The Beautiful Mystery (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #8)

“And what did you say?”

“I can’t remember what I said, but I suspect it was something not taught at the seminary.”

Dom Philippe cast his mind back. He’d shoved by the doctor and run, stumbling, to the far end. To what looked like a mound of dark earth. But wasn’t. As he saw it in his memory he described it to the large, quiet Sûreté officer beside him.

“And then I dropped to my knees beside him,” said Dom Philippe.

“Did you touch him?”

“Yes. I touched his face, and his robe. I think I straightened it. I don’t know why. Who would do such a thing?”

Again, Gamache ignored the question. Time enough for the answer.

“What was Frère Mathieu doing here? In your garden?”

“I have no idea. It wasn’t to see me. I’m always out at that time. It’s when I do my rounds.”

“And he’d know that?”

“He was my prior. He knew it better than most.”

“What did you do after you’d seen his body?” Gamache asked.

The abbot thought about that. “We prayed first. And then I called the police. We have only one phone. It’s a satellite thing. Doesn’t always work, but it did this morning.”

“Did you consider not calling?”

The question surprised the abbot and he studied this quiet stranger with new appreciation. “I’m ashamed to admit it was my first thought. To keep it to ourselves. We’re used to being self-sufficient.”

“Then why did you call?”

“Not for Mathieu, I’m afraid, but for the others.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mathieu is gone now. He’s with God.”

Gamache hoped that was true. For Frère Mathieu there were no more mysteries. He knew who took his life. And he now knew if there was a God. And a Heaven. And angels. And even a celestial choir.

It didn’t bear thinking about what happened to the celestial choir when yet another director showed up.

“But the rest of us are here,” Dom Philippe continued. “I didn’t call you in for vengeance or to punish whoever did this. The deed is done. Mathieu is safe. We, on the other hand, are not.”

It was, Gamache knew, the simple truth. It was also the reaction of a father. To protect. Or a shepherd, to keep the flock safe from a predator.

Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups. Saint Gilbert among the wolves. It was a curious name for a monastery.

The abbot knew there was a wolf in the fold. In a black robe, and shaved head, and whispering soft prayers. Dom Philippe had called in hunters to find him.

Beauvoir and the doctor had returned with the stretcher and had placed it beside Frère Mathieu. Gamache stood and gave a silent signal. The body was lifted onto the stretcher and Frère Mathieu left the garden for the last time.

*   *   *

The abbot led the small procession, followed by Frères Simon and Charles. Then Captain Charbonneau at the head of the stretcher and Beauvoir behind.

Gamache was the last to leave the abbot’s garden, closing the bookcase behind him.

They walked into the rainbow corridor. The joyful colors played on the body, and the mourners. As they arrived at the church, the rest of the community stood and filed from the benches. Joining them. Walking behind Gamache.

The abbot, Dom Philippe, began to recite a prayer. Not the rosary. Something else. And then Gamache realized the abbot wasn’t speaking. He was singing. And it wasn’t simply a prayer. It was a chant.

A Gregorian chant.

Slowly the other monks joined in and the singing swelled to fill the corridor, and join with the light. It would have been beautiful, if not for the certainty that one of the men singing the words of God, in the voice of God, was a killer.

SIX

Four men gathered around the gleaming examination table.

Armand Gamache and Inspector Beauvoir stood on one side, the doctor across from them and the abbot off to the side. Frère Mathieu lay on the stainless steel table, terrified face to the ceiling.

The other monks had gone off to do what monks did at a time like this. Gamache wondered what that might be.

Most people, in Gamache’s experience, groped and stumbled, barking their shins against familiar scents and sights and sounds. As though struck with vertigo, falling over the edge of their known world.

Captain Charbonneau had been detailed to search for the murder weapon. It was, Gamache believed, a long shot, but one that needed to be taken. It appeared the prior had been killed by a rock. If so, it had almost certainly been tossed over the wall, to be lost in the old-growth forest.