The Beautiful Mystery

But still, he looked it up and returned.

“I should demand a warrant for medical records,” he said, but they both knew he wouldn’t. It would just be postponing the inevitable and neither man wanted that. Besides, the monk never again wanted to experience that cold, hard stare.

“It was the abbot. Dom Philippe.”

“Merci.” Gamache went over to Beauvoir once again and looked down at the face of his now-sleeping Inspector. After tucking the blanket snug around him, the Chief walked to the door. “Can you tell me what the prescription was for?”

“A mild tranquillizer. The abbot hasn’t slept well since the death of Frère Mathieu. He needed to function, so he came for help.”

“Have you ever prescribed tranquillizers for him before?”

“No, never.”

“And for the other brothers? Tranquillizers? Sleeping pills? Pain medication?”

“It happens, but I watch it closely.”

“Do you know if the abbot used the tranquillizers?”

The doctor shook his head. “No, I don’t. I doubt it. He prefers meditation to medication. We all do. But he wanted something, just in case. I wrote that note for him.”

*   *   *

Armand Gamache reached the Blessed Chapel but instead of walking through it, he paused. And sat, in the very last pew. Not to pray, but to think.

If the doctor was telling the truth, his note was found by someone and used to give Beauvoir the impression the pills were from the medical monk. Gamache wished he could convince himself that Beauvoir didn’t know what he was taking, but the bottle was clearly marked OxyContin.

Beauvoir knew. And he took them anyway. No one forced him. But someone had tempted him. Gamache looked at the altar, which had changed in just the few minutes he’d been sitting there. Strings of light were dropping, like luminous acrobats, from above.

The fog was clearing. The boatman would come for them. Gamache checked his watch. In two and a half hours. Did he have time to do what was needed? The Chief Inspector spotted someone else in the chapel, sitting quietly in a pew by the wall. Not, perhaps, trying to hide. But not sitting out in the open either.

It was the Dominican. Sitting in the reflected light. A book on his knees.

And in that moment, the Chief Inspector knew, with distaste, what he had to do.

*   *   *

Jean-Guy Beauvoir was aware of his mouth before anything else. It was huge. And lined with fur and mud. He opened and closed it. The sound was mammoth. A mushy, clicking sound, like his grandfather in later years, eating.

Then he listened to his breathing. It was also unnaturally loud.

And finally, he pried open one eye. The other seemed glued shut. Through the slit he saw Gamache sitting on a hard chair, pulled up to the bed.

Beauvoir felt a moment of panic. What had happened? The last time he saw the Chief sitting like that Beauvoir had been gravely, almost mortally, wounded. Had it happened again?

But he didn’t think so. This felt different. He was exhausted, almost numb. But not in pain. Though there was an ache, deep down.

He watched Gamache sitting so still. His glasses were on, and he was reading. The last time, in the Montréal hospital, Gamache had also been hurt. His face a shock to Beauvoir when he’d finally roused enough to take anything in.

It had been covered in bruises, and there was a bandage over the Chief’s forehead. And when he got up to lean over Beauvoir, Jean-Guy had seen the grimace of pain. Before it quickly turned into a smile.

“All right, son?” he’d asked, quietly.

Beauvoir couldn’t talk. He’d felt himself drifting off again, but he held those deep, brown eyes as long as he could, before he had to let go.

Now, in the monastery infirmary, he watched the Chief.

He was no longer bruised, and while there was and always would be a deep scar over his left temple, it had healed. The Chief had healed.

Beauvoir hadn’t.

In fact, it now seemed to Beauvoir that the healthier the Chief got, the weaker he himself became. As though Francoeur was right, and Gamache was sucking him dry. Using him until he could be discarded. In favor of Isabelle Lacoste, whom the Chief had just promoted to Beauvoir’s own rank.

But he knew it wasn’t true. He unhooked the thought from his flesh and could almost see it drift away. But thoughts that dreadful came with a barb.

“Bonjour.” The Chief looked up and noticed Jean-Guy’s eye open. “How’re you feeling?” He leaned over the bed and smiled. “You’re in the infirmary.”

Jean-Guy struggled to sit up, and managed it, with Gamache’s help. They were alone. The doctor had gone off to the eleven A.M. mass, leaving Gamache alone with his Inspector.