Louise Penny - The Beautiful Mystery

He continued to stare, and Francoeur rolled his shoulders, as though feeling the scrutiny. Francoeur didn’t turn around. But the Dominican did.

Frère Sébastien turned his head and looked directly at Gamache. The Chief shifted his eyes from Francoeur to the monk. The two men stared at each other for a moment. Then Gamache returned to the Superintendent. Undeterred by the gentle inquiry of the monk.

Eventually, Gamache closed his eyes, and took deep breaths in. Deep breaths out. He smelled, again, the scent of Saint-Gilbert which was so familiar, but slightly different. A marriage of traditional incense, and something else. Thyme and monarda.

The natural and the manufactured, come together here, in this far-flung monastery. Peace and rage, silence and singing. The Gilbertines and the Inquisition. The good men and the not-so-good.

Hearing the bells had made Beauvoir almost giddy. Almost sick with anticipation.

Finally. Finally.

He’d hurried to les toilettes , peed, washed his hands then poured a glass of water. From his pocket he drew the small pill bottle and snapped off the top, no child-proof caps here, and shook two pills into his palm.

In one practiced move Beauvoir brought his hand to his mouth, and felt the tiny pills land on his tongue. One gulp of the water, and they were down.

Leaving the pissoire , he paused in the hallway. The bells were still sounding, but instead of returning to the Blessed Chapel, Beauvoir walked swiftly back to the prior’s office. He closed the door and leaned the new chair against the handle.

He could still hear the bells.

Sitting at the desk he dragged the laptop toward him and rebooted.

The bells had stopped, and there was silence now.

The DVD in the machine started up. Beauvoir turned down the sound. No need to draw attention. Besides he had the soundtrack in his mind. Always.

The images appeared.

Gamache opened his eyes as the first notes arrived in the Blessed Chapel, along with the first monk.

Frère Antoine carried the simple wooden cross ahead of him and placed it in the holder on the altar. Then he bowed and took his place. Behind him the rest of the monks filed in, bowing to the cross and taking their places. Singing all the time. All the live-long day.

Gamache glanced at Frère Sébastien in profile. He was staring at the monks. At the long-lost Gilbertines. Then Frère Sébastien closed his eyes and tilted his head back. He seemed to go into a trance. A fugue. As the Gregorian chants and the Gilbertines filled the chapel.

Beauvoir could hear the music, but softly, from very far away.

Men’s voices, all singing together. Growing more powerful as more voices joined in. While on the screen he watched his co-workers, his friends, his fellow agents, gunned down.

To the tune of the chants, Beauvoir watched himself gunned down.

The monks sang as the Chief dragged him to safety. Then left him. Dumping him there like—how had Francoeur described it? No longer useful.

And, to add to the injury, before leaving the Chief had kissed him.

Kissed him. On his forehead. No wonder they called him Gamache’s bitch. Everyone had seen that kiss. All his colleagues. And now they laughed at him, behind his back.

As the Gregorian chants were sung in the Blessed Chapel, Chief Inspector Gamache kissed him. Then left.

Gamache glanced again at the Dominican. Frère Sébastien seemed to have moved from a fugue to a sort of ecstasy.

And then Frère Luc entered the chapel, and the Dominican’s eyes sprang open. He was almost jolted forward in his seat. Drawn to the very young man with the divine voice.

Here was a voice in a million. A voice in a millennium.

The dead prior had known it. The current choirmaster knew it. The abbot knew it. Even Gamache, with his appreciation but limited knowledge, could hear it.

And now, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith knew it too.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir hit play, then pause. Then play again. Over and over he watched.

On the screen, time and again, over and over like a litany, a liturgy, Beauvoir saw himself fall. Saw himself dragged, like a sack of potatoes, across the factory floor. By Gamache.

In the background the monks chanted.

The Kyrie. The Alleluia. The Gloria.

While in the prior’s office Beauvoir was dying. Alone.

THIRTY

After Compline, the last service of the day, the abbot took Gamache aside. Dom Philippe wasn’t alone. To the Chief Inspector’s surprise, Frère Antoine was with him.

It would be impossible, looking at the men standing together, to know that they were enemies. Or at least, stood on opposite sides of a deep divide.

“How can I help you?” Gamache asked. He’d been led to a corner of the Blessed Chapel. It was empty now, though the Dominican remained in his seat. Staring ahead as though in a stupor.

Superintendent Francoeur was nowhere to be seen.

Gamache placed his back to the corner, so he could keep a watchful eye on the darkened Chapel.

“It’s about Mathieu’s last words,” said the abbot.

“‘Homo,’” said Frère Antoine. “Is that right?”

“It’s what Frère Simon reported, oui, ” said Gamache. The monks exchanged a rapid glance, then returned their eyes to the Chief.

“We think we know what he meant,” said the abbot. He cleared his throat very loudly, then said, “Homo.”

“ Oui ,” said Gamache, staring at Dom Philippe and waiting for more. “That’s what the prior apparently said.”

The abbot did it again. This time with a monumental clearing of his throat and Gamache had a moment of concern for the man’s health.

“Homo,” Dom Philippe repeated.

Now Gamache really was puzzled. He could see Frère Sébastien, the Dominican, looking over. If the noise from the abbot’s throat had been loud to Gamache, it must have been monstrous when it hit the full glory of the chapel’s acoustics.

The abbot stared intently at Gamache, his blue eyes piercing, willing the Chief to understand something he just couldn’t.

Then beside the abbot, Frère Antoine cleared his throat. A guttural, desperate sound.

“Homo,” he said.

And the Chief Inspector finally began to grasp that it wasn’t the word they wanted him to understand, but the sound. But it still meant nothing to Gamache.

Feeling extremely thick, he turned back to the abbot.

“ Désolé, mon père , but I honestly don’t understand.”

“ Ecce homo .”

The words came not from the abbot, nor from Frère Antoine, but from the Blessed Chapel, as though the room itself had spoken.

Then the Dominican appeared around one of the columns.

“I believe that’s what the abbot and choirmaster are saying. Is that right?”

The two men stared at Frère Sébastien, then nodded. Their looks, if not outright belligerent, were uninviting. But it was far too late. This uninvited man from the Vatican was there. Indeed, he seemed everywhere.

Gamache turned back to the Gilbertines, standing side-by-side. Was that what had finally bridged the chasm between them? A common enemy? This pleasant, unobtrusive monk in white robes who sat so still but took up so much space?

“We think the prior wasn’t clearing his throat,” said Frère Antoine, turning from the Dominican back to Gamache, “but that he actually said two words. ‘ Ecce ’ and ‘ homo .’”

Gamache’s eyes widened. Ecce . Eee-chay. But with the guttural Latin pronunciation. It could be.

The abbot repeated it, as the prior might have sounded. A man struggling to get out a word. A dying man with a throaty word, caught there.