Gamache considered that for a moment. “What did you do?”
“I went to see.”
Gamache glanced over at the wicker basket, on its side, the contents tumbling out onto the autumn leaves. The rake thrown down.
“Did you walk, or run?”
Again that hesitation. “I ran.”
Gamache could imagine the scene. The middle-aged monk with his basket. Preparing to garden, to rake up the dead leaves. Entering this peaceful garden to do what he’d done so many times before. Then seeing the unthinkable. A man collapsed at the base of the wall.
Without doubt, the abbot.
And what had Frère Simon done? He’d dropped his tools and run. As fast as his robed legs would take him.
“And when you got to him, what did you do?”
“I saw that it wasn’t Père Abbé at all.”
“Describe for me please everything that you did.”
“I knelt down.” Every word seemed to cause him pain. Either because of the memory, or just their existence. The very act of speaking. “And I moved his hood. It’d fallen across his face. That’s when I saw it wasn’t the abbot.”
It wasn’t the abbot. That was what seemed to matter to this man. Not who it was, but who it wasn’t. Gamache listened closely. To the words. The tone. The space between the words.
And what he heard now was relief.
“Did you touch the body? Move him?”
“I touched his hood and his shoulders. Shook him. Then I went to get the doctor.”
Frère Simon looked at the other monk.
He was younger than the other two, but not by much. The stubble on his close-cropped head was also graying. He was shorter and slightly rounder than the other two. And his eyes, while somber, held none of the anxiety of his companions.
“Are you the doctor?” Gamache asked and the monk nodded. He seemed almost amused.
But Gamache wasn’t fooled. One of Reine-Marie’s brothers laughed in funerals and wept at weddings. A friend of theirs always laughed when someone yelled at him. Not from amusement, but an overflow of strong emotion.
Sometimes the two got mixed up. Especially in people unused to showing emotion.
The medical monk, while appearing amused, might in fact be the most devastated.
“Charles,” the monk offered. “I’m the médecin.”
“Tell me how you found out about the death of the prior.”
“I was with the animals when Frère Simon came to get me. He took me aside and said there’d been an accident—”
“Were you alone?”
“No, there were other brothers there, but Frère Simon was careful to keep his voice low. I don’t think they heard.”
Gamache turned back to Frère Simon. “Did you really think it was an accident?”
“I wasn’t sure and I didn’t know what else to say.”
“I’m sorry.” Gamache turned back to the doctor. “I interrupted you.”
“I ran to the infirmary, grabbed my medical bag and we came here.”
Gamache could imagine the two black-robed monks running through the sparkling halls. “Did you meet anyone on the way?”
“Not a soul,” said Frère Charles. “It was our work period. Everyone was at their chores.”
“What did you do when you arrived in the garden?”
“I looked for a pulse, of course, but his eyes were enough to tell me he was dead, even if I hadn’t seen the wound.”
“And what did you think when you did?”
“At first I wondered if he’d fallen off the wall, but I could see that was impossible.”
“And then what did you think?”
Frère Charles looked at the abbot.
“Go on,” said Dom Philippe.
“I thought someone had done this to him.”
“Who?”
“I honestly hadn’t a clue.”
Gamache paused to scrutinize the doctor. In his experience when someone said “honestly” it was often a prelude to a lie. He tucked that impression away and turned to the abbot.
“I wonder, sir, if you and I might talk some more.”
The abbot didn’t look surprised. He looked as though nothing could shock him anymore.
“Of course.”
Dom Philippe bowed to the other two monks, catching their eyes, and the Chief wondered what message had just passed between them. Did monks who lived silently together develop a form of telepathy? An ability to read each other’s thoughts?
If so, that gift had sorely failed the prior.
Dom Philippe led Gamache to the bench under the tree. Away from the activity.
From there they couldn’t see the body. They couldn’t see the monastery. Instead the view was to the wall, and the medicinal herbs and the tops of the trees beyond.
“I’m finding it hard to believe this has happened,” said the abbot. “You must hear that all the time. Does everyone say that?”
“Most do. It would be a terrible thing if murder wasn’t a shock.”
The abbot sighed and stared into the distance. Then he closed his eyes, and brought his slender hands to his face.
There was no sobbing. No weeping. Not even praying.
Just silence. His long elegant hands like a mask over his face. Another wall between himself and the outside world.
Finally he dropped his hands into his lap. They rested there, limp.
“He was my best friend, you know. We’re not supposed to have best friends in a monastery. We’re all supposed to be equal. All friends, but none too much. But of course that’s the ideal. Like Julian of Norwich, we aspire to an all-consuming love of God. But we’re flawed and human, and sometimes we also love our fellow man. There are no rules for the heart.”
Gamache listened and waited, and tried not to overinterpret what he was being told.