Louise Penny - The Beautiful Mystery

But it was just possible a monastery wasn’t quite the same as the homicide department of the Sûreté. And it was just possible the abbot wasn’t quite the same as the Chief Inspector.

Still, it seemed a good bet the abbot and prior would have held regular meetings.

“That would mean,” said Beauvoir, “that the abbot wanted to talk to the prior about something other than normal monastery business.”

“It could. Or that it was urgent. Unexpected. Something had suddenly come up.”

“Then why not ask to see the prior right away?” asked Beauvoir. “Why wait until after the eleven o’clock mass?”

Gamache thought about that. “Good question.”

“So, if the prior didn’t return to his office after Lauds, where did he go?”

“Maybe he went straight to the garden,” said Charbonneau.

“Possibly,” the Chief said.

“Then wouldn’t Frère Simon, the abbot’s secretary, have seen him?” asked Beauvoir. “Or passed him in the corridor?”

“Maybe he did,” said the Chief. He lowered his voice and stage-whispered to Beauvoir. “Maybe he lied to you.”

Beauvoir stage-whispered back, “A religious? Lie? Someone’s going to Hell.” He looked at Gamache with exaggerated concern, then smiled.

Gamache smiled back and rubbed his face. They were collecting a lot of facts. And probably more than a few lies.

“Frère Simon’s name keeps coming up,” said Gamache. “What do we know about his movements this morning?”

“Well, this is what he says,” Beauvoir flipped a few pages in his notebook and stopped. “Right after Lauds, at quarter past eight, he returned to the abbot’s office. There the abbot asked him to make an appointment for after the eleven o’clock mass with the prior. The abbot left to look at the geothermal and Frère Simon left to do his job at the animal place. On his way he stopped by here, looked in. No prior. So he went away.”

“Was he surprised?” asked Gamache.

“Didn’t seem surprised or concerned. The prior, like the abbot, pretty much came and went as he liked.”

Gamache thought about that for a moment. “What did Frère Simon do then?”

“He worked for twenty minutes or so with the animals, then returned to the abbot’s office to work in the garden. That’s when he found the body.”

“Do we know for sure Frère Simon went to the animalerie ?” asked the Chief.

Beauvoir nodded. “His story checks. Other monks saw him there.”

“Could he have left earlier?” asked Gamache. “Say at half past eight?”

“I wondered the same thing,” Beauvoir smiled. “The other monks working there say it’s possible. They were all busy with their own chores. But it’d be hard for Brother Simon to do what he had to do in so short a time. And all his chores were done.”

“What were they?” asked Gamache.

“He let the chickens out of their cages and gave them all fresh food and water. Then he cleaned the cages. Not the sort of thing you can pretend to do.”

Gamache made a few notes, nodding to himself. “The door to the abbot’s office was locked when we arrived. Is it usually?”

The men looked at each other. “I don’t know, patron ,” said Beauvoir, making a note. “I’ll find out.”

“Good.”

It was clearly important. If it was usually locked then someone had had to let the prior in.

“Anything else?” asked Gamache, looking from Beauvoir to Charbonneau and back again.

“Nothing,” said Beauvoir, “except that I tried to hook up this piece of shit and of course, it doesn’t work.” He waved a disgusted hand at the satellite dish they’d lugged all that way from Montréal.

Gamache took a deep breath. That was always a blow to a remote investigation. They brought state-of-the-art equipment into primitive surroundings, and then were surprised when it didn’t work.

“I’ll keep trying,” said Beauvoir. “There’s no telecommunication tower, so our cell phones won’t work either, but we can still get text on our BlackBerrys.”

Gamache looked at the time. It was just after four. They had an hour before the boatman left. A murder investigation was never a leisurely pursuit, but there was even more urgency about this one. They were chasing daylight and the boatman’s deadline.

Once the sun set, they would all be trapped in the monastery. Along with the evidence and the body. And Chief Inspector Gamache didn’t want that.

Dom Philippe made the sign of the cross over his community. They crossed themselves.

And then he sat. And they sat. Like shadows, mimicking his every move. Or children, he thought. More charitable, and perhaps more accurate.

Though some of the monks were considerably older than the abbot, he was their father. Their leader.

He was far from convinced he was a very good one. Certainly not as good as Mathieu. But he was all they had right now.

“As you know, Frère Mathieu has died,” began the abbot. “Unexpectedly.”

But it got worse. More words were appearing. Lining up. Crushing forward.

“He was killed.”

Dom Philippe paused before that last word.

“Murdered.”

Let us pray , he thought. Let us pray. Let us chant. Let us close our eyes and chant the psalms and lose ourselves. Let us retreat to our songs and our cells, and let that police officer worry about this mess.

But this was not the time for retreating. Nor was it the time for plainchant. It was the time for plain speech.

“The police are here. Most of you have been interviewed by them. We must cooperate. We must have no secrets. That means letting them not only into our cells and our workplaces, but into our thoughts and hearts.”

As he spoke these unfamiliar words he noticed a few nods. And then a few more. And the flat faces of concealed panic began to give way to understanding. To agreement even.

Should he go further? Dear Lord, he silently pleaded, should I go further ? Surely this was far enough. Did the rest really need to be said? And done?

“I’m lifting the rule of silence.”

There was a sharp intake of breath. His brother monks looked as though he’d just stripped them of their clothing. Left them naked, exposed.

“It must be done. You’re free to talk. Not idle chatter. Not gossip. But to help those officers get at the truth.”

Now their faces were filled with anxiety. Their eyes holding his. Trying to grab his glance.

And while their fear was painful for him to see, he knew it was far more natural than the guarded, empty expressions he’d seen before.

And then the abbot took that last, irrevocable step.

“Someone in this monastery killed Brother Mathieu,” said Dom Philippe, feeling himself plunging. The problem with words, he knew, was that they could never be taken back. “Someone in this room killed Brother Mathieu.”

He’d wanted to comfort them, but all he’d managed to do was strip them naked and terrify them.

“One of us has a confession to make.”

EIGHT

It was time to go.

“You have everything?” Gamache asked Captain Charbonneau.

“Everything except the body.”

“Best not to forget that,” agreed the Chief.

Five minutes later the two Sûreté agents were carrying the covered body of Frère Mathieu on a stretcher from the infirmary. Gamache had looked for the doctor, Frère Charles, to let him know. But there was no sign of the médecin . Nor was there any sign of Dom Philippe.

He’d disappeared.

As had the abbot’s secretary, the taciturn Frère Simon.

As had all the dark-robed monks.

All gone.

The monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups felt not simply quiet, but empty.