Louise Penny - The Beautiful Mystery

“Except the abbot.”

“True, and I suspected him for a while too. In fact, right up until the end I suspected almost everyone. I realized while Dom Philippe wasn’t confessing to the crime, neither was he completely exonerating himself. He told a lie he knew we’d uncover. Said he was in the basement looking at the geothermal. He wanted us to know he was alone.”

“But he must have known that would make him a suspect,” said Frère Sébastien.

“That’s what he wanted. He knew one of his monks had committed the crime, and he felt some measure of responsibility. So he deliberately left himself open to take the blame. But that was another reason I suspected Frère Luc.”

“How so?”

The plane was just skimming the waves. Beginning to get airborne. Gamache spoke to the monk, but had eyes only for the small plane.

“The abbot kept wondering how he could have missed it. How he didn’t see it coming. Dom Philippe struck me from the beginning as an unusually observant man. Very little got by him. So I began to wonder the same thing. How could the abbot have missed it? And there seemed two possible answers. That he hadn’t missed anything because he himself was the killer. Or, he had missed it only because the killer was the one monk the abbot didn’t know very well. The newest among them. Who chose to spend all his time in the porter’s office. No one knew him. Not even the prior, as it turns out.”

The plane cleared the lake. The fog was gone and Gamache shielded his eyes from the bright sun. And watched the plane.

“ Ecce homo, ” said Frère Sébastien, watching Gamache. Then his gaze shifted to the monastery, where the abbot had left the gate and was walking toward them.

“Dom Philippe heard Frère Luc’s confession, you know,” said the Dominican.

“Which is more than I’ve done,” Gamache glanced at the monk before returning his gaze to the sky.

“I suspect Frère Luc will tell you everything. That’ll be part of his penance. Plus Hail Marys for the rest of his life.”

“And will that do it? Will he be forgiven?”

“I hope so.” The Dominican studied Chief Inspector Gamache. “You took a risk, getting me to sing the prior’s chant. Suppose Frère Luc hadn’t reacted?”

Gamache nodded. “It was a risk. But I needed a quick resolution. I hoped if just seeing the new chant was enough to drive Frère Luc to murder, hearing it sung in the Blessed Chapel would also bring on some violent reaction.”

“And if Luc hadn’t reacted? Hadn’t given himself away? What would you have done?”

Gamache turned to look him full in the face. “I think you know.”

“You’d have left with your Inspector? To take him to treatment? You’d have left us with a murderer?”

“I’d have come back, but yes. I’d have left with Beauvoir.”

Now they both looked at the plane. “You’d do anything to save his life, wouldn’t you?”

When Gamache didn’t answer, the Dominican walked back toward the abbey.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir looked out the window, onto the sparkling lake.

“Here.” Francoeur tossed something at Beauvoir. “This’s for you.”

Beauvoir bobbled then caught the pill bottle. He closed his hand over it.

“ Merci .” He quickly twisted off the cap and took two pills. Then he leaned his head against the cool window.

The plane turned and flew toward the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups.

Jean-Guy looked down as they banked. A few monks were outside the walls, picking wild blueberries. He realized he didn’t have any of the chocolates to take back to Annie. But Beauvoir had a sick feeling that it no longer mattered.

As his head lolled against the window, he saw monks bowing down in the garden. And one monk outside with the chickens. The Chanteclers. Saved from extinction. As the Gilbertines had been. As the chants had been.

And he saw Gamache on the shore. Looking up. He’d been joined by the abbot, and the Dominican was walking away.

Beauvoir felt the pills take hold. Felt the pain finally recede, the hole heal. He sighed with relief. To his surprise, Beauvoir realized why Gilbert of Sempringham had chosen that unique design for their robes. Long black robes, with the white top.

From above, Heaven, or an airplane, the Gilbertines looked like crosses. Living crosses.

But there was one other thing for God, and Beauvoir, to see.

The monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups wasn’t itself a cross. On paper Dom Clément had drawn it to look like a crucifix, but that was another medieval architect’s lie.

The abbey was, in fact, a neume. Its wings curved, like wings.

It looked as though the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups was about to take flight.

At that moment, Chief Inspector Gamache looked up. And Beauvoir looked away.

Gamache watched the plane until it disappeared from sight, then he turned to the abbot, who’d just joined him.

“I know how horrendous this has been for you.”

“For all of us,” the abbot agreed. “I hope we learn from it.”

Gamache paused. “And what’s the lesson?”

The abbot thought about that for a few moments. “Do you know why we’re called Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups? Why our emblem is two wolves intertwined?”

Gamache shook his head. “I assumed it dated back to when the first monks arrived. That it was symbolic of taming the wilderness, or making friends with it. Something like that.”

“You’re right, it is from when Dom Clément and the others came here,” said the abbot. “It’s a story one of the Montagnais told them.”

“A native story?” asked Gamache, surprised the old Gilbertines were inspired by anything they’d have considered pagan.

“Dom Clément relates it in his diaries. One of the elders told him that when he was a boy his grandfather came to him one day and said he had two wolves fighting inside him. One was gray, the other black. The gray one wanted his grandfather to be courageous, and patient, and kind. The other, the black one, wanted his grandfather to be fearful and cruel. This upset the boy and he thought about it for a few days then returned to his grandfather. He asked, ‘Grandfather, which of the wolves will win?’”

The abbot smiled slightly and examined the Chief Inspector. “Do you know what his grandfather said?”

Gamache shook his head. There was a look of such sadness on the Chief Inspector’s face, it almost broke the abbot’s heart.

“The one I feed,” said Dom Philippe.

Gamache looked back at the monastery that would now stand for many generations to come. Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups. He’d mistranslated it. Not Saint Gilbert among the wolves, but between them. In that place of perpetual choice.

The abbot noted the gun in Gamache’s belt and the grim expression on his face. “Would you like me to hear your confession?”

The Chief Inspector looked into the sky and felt the north wind on his upturned face. Some malady is coming upon us .

Armand Gamache thought he could just hear the sound of a plane, way far off. And then that too disappeared. And he was left with a great silence.

“Not just yet, I think, mon père .”

ALSO BY LOUISE PENNY

A Trick of the Light

Bury Your Dead

The Brutal Telling

A Rule Against Murder

The Cruelest Month

A Fatal Grace

Still Life

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LOUISE PENNYis the New York Times and Globe and Mail bestselling author of seven previous novels featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. Her debut, Still Life, won the John Creasey Dagger and the Arthur Ellis, Barry, Anthony, and Dilys Awards, and was named one of the five Mystery/Crime Novels of the Decade by Deadly Pleasures magazine. Penny was the first author to win the Agatha Award for Best Novel four times—for A Fatal Grace, The Cruelest Month, The Brutal Telling (which also received the Anthony Award for Best Novel), and Bury Your Dead (which also won the Dilys, Arthur Ellis, Anthony, Macavity, and Nero Awards). Her most recent novel, A Trick of the Light, received an Independent Literary Award and was named one of the Best Crime Novels of 2011 by The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, and Publishers Weekly . Louise lives with her husband, Michael, in a small village south of Montréal.