The Beautiful Mystery (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #8)

The Beautiful Mystery (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #8) Page 64

“So you met with him.”

“Well, no.” The abbot turned and started strolling slowly around the garden, and Gamache joined him.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“Brother Raymond wasn’t there. He works in the garden every morning after Lauds.”

“And that’s when you chose to inspect the geothermal?” asked Gamache, perplexed. “Wouldn’t you want him there, to go over it together?”

The abbot smiled. “Have you met Brother Raymond?”

Gamache shook his head.

“Lovely man. Gentle man. An explainer.”

“A what?”

“He loves to explain how things work, and why. It doesn’t matter that he’s told me every day for fourteen years how an artesian well works, he’ll still tell me again.”

The whimsical, affectionate look remained on Dom Philippe’s face.

“Some days I’m very bad,” he confided in the Chief, “and sneak down to do my rounds when I know he won’t be there.”

The Chief smiled. He had a few agents and inspectors like that. Who literally followed him through the halls explaining the intricacies of fingerprints. He’d hidden in his office more than once, to avoid them.

“And your secretary, Brother Simon? He tried to find the prior, but when he couldn’t he went to work in the animalerie, I understand.”

“That’s right. He’s very fond of chickens.”

Gamache studied the abbot to see if he was joking, but he seemed perfectly serious.

*   *   *

Jean-Guy looked at the garden. It was huge. Much, much bigger than the abbot’s garden. This was clearly a vegetable garden, whose main crop seemed to be massive mushrooms.

A dozen monks, in their black robes, were kneeling down or bending over. On their heads they wore large, extravagant straw hats. With wide floppy brims. One man wearing it would look ridiculous but since all of them were it looked normal. And Beauvoir, bare-headed, became the abnormal one.

Plants were staked up, vines were trained along trellises, neat rows were being weeded by some of the mushrooms, while others gathered vegetables in baskets.

Beauvoir was reminded of his grandmother, who’d lived all her life on a farm. Short and stocky, she’d spent half her life loving the Church and the other half loathing it. When Jean-Guy had visited they’d collect little new peas together and shell them, sitting on the porch.

He now knew his grandmother must have been very busy, but she never gave that impression. Just as these monks now gave the impression of working steadily, working hard even, but working at their own pace.

Beauvoir found himself almost mesmerized by the rhythm of their movements. Standing, bowing, kneeling.

It reminded him of something. And then he had it. Had they been singing, this would be a mass.

Did this explain his grandmother’s love of her garden? As she stood, and bowed, and knelt, had it become her mass? Her devotion? Had she found in her garden the peace and solace she’d sought in the Church?

One of the monks noticed him and smiled. Motioning him over.

Their vow of silence had been lifted, but clearly it was also a choice. These men liked silence. Beauvoir was beginning to see why.

As he arrived, the monk lifted his hat in an old-fashioned greeting. Beauvoir knelt beside him.

“I’m looking for Frère Antoine,” he whispered.

The monk pointed a trowel toward the far wall then went back to work.

Picking his way along the orderly rows, past the weeding and harvesting monks, Beauvoir approached Frère Antoine. Weeding. Alone.

The soloist.

*   *   *

“Poor Mathieu,” said Dom Philippe. “I wonder why he was here.”

“Didn’t you invite him? You sent Frère Simon to request a meeting.”

“Yes, after the eleven o’clock mass. Not after Lauds. He was three hours early, if that’s why he came.”

“Perhaps he misunderstood.”

“You didn’t know Mathieu. He was rarely wrong. And never early.”

“Then maybe Frère Simon gave him the wrong time.”

The abbot smiled. “Simon is wrong even less of the time. Though more punctual.”

“And you, Dom Philippe? Are you ever wrong?”

“Always and perpetually. One of the perks of the position.”

Gamache smiled. He knew that perk too. But then he remembered that while Frère Simon had headed off to give the prior the message, he hadn’t found him. The message hadn’t been delivered.