Louise Penny - The Beautiful Mystery

There was a change of robes, of underwear, of shoes. A nightshirt. Books of prayers and the psalms. And nothing else. Not a single personal item. No photographs, no letters. No parents, no siblings. But then, perhaps God was his Father, and Mary his mother. And the monks his brothers. It was, after all, a large family.

But the office, the prior’s office, was a gold mine. Not, sadly, of clues to the case. There was no bloody stone. No threatening, signed letter. No murderer waiting to confess.

What Gamache did find in the prior’s desk were used quill pens and a bottle of open ink. He’d bagged and put them in the satchel along with the other evidence they’d collected.

It had seemed a major find. After all, that sheet of old paper that had fallen from the prior’s robes had been written with quill pen and ink. But the more the Chief thought about it the less certain he was that this would prove significant.

What were the chances the prior, the choirmaster, a world authority on Gregorian chant, would write something almost unintelligible? The abbot and the doctor had both been baffled by the Latin, and those neume things.

It seemed more the work of some unschooled, untrained amateur.

And it was written on very old paper. Vellum. Sheepskin. Stretched and dried, perhaps hundreds of years ago. There was plenty of paper, but no vellum in the prior’s desk.

Still, Gamache had been careful to bag and label the quills and ink. In case.

He also found scores. Sheets and sheets of sheet music.

Books filled with music, and histories of music. Learned papers on music. But while Frère Mathieu was Catholic in his belief, he was not small “c” catholic in his taste.

Only one thing interested him. Gregorian chant.

There was a simple cross on the wall, with the crucified Christ in agony. And below and surrounding that crucifix was a sea of music.

That was the passion of Brother Mathieu. Not Christ, but the chants he floated above. Christ might have called Frère Mathieu, but it was to the tune of a Gregorian chant.

Gamache had had no idea so much had been, or could be, written about plainchant. Though, to be fair, he’d given it no thought. Until now. The Chief had settled in behind the desk and while waiting for Beauvoir and Charbonneau to return, he’d begun reading.

Unlike the cell, which smelled of cleaning fluid, the office smelled of old socks and smelly shoes and dusty documents. It smelled human. The prior slept in his cell, but he lived here. And Armand Gamache began to see Frère Mathieu as simply Mathieu. A monk. A music director. Perhaps a genius. But mostly a man.

Charbonneau and Beauvoir eventually returned and the Chief turned his attention to them.

“What did you find?” Gamache looked at Charbonneau first.

“Nothing, patron . At least, I didn’t find the murder weapon.”

“I’m not surprised,” said the Chief, “but we had to try. When we get the coroner’s report we’ll know if it was a stone or something else. What about the monks?”

“All fingerprinted,” said Beauvoir. “And we did the initial interviews. After the seven thirty service they go to their chores. Now,” Beauvoir consulted his notes, “there’re four main areas of work at the monastery. The vegetable garden, the animals, the physical repairs to the monastery, which are endless, and the cooking. The monks have an area of expertise, but they also rotate. We found out who was doing what at the crucial time.”

At least, thought Gamache, listening to the report, the time of death was fairly clear. Not before Lauds finished at quarter past eight, and not after twenty to nine, when Frère Simon found the body.

Twenty-five minutes.

“Anything suspicious?” he asked.

Both men shook their heads. “They were all at their work,” said Charbonneau. “With witnesses.”

“But that’s not possible,” said Gamache, calmly. “Frère Mathieu didn’t kill himself. One of the brothers wasn’t doing what he was assigned to do. At least, I hope it wasn’t an assignment.”

Beauvoir raised a brow. He presumed the Chief was joking, but perhaps it was worth considering.

“Let’s try to get at this another way,” suggested the Chief. “Did any of the monks tell you about a conflict? Was anyone fighting with the prior?”

“No one, patron, ” said Captain Charbonneau. “At least no one admitted there was conflict. They all seemed genuinely shocked. ‘Unbelievable’ was the word that kept coming up. ‘ Incroyable .’”

Inspector Beauvoir shook his head. “They believe in a virgin birth, a resurrection, walking on water and some old guy with a white beard floating in the sky and running the world, but this they find unbelievable?”

Gamache was quiet for a moment, then nodded. “It is interesting,” he agreed, “what people choose to believe.”

And what they’d do in the name of that faith.

How did the monk who’d done this reconcile the murder with his faith? What, in his quiet moments, did the murderer say to the old man with the white beard floating in the sky?

Not for the first time that day, the Chief Inspector wondered why this monastery had been built so far from civilization. And why it had such thick walls. And such high walls. And locked doors.

Was it to keep the sins of the world out? Or to keep something worse in?

“So,” he said, “according to the monks, there were no conflicts at all.”

“None,” said Captain Charbonneau.

“Someone is lying,” said Beauvoir. “Or all of them are.”

“There is another possibility,” said Gamache. He brought the yellowed page toward him, from the middle of the table. Examining it for a moment he lowered it again and looked into their faces.

“Maybe the murder had nothing to do with the prior himself. Maybe there really was no conflict. Maybe he was killed because of this.”

The Chief placed the page on the table again. And again he saw the body, as he’d first seen it. Curled into a shady corner in the bright garden. He hadn’t known then, but he did now, that at the very center of that dead body was a piece of paper. Like a pit in a peach.

Was this the motive?

“None of the monks noticed anything odd this morning?” Gamache asked.

“Nothing. Everyone seemed to be doing what they were meant to do.”

The Chief nodded and thought. “And Frère Mathieu? What was he meant to be doing?”

“Be here, in his study. Working on the music,” said Beauvoir. “And that’s the only interesting thing that came up. Frère Simon, the abbot’s secretary, says he returned to the abbot’s office right after Lauds, then he had to go to his work at the animalerie . But on his way he stopped by here.”

“Why?” Gamache sat forward and removed his glasses.

“To deliver a message. The abbot apparently wanted to meet with the prior this morning after the eleven A.M. mass.” The words sounded strange on Beauvoir’s tongue. Abbots and priors and monks, oh my.

They weren’t part of the vocabulary of Québec anymore. Not part of daily life. In just a generation those words had gone from respected to ludicrous. And soon they’d disappear completely.

God might be on the side of the monks, thought Beauvoir, but time wasn’t.

“Frère Simon says when he came to make the appointment, no one was in.”

“That would’ve been at about twenty past eight,” said the Chief, making a note. “I wonder why the abbot wanted to see the prior?”

“ Pardon? ” asked Inspector Beauvoir.

“The victim was the abbot’s right-hand man. It seems likely he and the abbot had regularly scheduled meetings, like we do.”

Beauvoir nodded. He and the Chief met every morning at eight, to go over the previous day and to review all the homicide cases currently being investigated by Gamache’s department.