The Beautiful Mystery (46 page)

“And the prior?” asked Gamache as he walked the abbot to his rooms. “What did he love more?”

“The music.” The answer was swift and unequivocal. “But it isn’t quite that simple.” The abbot smiled. “As you might have noticed, few things here are actually simple.”

Gamache also smiled. He had noticed.

They were in the long corridor leading to the abbot’s office and cell. Where at first it had seemed perfectly straight from one end to the other, now he thought he noticed a very slight curve. Dom Clément might have drawn a straight line, but his builders had erred, ever so slightly. As anyone who’d built a bookcase, or tried to follow a detailed map, knew, an infinitesimal error at the beginning can become a massive mistake later on.

Even the corridors here, he reflected, weren’t as simple, as straight, as they appeared.

“For Mathieu there was no separation between the music and his faith. They were one and the same,” said the abbot. His pace had slowed and now they were barely moving down the darkened hallway. “The music magnified his faith. Took it to levels of near ecstasy.”

“Levels few achieve?”

The abbot was quiet.

“Levels you’ve never achieved?” Gamache pushed.

“I’m more the slow and steady type,” said the abbot, looking straight ahead as they walked the slightly flawed path. “Not given to soaring.”

“But neither do you fall?”

“We can all fall,” said the abbot.

“But perhaps not as hard and not as fast and not as far as someone who spends his life on the ascent.”

Again the abbot lapsed into silence.

“You obviously adore the Gregorian chants,” said Gamache. “But unlike the prior, you separate them from your faith?”

The abbot nodded. “I hadn’t thought about it until this happened, but yes, I do. If the music was somehow taken away tomorrow. If I could no longer sing, or listen to the chants, my love of God would be unchanged.”

“Not so with Frère Mathieu?”

“I wonder.”

“Who was his confessor?”

“I was. Until recently.”

“Who was his new confessor?”

“Frère Antoine.”

Now their slow progress stopped completely.

“Can you tell me what Frère Mathieu said, in his confessions to you? Before he switched confessors?”

“You know I can’t.”

“Even though the prior is dead?”

The abbot studied Gamache. “Surely you know the answer to that. Has any priest ever agreed to break the seal of the confessional for you?”

Gamache shook his head. “No,
mon père
. But I’ll never give up hope.”

That brought a smile to the abbot’s face.

“When did the prior switch to Frère Antoine?”

“About six months ago.” The abbot looked resigned. “I wasn’t completely honest with you.” He looked directly into Gamache’s eyes. “I’m sorry. Mathieu and I did have a disagreement about the chants, and that grew into an argument about the direction of the monastery and the community.”

“He wanted another recording, and for Saint-Gilbert to be more open to the outside world.”

“
Oui
. And I believe we need to stay on course.”

“A steady hand on the tiller,” said the Chief, nodding approval. Though both men knew, if you were heading into the rocks, a quick turn was often necessary.

“But there was another outstanding issue,” said Gamache. They’d started walking again, toward the closed door at the end of the corridor. “The foundations.”

Gamache had taken a step forward before he realized the abbot was no longer beside him. The Chief turned and saw Dom Philippe staring at him, surprised.

It seemed to Gamache that the abbot was on the verge of another lie, but in the breath he took before speaking he seemed to change his mind.

“You know about that?”

“Frère Raymond told Inspector Beauvoir. It’s true, then.”

The abbot nodded.

“Did anyone else know?” Gamache asked.

“I told no one.”

“Not even your prior?”

“A year ago, eighteen months ago, he’d have been the first person I told, but not now. I kept it to myself. Told God, but he already knew, of course.”

“Might have even put the cracks there,” suggested Gamache.

The abbot looked at the Chief, but said nothing.

“Is that why you were in the basement yesterday morning?” asked Gamache. “Not to examine the geothermal, but to look at the foundations?”

The abbot nodded and they began their slow progress again, neither man in a hurry to reach the door.

“I waited until Frère Raymond was gone. I’m afraid I didn’t need to hear him go on and on about the impending disaster. I just needed some quiet time to look for myself.”

“And what did you see?”

