“Same as what?” asked the abbot.
“As this.” Once again, the Chief brought the page from the book and laid it on top of the plan. “The chant is written on exactly the same paper as the plan for the monastery. Is it possible this,” he touched the chant, “is as old as that?” He nodded to the plan of the monastery. “Were they written at the same time?”
The drawing was dated 1634 and signed Dom Clément, Abbot of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups. Below the signature were two figures Gamache had grown to recognize. Wolves, intertwined, apparently sleeping.
Entre les loups. Among the wolves. It suggested coming to an agreement, finding peace rather than banishment or massacre. Perhaps when you flee an Inquisition you’re less likely to visit those horrors on others. Even wolves.
Gamache compared the lettering. Both were simple, the letters not so much written as drawn. Calligraphied. They looked to be done by a similar hand. He’d need an expert to say if the plan and the chant were written by the same man. In 1634.
Dom Philippe shook his head. “It’s certainly the same type of paper. But is it the same vintage? I think the chant was written much more recently, and whoever did it used vellum to make it look old. We have sheets of vellum still, made by monks centuries ago. Before paper.”
“Where do you keep them?”
“Simon?” the abbot called and the monk appeared. “Can you show the Chief Inspector our vellum?”
Frère Simon looked put out, as though this was far too much effort. But he nodded and walked across the room, followed by Gamache. He pulled out a drawer filled with sheets of yellowed paper.
“Are any missing?” asked Gamache.
“Don’t know,” said Simon. “I never counted.”
“What do you use them for?”
“Nothing. They just sit here. In case.”
In case of what? Gamache wondered. Or just, in case.
“Who could’ve taken one?” he asked, feeling he was caught in a perpetual game of Twenty Questions.
“Anyone,” said Frère Simon, closing the drawer. “It’s never locked.”
“But is your office locked?” Gamache turned back to the abbot.
“Never.”
“It was locked when we arrived,” said the Chief.
“I did that,” said Frère Simon. “Wanted to make sure nothing was disturbed when I came to get you.”
“Did you also lock it when you went to find the doctor and the abbot?”
“Oui.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want anyone to come across the body.” The monk was getting defensive, his eyes darting from Gamache to the abbot, who sat quietly listening.
“Did you know it was murder at the time?”
“I knew it wasn’t natural.”
“How many people use the abbot’s garden?” the Chief asked and again saw the monk’s eyes shoot off to the abbot, then back again.
“No one,” said Dom Philippe, getting up and coming over. To the rescue? Gamache wondered. It had that feel. But he wasn’t clear why Frère Simon needed rescuing.
“As I believe I mentioned earlier, Chief Inspector, this is my private garden. A sort of sanctuary. Mathieu used to visit, and Frère Simon does the gardening, but beyond that it’s used only by me.”
“Why?” Gamache asked. “Most other spaces in the abbey are communal. Why’s your garden private?”
“You’d have to ask Dom Clément,” said the abbot. “He designed the abbey. He put in the garden and the hidden Chapter House and everything else. He was a master architect you know. Renowned in his time. You can see his brilliance.”
Gamache nodded. He could. And brilliance was exactly the right word. Not only in the simple, elegant lines, but in the placement of the windows.
Every stone was there for a reason. Nothing superfluous. Nothing ornate. All had a reason for being. And there was a reason the abbot’s garden was private, if not secret.
Gamache turned back to Frère Simon. “If no one else used the garden, why did you think one of the monks might stumble across the body of Frère Mathieu?”
“I hadn’t expected to find the prior there,” said Simon. “I didn’t know what else to expect.”
There was silence then, as Gamache studied the guarded monk.
Then the Chief nodded and turned back to the abbot.
“We were talking about the sheet of paper found on the body of the prior. You think the paper’s old, but the writing isn’t. Why do you say that?”
The two men returned to their chairs, while Frère Simon hovered in the background, tidying, shifting papers. Watching. Listening.
“The ink’s too dark, for one thing,” said Dom Philippe, as they studied the page. “Vellum soaks up liquid, over time, so that what’s left on the surface isn’t really ink anymore, but a stain, in the shape of the words. You can see that in the plan of the monastery.”
Gamache leaned over the scroll. The abbot was right. He’d thought with the passage of time and exposure to the sun the black ink had faded slightly, but it hadn’t. It had been absorbed into the vellum. The color was now trapped inside the page, not resting on top.
“But that,” the abbot waved to the yellowed paper, “hasn’t sunk in yet.”
Gamache frowned, impressed. He’d still consult a forensics expert, but he suspected the abbot might be right. The yellowed chant wasn’t old at all, just made to look that way. Made to deceive.
“Who would have done this?” Gamache asked.
“I can’t know.”
“Let me rephrase that, then. Who could have done this? I can tell you, not many people can sing a Gregorian chant, never mind write one, even a mockery of one, using these.”
He placed his index finger firmly over one of the neumes.
“We live in different realities, Chief Inspector. What’s obvious to you, isn’t to me.”
He left and returned a moment later with a workbook, clearly modern, and opened it. Inside, on the left page, were Latin text and the squiggled neumes. On the right was the same text, but this time instead of neumes there were musical notes.
“This is the same chant,” Dom Philippe explained. “One side’s in the old form, with neumes, and the other’s in modern notes.”
“Who did this?”
“I did. An early attempt to transcribe the old chants. Not very good, or accurate, I’m afraid. The later ones are better.”
“Where did you get the old chant?” Gamache pointed to the neume side.
“From our Book of Chants. Before you get excited, Chief Inspector—”
Yet again Gamache realized even slight shifts in his expression were readable by these monks. And a tiny ripple of interest was considered “excited” in this placid place.
“—let me tell you that many monasteries have at least one, often many books, of chants. Ours is among the least interesting. No illuminated script. No illustrations. Pretty dull, by church standards. All the impoverished Gilbertines could afford at the time, I suspect.”