younger than Christ.”

“You’re not suggesting we have the second coming in the porter’s room?”

Beauvoir, who had a tenuous hold on anything biblical, gave the point to the monk.

“Frère Luc must have misunderstood the prior,” said Frère Antoine.

“Was that an easy thing to do?”

Frère Antoine hesitated then shook his head. “No,” he admitted. “The prior was quite a definite man.”

“Then why does Frère Luc believe the prior wanted him to be the soloist?”

“I can’t explain what people believe, Inspector Beauvoir. Can you?”

“No,” admitted Beauvoir. He was looking at a man his own age, in a gown and floppy hat, head shaved, in a community of men in the woods. They’d dedicated their lives to a church most in Québec had renounced and they found meaning in singing songs in a dead language with squiggles for notes.

No, he couldn’t explain it.

But Beauvoir knew one thing, after years of kneeling beside dead bodies. It was very, very dangerous to come between a person and their beliefs.

Frère Antoine handed Beauvoir a basket. The monk bent down and searched through thick elephant ear leaves.

“Why do you think Frère Luc is the
portier
?” the monk asked, not looking at Beauvoir.

“Punishment? Some sort of hazing ritual?”

Frère Antoine shook his head. “Every single one of us is assigned that little room when we first arrive.”

“Why?”

“So we can leave.”

Frère Antoine picked a plump squash and put it in Beauvoir’s basket.

“Religious life is hard, Inspector. And this is the hardest. Not many can cut it.”

He made it sound like the marines of religious orders. There’s no life like it. And Beauvoir discovered a small stirring of understanding. Of attraction even. This was a tough life. And only the tough made it. The few. The proud. The monks.

“Those of us who stay at Saint-Gilbert have been called here. But that means it’s voluntary. And we have to be sure.”

“So you test each new monk?”

“We don’t test him, the test is between himself and God. And there’s no wrong answer. Just the truth. He’s given the door to guard and the key to leave.”

“Free choice?” asked Beauvoir, and saw the monk smile again.

“Might as well make use of it.”

“Has anyone ever left?”

“Lots. More leave than stay.”

“And Brother Luc? He’s been here almost a year now. When’s his test over?”

“When he decides it’s over. When he asks to be taken out of the porter’s room and comes to join the rest of us. Or he uses the key and leaves.”

Another heavy gourd landed in Beauvoir’s basket.

Frère Antoine moved down the row.

“He’s in a sort of purgatory there,” said the monk, searching among the huge leaves for more squash. “Of his own making. It must be very painful. He seems paralyzed.”

“By what?”

“You tell me, Inspector. What generally paralyzes people?”

Beauvoir knew that answer. “Fear.”

Frère Antoine nodded. “Frère Luc is gifted. By far the best voice we have here, and that’s saying something. But he’s frozen with fear.”

“Of what?”

“Of everything. Of belonging. And not belonging. He’s afraid of the sun and afraid of shadows. He’s afraid of creaks in the night and afraid of the morning dew. That’s why I know Frère Mathieu wouldn’t have chosen him to be the soloist. Because his voice, while beautiful, is full of fear. When that fear is replaced by faith he’ll be the soloist. But not before.”

Beauvoir thought about that as they inched down the row, his basket growing heavy with produce.

“But suppose the prior had chosen him? Suppose he decided most people wouldn’t hear the fear, or care. Maybe it even made the music more attractive, richer, more human. I don’t know. But suppose Frère Mathieu had chosen Luc. How would you’ve felt?”

The monk took the straw hat from his head and wiped his brow. “You think I’d care?”

Beauvoir met the stare. It really was like looking into a mirror. “I think you’d care very deeply.”

“Would you? If a man you admired, respected, revered even passed you up in favor of someone else, what would you do?”

“Is that how you felt about the prior? You revered him?”

“I did. He was a great man. He saved the monastery. And if he wanted a monkey to sing solo I’d happily plant bananas.”

Beauvoir found himself wanting to believe this man. Perhaps because he wanted to believe he’d react the same way himself.

But he had his doubts.

And Jean-Guy Beauvoir also doubted this monk. Beneath that robe, beneath that ridiculous hat, wasn’t the son of God but the son of man. And the son of man, Beauvoir knew, was capable of almost anything. If pushed. If betrayed. Especially by a man he revered.

Beauvoir knew that the root of all evil wasn’t money. No, what created and drove evil was fear. Fear of not having enough money, enough food, enough land, enough power, enough security, enough love. Fear of not getting what you want, or losing what you have.

Beauvoir watched Brother Antoine collect hidden squash. What drove a healthy, smart young man to become a monk? Was it faith or was it fear?

*   *   *

“Who’s leading the choir now that the prior is gone?” Gamache asked. They’d walked to the end of the garden and were wandering back. Their cheeks were red from the cold morning air.

“I’ve asked Brother Antoine to take over the choir.”

“The soloist? The one who challenged you last night?”

“The one who is by far the most accomplished musician, after Mathieu.”

“You weren’t tempted to take over?”

“I was tempted, and still am,” said the abbot with a smile. “But I passed up that fruit. Antoine is the man for the job. Not me.”

“And yet, he was one of the prior’s men.”

“What do you mean by that?” The abbot’s smile faded.

Gamache cocked his head slightly and examined his companion. “I mean that this abbey, this order, is divided. The prior’s men on one side, the abbot’s men on the other.”

“That’s preposterous,” the abbot snapped. Then snapped back into place. But it was too late. Gamache had had a glimpse of what hid beneath the face. A serpent’s tongue had lashed out, and retreated just as quickly.