“Roots,” he said, his voice a study of neutrality. A plainchant voice, monotone. No inflection. No emotion. Just fact. “The cracks are getting worse. I’d marked where they’d been the last time I looked, a week or so ago. They’ve widened since then.”

“You might have even less time than you’d hoped?”

“We might,” Dom Philippe admitted.

“So what do you do about it?”

“I pray.”

“That’s it?”

“And what do you do, Chief Inspector, when all seems lost?”

Take this child
.

“I pray too,” he said.

“And does it work?”

“Sometimes,” said Gamache. Jean-Guy hadn’t died that dreadful day in the factory. Covered in blood, gasping in pain. Eyes pleading for Gamache to stay. To do something. To save him. Gamache had prayed. And Beauvoir hadn’t been taken. But neither, Gamache knew, had he returned. Not completely. Beauvoir was still caught between worlds.

“But is all lost?” he asked the abbot. “Frère Raymond seems to think another recording would bring in enough money to fix the foundations. But you have to act quickly.”

“Frère Raymond is right. But he also sees only the cracks. I see the whole monastery. The whole community. What good would it do to fix the cracks but lose our real foundation? Our vows aren’t negotiable.”

Gamache saw then what Frère Raymond must have seen. What the prior must have seen. A man who would not budge. Unlike the monastery, there were no cracks in the abbot. He was immovable, at least on this subject.

If the last Gilbertine monastery was to be saved it would have to be by divine intervention. Unless, as Frère Raymond believed, their miracle had been offered and the abbot, blinded by pride, had missed it.

“I have a favor to ask,
Père Abbé
.”

“Would you also like me to approve another recording?”

Gamache almost laughed. “No. I’ll leave that between you and your God. But I would like the boatman to come tomorrow morning, to take Inspector Beauvoir back with some of the evidence we’ve gathered.”

“Of course. I’ll call first thing. Assuming the fog lifts Etienne should be here shortly after breakfast.”

They’d reached the closed door. The wood pockmarked by hundreds of years of monks asking for admittance. But no longer. The iron rod was gone and would leave the abbey for good with Beauvoir in the morning. Gamache wondered if the abbot would have it replaced.

“Well,” said Dom Philippe, “good night, my son.”

“
Bonne nuit
,
mon père
,” said Gamache. The words sounded so strange. His own father had died when Gamache was a boy and he’d rarely called anyone that since.

“
Ecce homo
,” said Gamache, just as Dom Philippe opened the door.

The abbot paused.

“Why would Frère Mathieu say that?” Gamache asked.

“I don’t know.”

Gamache pondered for a moment. “Why did Pilate say it?”

“He wanted to prove to the mob that their god wasn’t divine at all. That Jesus was just a man.”

“
Merci
,” said Gamache, and bowing slightly he walked back down the slightly curved hall. To think about the Divine, the human, and the cracks in between.

*   *   *

“Dear Annie,” Beauvoir wrote in the dark. His light was out so that no one would know he was still awake.

He lay on his bed, fully clothed. Compline was over, he knew, and he’d retreated to his cell, until he could safely return to the prior’s office, when everyone was asleep.

He’d found a message from Annie on his BlackBerry. A light-hearted description of her evening with old friends.

I love you
, she wrote, at the end.

I miss you
.

Hurry home.

He thought about Annie having dinner with her friends. Had she told them about him? Had she told them about his gift? The plunger. What a stupid thing to do. A crass, boorish gift. They’d probably all laughed. At him. At the stupid Pepsi who knew no better. Who was too poor or cheap or unsophisticated to buy her a real gift. To go to Holt Renfrew or Ogilvy’s or one of the fucking snooty shops along Laurier and get her something nice.

Instead, he’d given her a toilet plunger.

And they’d laughed at him.

And Annie would’ve laughed too. At the dumb yokel she was screwing. Just for fun. He could see those eyes, shining, glowing. As she’d looked at him so often in the last few months. As she’d looked at him over the past ten years.

He’d mistaken that look for affection, love even, but now he saw it was simply amusement.

“Annie,” he wrote.

*   *   *

“Dear Reine-Marie,” Gamache wrote.

