The Beautiful Mystery
He felt it himself, for his own son and daughter. He felt it, God help him, for his agents. He chose them, recruited them, trained them.
They were his sons and daughters, and every day he sent them after murderers.
And he’d crawled over to each and every mortally wounded one, and held them and whispered an urgent prayer.
Take this child.
As gunshots exploded into walls and floors, he’d held Jean-Guy, protecting him with his own body. He’d kissed his brow and whispered those words too. Believing this boy he loved was dying. And he could see in Jean-Guy’s eyes, he believed it too.
And then he’d left him. To help the others. Gamache had killed that day. Coolly taken aim and seen men lose their lives. He’d killed deliberately, and he’d do it again. To save his agents.
Armand Gamache knew the power of a father’s love. Whether it be a biological father or a father by choice. And fate.
If he could kill, why couldn’t the abbot?
But Gamache couldn’t, for the life of him, see what role the neumes might have played. It all made sense. Except for the mystery he held in his hand.
Like a father himself, the prior had died hugging it.
* * *
The Chief Inspector left Frère Simon and went in search of Beauvoir, to bring him up to speed and to give him the murder weapon for safekeeping.
Gamache doubted the iron knocker had much to tell them. Frère Simon had admitted washing it off, scrubbing it down, and replacing it by the door. So that anyone wanting admittance to the abbot’s locked rooms yesterday morning would put their fingerprints and DNA on it. And many had. Including Gamache himself.
The prior’s office was empty. A few monks were working in the animalerie, feeding and cleaning the goats and chickens. Down the other corridor, Gamache looked in the dining hall and then opened the door to the chocolaterie.
“Looking for someone?” Frère Charles asked.
“Inspector Beauvoir.”
“I’m afraid he isn’t here.” The medical monk put a scoop into the vat of melted chocolate and brought out a ladle filled with dripping blueberries. “Last batch of the day. Picked by Frère Bernard this morning. He had to go out twice, poor man. Apparently he ate the first harvest himself.” Frère Charles laughed. “An occupational hazard. Like some?”
He gestured to the long rows of tiny, dark brown spheres already cooled and ready to be packaged and shipped south.
Gamache, feeling a bit like a child playing hooky, walked into the chocolaterie and closed the door.
“Please.” Frère Charles motioned to a sturdy stool and pulled one up himself. “We take shifts working here. When the monks first started making chocolate-covered berries one monk was assigned the work, but then they noticed he was getting larger and the output was shrinking.”
Gamache smiled and took the confection the monk was offering. “Merci.”
If possible, the wildly flavorful berry covered in the musky chocolate was even tastier than before. Now, if a monk was murdered for these, Gamache could understand. But then, he thought, taking another chocolate, we all have our drug of choice. For some it’s chocolate, for others it’s chants.
“You told Inspector Beauvoir that you were neutral in the conflict within the monastery, mon frère. A sort of Red Cross, ministering to the wounded in the battle for control of Saint-Gilbert. Who would you say were the most hurt? By the fighting, but also by the prior’s death.”
“In the fighting I’d say not a man was left untouched. We all felt horrible about what was happening, but no one quite knew how to stop it. So much seemed at stake, and there didn’t seem to be any middle ground. You couldn’t make half a recording or remove half the vow of silence. There didn’t seem a compromise possible.”
“You say there was so much at stake, do you know about the foundations?”
“What foundations? Of the abbey?”
Gamache nodded, watching the cheerful doctor closely.
“What about them?”
“Do you know if they’re solid?” asked Gamache.
“Are you talking literally or figuratively? Literally, nothing could knock these walls down. The original monks knew what they were doing. But figuratively? I’m afraid Saint-Gilbert is very shaky.”
“Merci,” said Gamache. Here was another who didn’t seem to know anything about cracked foundations. Was it possible Frère Raymond was wrong? Or lying? Did he make the whole thing up to help pressure the abbot into the second recording?