The Beautiful Mystery (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #8)

The Beautiful Mystery (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #8) Page 94

Would he tell anyone else?

Gamache thought not. At least, not right away.

In a silent order, information became a powerful currency, and Frère Mathieu was almost certainly a miser. He’d never have shared that information so quickly. He’d have hoarded it. Waited for the perfect moment.

Gamache couldn’t be sure, but he thought the prior would probably ask for a meeting with the abbot. Someplace private. Not overlooked. Not overheard. With only the birds, and the old-growth maple, and the black flies as witnesses. If you didn’t count God.

Again, though, the Chief shook his head. It didn’t fit all the facts. One fact, supported by witnesses, was that it was the abbot who had sought out the prior. Not the other way around.

Except.

Gamache thought back to one of his interviews with the abbot. In the garden. When the abbot admitted it was the prior’s idea to meet. Only the timing was the abbot’s.

So, the prior had asked for the meeting. Could it have been about the foundations?

And the scenario shifted again. To the abbot, sending his private secretary on a fool’s errand. To find the prior and ask him to meet later that morning.

Frère Simon leaves.

And the abbot has his office, his cell, and his garden to himself. And there he waits, for Frère Mathieu, and the assignation he’d secretly set up. Not for after the 11 A.M. mass, but after Lauds.

They go into the garden. Dom Philippe doesn’t know for sure why the prior wants to meet, but he suspects. He’s brought a length of pipe out with him, hidden in the long black sleeves of his robe.

Frère Mathieu tells the abbot he knows about the foundations. Demands the second recording. Demands a lifting of the vow of silence. To save the monastery. Or in Chapter later that day he’ll tell all the monks about the foundations. About the abbot’s silence. About the abbot’s paralysis in the face of crisis.

When Frère Mathieu brings out his bomb, the abbot brings out his pipe. One weapon is figurative, and the other isn’t.

Within seconds the prior lies dying at the abbot’s feet.

Yes, thought Gamache, imagining the scene. It fit.

Almost.

“What’s wrong?” asked Beauvoir, seeing the unease on the Chief’s face.

“It almost makes sense, but there’s a problem.”

“What?”

“The neumes. That piece of paper the prior had on him when he died.”

“Well, maybe he just brought it with him. Maybe it’s nothing.”

“Maybe,” said Gamache.

But neither man was convinced. There was a reason the prior had the paper. A reason he died curled around it.

Could it have something to do with the rotting foundations of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups? Gamache couldn’t see how.

“I’m all confused,” Beauvoir admitted.

“So am I. What’s confusing you, mon vieux?”

“The abbot, Dom Philippe. I talk to Frère Bernard, who seems a good guy, and he thinks the abbot’s almost a saint. Then I talk to Frère Raymond, who also seems pretty decent, and he thinks the abbot’s first cousin to Satan.”

Gamache was quiet for a moment. “Can you find Frère Raymond again? He’s probably in the basement. I think that’s where his office is. Ask him directly if he told the prior about the foundations.”

“And if a pipe was the murder weapon the killer probably got it from the basement. And might’ve taken it back.”

Which, Beauvoir knew, made the strappy, chatty Frère Raymond a pretty good suspect. The prior’s man, who knew about the cracks, who loved the abbey and believed the abbot was about to destroy it. And who better than the maintenance monk to know where to find a length of pipe?

Except. Except. Yet again, Beauvoir came up against the fact that the wrong monk had been killed. All that fit. If the abbot had died. But he hadn’t. The prior had.

“I’ll also ask Frère Raymond about the hidden room,” said Beauvoir.

“Bon. Take the plans. See what he thinks. And look at the foundations. If they’re that bad, it should be easy to see. I wonder why no one noticed before?”

“You think he was lying?”

“Some people do, I’m told.”

“It goes against my nature to be cynical, patron, but I’ll try. And you?”

“Frère Simon must be finished copying the chant we found on the prior. I’ll go and get it. I also have a few quiet questions for him. But first I want to finish reading the coroner’s and the forensics reports in peace.”