He’d returned to his cell, after looking for Beauvoir in the prior’s office. The lights were off and it was empty. The Chief had spent half an hour there, making notes, copying notes. Preparing the package of evidence for Beauvoir to take out the next morning.

It was eleven o’clock. The end of a long day. He’d turned the lights off and taken the package back to his cell, after first tapping on Beauvoir’s door. But there was no answer.

He’d opened the door and looked in. To be sure Jean-Guy was there. And sure enough, he could see the outline on the bed, and hear the heavy, steady breathing.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

Evidence of life.

It was unlike Jean-Guy to simply go to sleep, without a final check-in, a postmortem of the day. All the more reason, thought Gamache as he prepared for bed, to get him home as soon as possible.

“Dear Reine-Marie,” he wrote.

*   *   *

“Annie. My day was fine. Nothing special. The investigation is moving along. Thanks for asking. Glad to hear you had a fun night out with your friends. Lots to laugh about, I’d imagine.”

*   *   *

“Dear Reine-Marie. I wish you were here and we could talk about this case. It seems to swirl around the Gregorian chants and how important they are to these monks. It would be a mistake to dismiss the chants as simply music.”

Gamache paused and thought about that. He found even just writing to Reine-Marie helped clarify things, as though he could hear her voice, see her lively, warm eyes.

“We had a surprise visitor. A Dominican from the Vatican. The office that used to be the Inquisition. Apparently they’ve been searching for the Gilbertines for almost four hundred years. And today they found them. The monk says it’s just a loose end that needed to be tied up, but I wonder. I think, like so much else in this case, part of what he’s telling us is the truth, and part isn’t. I wish I could see more clearly.

“Good night, my love. Sweet dreams.

“I miss you. I’ll be home soon.

“
Je t’aime
.”

*   *   *

“Talk to U soon,” wrote Jean-Guy.

Then he hit send and lay in the dark.

THIRTY-ONE

Beauvoir awoke to the sound of the bells, calling the faithful. Though he knew the bells weren’t for him, still he followed them through his bleary brain. Up, up he crawled to consciousness.

He wasn’t even completely sure if he was awake, so vague was his border between conscious and unconscious. He felt confused, clumsy. Grabbing his watch he tried to focus on the time.

Five in the morning. The bells continued and if Beauvoir could’ve mustered the energy he’d have tossed his shoes at the monk who was ringing them.

He flopped back in the bed and prayed for the sound to stop. Anxiety gripped him and he gasped for breath.

Deep breath in, he begged his body. Deep breath out.

Deep breath—
oh, fuck it
, he thought. Beauvoir sat up in bed and swung his legs over the side, feeling his bare feet on the cold stone floor.

Everything hurt. The soles of his feet, the top of his head. His chest, his joints. His toenails and his eyebrows. He stared at the wall across from him, his mouth open and slack. Begging for breath.

Finally, with one jagged gasp, his throat opened and air rushed in.

Then the trembling began.

Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck
.

He turned on the light and grabbed the bottle of pills from underneath his pillow, squeezing it tight. After a couple of tries he got it open. He wanted one, but the shaking was so bad two tumbled out. He didn’t care. He tossed them both into his mouth and dry swallowed. Then he gripped the sides of his bed and waited.

His chemo. His medicine. The pills would kill what was killing him. Stop the trembling. Stop the pain so deep inside he couldn’t get at it. Stop the images, the memories.

The fears. That he’d been left alone. And was still alone. Would always be alone.

He lay back in bed and felt the pills begin to work. How could anything this good be bad?

He felt human again. Whole again.

The pain receded, his brain cleared. The hooks and barbs released his flesh, and the void was filled in. As he drifted, Beauvoir could hear familiar voices singing.

The bells had ended and the service had begun. Vigils. The first of the day.

Two clear voices were singing now. A call and response. And Beauvoir was surprised to realize he now recognized it. His grip on the bed loosened as he listened.

Call. Response.

Call. Response.

It was mesmerizing.

Call. Response.

And then all the voices joined in. No more need to call. They’d found each other.

Beauvoir felt a tug deep inside. A pain not wholly numbed.