Louise Penny - The Beautiful Mystery

“Where’s Captain Charbonneau?” Gamache asked.

“Down there.” Beauvoir pointed across the chapel, through the monks and to the far end.

“Stay here,” said the Chief and began to move in that direction when the far door opened and the Sûreté officer appeared. Charbonneau looked, thought Gamache, exactly as he must have looked when he’d arrived in the chapel.

Perplexed, alert, suspicious.

And finally, amazed.

Captain Charbonneau saw Gamache and nodded, then briskly made his way along the wall, skirting the monks but keeping his eyes on them.

They were taking their places along the wooden benches, two rows on either side of the altar.

The last man took his place.

The abbot, thought Gamache. He looked like all the others, in simple robes with a rope around his slender middle, but still the Chief knew it was Dom Philippe. Some mannerism, some movement. Something distinguished him from the rest.

“Chief,” said Charbonneau quietly when he arrived at Gamache’s side. “Where did they come from?”

“Over there,” said Gamache, pointing off to the side. There was no door visible, just a stone wall, and the Captain looked back to Gamache, who didn’t explain. Couldn’t explain.

“We need to get out of here,” said Beauvoir. He took a step toward the monks, but the Chief stopped him.

“Wait a moment.”

As the abbot took his place the singing died. The monks continued standing. Absolutely motionless. Facing each other.

The Sûreté agents also stood, facing the monks. Waiting for a signal from Gamache. He was staring at the monks, at the abbot. His eyes sharp. Then he made up his mind.

“Get the body of Frère Mathieu, please.”

Beauvoir looked confused, but left with Charbonneau and returned with the stretcher.

The monks remained motionless, apparently oblivious to the men standing together in the aisle. Staring at them.

Then the monks, in a single synchronized movement, removed their hoods but continued to stare straight ahead.

No, Gamache realized. They weren’t staring. Their eyes were closed.

They were praying. Silently.

“Come with me,” Gamache whispered, and led them down the very center of the chapel. He walked slowly.

The monks, even in a trance, could not fail to hear them approaching. Their feet on the floor. How disconcerting this must be for them, the Chief Inspector thought.

Since the walls were raised more than three hundred years ago, their services had been undisturbed. The same ritual, the same routine. Familiar, comfortable. Predictable. Private. They had never heard a sound during a service they themselves had not produced.

Until this very moment.

The world had found them, and slipped through a crack in their thick walls. A crack produced by a crime. But Gamache knew he was not the one violating the sanctity and privacy of their lives. The murderer had done that.

That vicious act in the garden this morning had summoned up a whole host of things. Including a Chief Inspector of homicide.

He took the two stone steps up and stood between the rows.

The Chief gestured to Beauvoir and Charbonneau to lower the body to the slate floor, in front of the altar.

Then silence again descended.

Gamache studied the rows of monks, to see if any of them were peeking. Sure enough, one was.

The abbot’s secretary. Frère Simon. His heavy face stern, even in repose. And his eyes not quite shut. This man’s mind was not entirely on prayer, not entirely with God. As Gamache watched, Brother Simon’s eyes closed completely.

A mistake, Gamache knew. Had Frère Simon stayed as he was, Gamache might have had his suspicions but could not have been certain.

But that tiny flutter had betrayed him, as surely as if Frère Simon had screamed.

Here was a community of men who communicated all day, every day. Just not with words. The smallest gesture took on a meaning and significance that would be lost in the hurly-burly of the outside world.

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.”