The Beautiful Mystery (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #8)

The Beautiful Mystery (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #8) Page 55

Who’d followed Gamache’s orders. Followed Gamache. But while the Chief had come back, with a deep scar near his temple and a tremor in his hand, they hadn’t.

Was the Chief looking at Frère Luc, but thinking about them?

Gamache seemed worried.

“OK, patron?” whispered Beauvoir.

The acoustics in the Blessed Chapel picked up the words and magnified them. Chief Inspector Gamache didn’t answer. Instead he continued to stare. At the now-closed door. Where Frère Luc had gone, and disappeared.

Alone.

The other black-robed monks went through all the other doors.

Finally they were alone in the Blessed Chapel and Gamache turned back to Beauvoir.

“I know you want to speak with Frère Antoine—”

“The soloist,” said Beauvoir. “Yes.”

“That’s a good idea, but I wonder if you’d mind joining Frère Luc first?”

“Sure, but what’ll I ask him? You’ve already spoken to him. So have I, in the shower this morning.”

“Find out if Frère Antoine knew he was about to be replaced as soloist on the next album. Just keep Frère Luc company for a while. See if anyone else shows up at the porter’s door in the next half hour.”

Beauvoir looked at his watch. The service had started bang on seven thirty, and ended exactly forty-five minutes later.

“Oui, patron,” he said.

Gamache’s eyes hadn’t left that dim part of the church.

Beauvoir willingly followed Frère Luc, just as he willingly followed all of Gamache’s orders. He knew it was a waste of time, of course. The Chief might make it sound like more interrogation, but Beauvoir knew what it really was.

Babysitting.

He was happy to do it, if it gave the Chief some peace. Beauvoir would have burped and diapered the monk, had Gamache asked. And had it helped ease the Chief’s mind.

*   *   *

“Would you mind having a look, Simon?”

The abbot smiled at his taciturn secretary, then turned to his guest.

“Shall we?” The abbot raised an arm and pointed, like a good host, to the two comfortable armchairs by the fireplace. The chairs were covered in a faded chintz and seemed to be stuffed with feathers.

The abbot was about ten years older than Gamache. Mid-sixties, the Chief guessed. But he seemed sort of ageless. The shaved head and robes, Gamache supposed, did that. Though there was no disguising the lines in Dom Philippe’s face. And no attempt to disguise them.

“Brother Simon will find you a plan of the monastery. I’m sure we have one somewhere.”

“You don’t use one?”

“Good heavens, no. I know every stone, every crack.”

Like a commander of a ship, thought Gamache. Coming up through the ranks. Intimately aware of every corner of his vessel.

The abbot seemed comfortable in command. Apparently unaware a mutiny was under way.

Or probably supremely aware there had been one, and it had been thwarted. The challenge to his authority had died with the prior.

Dom Philippe smoothed his long, pale hands over the arms of his chair. “When I first joined Saint-Gilbert one of the monks was an upholsterer. Self-taught. He’d ask the abbot to get the ends of bolts and bring them back. This’s his work.”

The abbot’s hand stopped moving and rested on the arm, as though it was the arm of the monk himself.

“That was almost forty years ago now. He was elderly then, and died a few years after I arrived. Frère Roland was his name. A gentle, quiet man.”

“Do you remember all the monks?”

“I do, Chief Inspector. Do you remember all your brothers?”

“I’m an only child, I’m afraid.”

“I put it badly. I meant your other brothers, your brothers-in-arms.”

The Chief felt himself grow still. “I remember every name, every face.”

The abbot held his gaze. It wasn’t challenging, it wasn’t even searching. It felt, to Gamache, more like a hand to the elbow, helping him keep his balance.

“I thought you probably did.”

“Unfortunately none of my agents is quite this handy.” Gamache also smoothed the faded chintz.

“If you lived and worked here, believe me, they’d become handy even if they didn’t start that way.”

“You recruit everyone?”

The abbot nodded. “I have to go get them. Because of our history, we’ve taken not just a vow of silence but a vow of invisibility. A pledge to keep our monastery…”