The Beautiful Mystery

Would be lost on him, Gamache knew, if he wasn’t careful. How much had he already missed?

At that moment all the monks opened their eyes. At once. And stared. At him.

Gamache suddenly felt both very exposed and a little foolish. Like being caught where he shouldn’t be. On the altar during a service, for instance. Beside a dead man.

He looked over to the abbot. Dom Philippe was the only monk not staring at him. Instead his cool, blue eyes rested on Gamache’s offering.

Frère Mathieu.

*   *   *

For the next twenty-five minutes the Sûreté officers sat in a pew, side by side, while the monks held Vespers. They, along with the monks, sat, and stood, and bowed and sat. Then stood. And sat, then kneeled.

“I should’ve carbed up,” murmured Beauvoir, standing again.

When not silent, the monks sang their Gregorian chants.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir sat back down on the hard wooden pew. He went to church as rarely as possible. Some weddings, though the Québécois now preferred to simply live together. Funerals mostly. And even those were becoming rarer, at least in churches. Even the elderly Québécois, when they died, now preferred a funeral home send-off.

It might not have nurtured them, the funeral home. But neither had it betrayed them.

The monks had been silent for a few moments.

Please, dear Lord, Beauvoir prayed, let this be over.

Then they stood, and started another chant.

Tabernac, thought Beauvoir, getting to his feet. Beside him, the Chief was also standing, and resting his large hands on the wooden pew in front. His right hand trembled slightly. It was subtle, barely there, but in a man so still, so self-possessed, it was remarkable. Impossible to miss. The Chief didn’t bother to hide the tremor. But Beauvoir noticed Captain Charbonneau glancing at the Chief. And the tell-tale tremble.

And Beauvoir wondered if he knew the tale it told.

He wanted to take him aside and scold Charbonneau for staring. He wanted to make it clear that slight quiver wasn’t a sign of weakness. Just the opposite.

But he didn’t. Taking his cue from Gamache, he said nothing.

“Jean-Guy,” Gamache whispered, his eyes straight ahead, never leaving the monks, “Frère Mathieu was the choir director, right?”

“Oui.”

“So who’s directing them now?”

Beauvoir was quiet for a moment. Now, instead of just biding his time while this interminable, intolerable, tedious chanting droned on and on, he started to pay attention.

There was an obvious empty spot on the benches. Directly across from the abbot.

That must have been where the man now laid at their feet had stood, and sat, had bowed and prayed. And led the choir in these dull chants.

Beauvoir had earlier amused himself by wondering if the prior had possibly done it to himself. Stoned himself to death rather than have to live through yet another mind-numbing mass.

It was all the Inspector could do to not run shrieking into one of the stone columns, hoping to knock himself out.

But now he had a puzzle to occupy his active mind.

It was a good question.

Who was leading this choir of men, now that their director was dead?

“Maybe no one is,” he whispered, after studying the monks for a minute or two. “They must know the songs by heart. Don’t they do the same ones over and over?”

They sure sounded the same to him.

Gamache shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think they change from mass to mass and from day to day. Feast days, saints’ days, that sort of thing.”

“Don’t you mean, et cetera?”

Beauvoir saw the Chief smile slightly and shoot him a glance.

“And so on,” said Gamache. “Ad infinitum.”

“That’s better.” Beauvoir paused before whispering, “Do you know what you’re talking about?”

“I know a little, but not much,” admitted the Chief. “I know enough about choirs to know they don’t direct themselves, any more than a symphony orchestra can conduct itself, no matter how often they perform a work. They still need their leader.”

“Isn’t the abbot their leader?” asked Beauvoir, watching Dom Philippe.

The Chief also watched the tall, slender man. Who really led these monks? both men wondered, as they bowed and sat again. Who was leading them now?

*   *   *

The Angelus bell rang out, its deep, rich notes pealing over the trees and across the lake.

Vespers was over. The monks bowed to the crucifix and filed back off the altar while Gamache and the others stood in their pew and watched.