The Beautiful Mystery (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #8)

The Beautiful Mystery (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #8) Page 84

But that didn’t make him less dangerous.

Gamache looked down at the coroner’s report in his hand. In twenty minutes he’d only managed to read a single page. It showed the prior to be a healthy man in his early sixties. The usual wear and tear on a sixty-year-old body. Some slight arthritis, some hardening of the arteries.

“I looked up the Gilbertines as soon as I’d heard about the prior’s murder.” Francoeur’s voice was agreeable, authoritative. People not only trusted this man, they believed him.

Gamache lifted his eyes from the page and put a politely interested look on his face.

“Is that right?”

“I’d read some of the newspaper articles, of course,” said the Superintendent, moving his eyes from Gamache to gaze out the narrow slat of the window. “The news coverage when their recording was such a hit. Do you have it?”

“I do.”

“So do I. Don’t understand the attraction myself. Dull. But lots liked it. Do you?”

“I do.”

Francoeur gave him a small smile. “I thought you might.”

Gamache waited, quietly watching the Superintendent. As though he had all the time in the world and the paper in his hand was far less interesting than whatever his boss was saying.

“Caused a sensation. Amazing to think these monks have been here for hundreds of years and no one seemed to notice. And then they do one little recording and voilà. World famous. That’s the problem, of course.”

“How so?”

“There’s going to be an uproar when news of Frère Mathieu’s murder gets out. He’s more famous than Frère Jacques.” Francoeur smiled and, to Gamache’s surprise, the Superintendent sang, “Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques, dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?”

But he sang the cheerful child’s song like a dirge. Slowly, sonorously. As though there was some meaning hidden in the nonsense verse. Then Francoeur stared for a long, cold moment at Gamache.

“There’s going to be hell to pay, Armand. Even you must have figured that out.”

“Yes, I had. Merci.”

Gamache leaned forward and placed the coroner’s report on the desk between them. He stared directly at Francoeur, who stared back. Not blinking. His eyes cold and hard. Daring the Chief Inspector to speak. Which he did.

“Why are you here?”

“I’ve come to help.”

“Forgive me, Superintendent,” said Gamache. “But I’m still not sure why you came. You’ve never felt the need to help before.”

The two men glared at each other. The air between them throbbed with enmity.

“In a murder investigation, I mean,” said Gamache, with a smile.

“Of course.”

Francoeur looked at Gamache with barely disguised loathing.

“With communications down,” the Superintendent looked at the laptop on the desk, “and only one phone in the monastery, it was clear someone would need to bring those.”

He waved at the dossiers on the desk. The coroner’s report and the findings of the forensics team.

“That is extremely helpful,” said Gamache. And meant it. But he knew, and Francoeur knew, that it didn’t take the Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté to act as courier. In fact, it would have been far more helpful, if that really was the goal, to have one of Gamache’s homicide investigators bring it.

“Since you’re here to help, perhaps you’d like me to give you the facts of the case,” Gamache offered.

“Please.”

Gamache spent the next few minutes trying to give Superintendent Francoeur the facts, while the Superintendent continually interrupted with meaningless questions and comments. Most suggesting Gamache might have missed something, or failed to ask something, or failed to investigate something.

But, haltingly, Gamache managed to tell the story of the murder of Frère Mathieu.

The body, curled around the yellowed paper, with the neumes and Latin gibberish. The three monks praying over the dead prior in the garden. The abbot, Dom Philippe, his secretary, Frère Simon, and the doctor, Frère Charles.

The evidence of an increasingly bitter rift in Saint-Gilbert. Between those who wanted the vow of silence lifted and another recording of Gregorian chants made, and those who wanted neither. Between the prior’s men and the abbot’s men.

Through constant interruptions, Gamache told the Superintendent about the hidden Chapter House and the abbot’s secret garden. The rumors of more hidden rooms, and even a treasure.