Louise Penny - The Beautiful Mystery

“Stop it.”

It wasn’t so much a command as a howl. A baying.

But the Dominican stopped neither his singing nor his progress. He continued, unhurried and unrelenting, toward the altar. And the monks.

Armand Gamache slowly rose to his feet, his eyes on the one monk who had finally separated himself from the rest.

The lone voice.

“Nooo!” the monk cried in pain. It was as though the music was sizzling his skin, as though the Inquisition had one final monk to burn.

Frère Sébastien came to a halt just below the abbot, and looked up.

“ Dies irae ,” Frère Sébastien sang. Day of wrath.

“Stop,” the monk pleaded. He’d stepped toward the Dominican and sank to his knees. “Pleeease.”

And the Dominican stopped. All that filled the chapel was sobbing. And giddy light.

“You killed your prior,” said Gamache quietly. “ Ecce homo . He is man. And you killed him for it.”

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

The abbot crossed himself.

“Go on, my son.”

There was a long pause. Dom Philippe knew this old confessional had heard many, many things over the centuries. But none as disgraceful as was about to come out.

God, of course, already knew. Had probably known before the blow was struck. Probably even knew before the thought was formed. This confession wasn’t for the Lord, but for the sinner, the sheep who’d wandered too far from the fold. And been lost in a land of wolves.

“I have committed murder. I killed the prior.”

Bugs were crawling all over Jean-Guy Beauvoir’s skin and he wondered if the infirmary might’ve been infested with bedbugs or cockroaches.

He wiped his hand over his arms and tried to get at the ones crawling down his spine. He and the Chief were in the prior’s office, doing the paperwork, making notes. Packing up. The final preparations before leaving with the boatman.

Superintendent Francoeur had officially made the arrest, taken possession of the prisoner, and called for the floatplane to pick them up. Francoeur was now sitting in the Blessed Chapel while the murderer monk made his confession. Not to the police, but to his confessor.

Beauvoir’s discomfort came in waves. Getting closer and closer, until now he was barely able to sit still. Bugs crawled under his clothing, and waves of anxiety cascaded over him until he found he could barely breathe.

And the pain was back. In his gut, in his marrow. His hair, his eyeballs, his dry lips hurt.

“I need a pill,” he said, barely able to focus on the man across from him. He saw Gamache raise his head from the notes he was making, and stare at him.

“Please. Just one more, and then I’ll stop. Just one to get me home.”

“The doctor said to give you Extra Strength Tylenol—”

“I don’t want a Tylenol,” shouted Beauvoir, his hand slapping the desk. “For God’s sake, please. It’ll be the last one, I swear.”

The Chief Inspector calmly shook two pills into his hand and walked around the desk with a glass of water. He offered his palm to Beauvoir. Jean-Guy grabbed the pills then tossed them onto the floor.

“Not those, not the Tylenol. I need the others.”

He could see them in Gamache’s jacket pocket.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir knew he shouldn’t. Knew this would be crossing a line which could never be uncrossed. But finally there was no “knowing” about it. Only the pain. And the crawling, and the anxiety. And the need.

He pushed himself off the chair with all the strength he had and grabbed at Gamache’s pocket, thrusting the two of them against the stone wall.

“I killed the prior.”

“Go on, my son,” said the abbot.

There was a silence. But it wasn’t complete. Dom Philippe heard gasping as the man in the other half of the confessional tried to breathe.

“I didn’t mean to. Not really.”

The voice was growing hysterical and the abbot knew that wouldn’t help.

“Slowly,” he advised. “Slowly. Tell me what happened.”

There was another pause as the monk gathered himself.

“Frère Mathieu wanted to talk about the chant he’d written.”

“Mathieu wrote the chant?” The abbot knew he shouldn’t be asking questions during a confession, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

“Yes.”

“The words and the music?” the abbot asked, and promised himself that would be the last interruption. And then silently begged God’s forgiveness for lying.

He knew there’d be more.

“Yes. Well, he’d written the music and then put in just any Latin words to fit the meter of the music. He wanted me to write the real words.”

“He wanted you to write a prayer?”

“Sort of. Not that I’m so great at Latin, but anyone was better than him. And I think he wanted an ally. He wanted to make the chants even more popular and he thought if we could modernize them just a little, we’d reach more people. I tried to talk him out of it. It wasn’t right. It was blasphemy.”

The abbot sat in silence and waited for more. And finally it came.

“The prior gave me the new chant about a week ago. He said if I helped him I could sing it on the new recording. Be the soloist. He was excited and so was I at first, until I looked more closely. I could see then what he was doing. It had nothing to do with the glory of God and everything to do with his own ego. He expected I’d just say yes. He couldn’t believe it when I refused.”

“What did Frère Mathieu do?”

“He tried to bribe me. And then he got angry. Said he’d drop me from the choir completely.”

Dom Philippe tried to imagine what that would be like. To be the only monk not singing the chants. To be excluded from that Glory. To be excluded from the community. Left out. His silence complete.

It would be no life at all.

“I had to stop him. He’d have destroyed everything. The chants, the monastery. Me.” The disembodied voice paused, to gather himself. And when he spoke again it was so quietly the abbot had to lean his ear against the grille to hear.

“It was a profanity. You heard it, mon père . You see that something had to be done to stop him.”

Yes, thought the abbot, he’d heard it. Hardly believing his eyes, and ears, he’d watched the Dominican walk down the central aisle of the Blessed Chapel. The abbot had been at first shocked, angered even. And then, God help him, all the anger had disappeared and he’d been seduced.

Mathieu had created a plainchant with a complex rhythm. The music had swarmed over the abbot’s final defenses. Walls he didn’t realize he still had. And the notes, the neumes, the lovely voice had found the chord at Dom Philippe’s core.

And for a few moments the abbot had known complete and utter bliss. Had resonated with love. Of God, of man. Of himself. Of all people and all things.

But now all he heard was the sobbing in the stall beside him.

Frère Luc had finally made his choice. He’d left the porterie and killed the prior.

Gamache felt himself propelled backward and braced himself. His back connected with the stone wall and the breath was knocked out of him.

But by far the biggest shock came in that split second before impact, when he realized who was doing this.

He gasped for air and felt Jean-Guy’s hand go to his pocket. After the pills.

Gamache grabbed the hand and twisted. Beauvoir howled and fought harder, thrashing and wailing. Knocking Gamache in the face and chest. Knocking him backward again in a desperate, single-minded drive to get at what was in Gamache’s pocket.

Nothing else mattered. Beauvoir twisted and shoved and would have clawed his way through concrete to get at that pill bottle.