They were within sight of the gate now. Inside were the long, light hallways. And small cells. And silent, gliding monks. And Chief Inspector Gamache. And Francoeur. Together. Beauvoir was a little surprised the walls and foundations of the monastery weren’t shaking.
They approached the door, made of thick wood, cut from this forest four hundred years ago. And then hinges were forged. And a deadbolt. And a lock.
On the rolled paper in Beauvoir’s hand Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups looked like a crucifix. But in reality?
It looked like a prison.
Beauvoir stopped.
“Why is the door locked?” he asked Frère Bernard.
“Tradition, nothing more. I expect lots of what we do seems senseless, but our rules and traditions make sense to us.”
Still Beauvoir stared.
“A door is locked as protection,” he finally said. “But who’s being protected?”
“Pardon?”
“You said your slogan could be ‘Just in case.’”
“Exsisto paratus, yes. It was a joke.”
Beauvoir nodded. “Lots of truth is said in jest, or so I’ve heard. Just in case of what, mon frère? What’re the locked doors for? To keep the world out, or the monks in? To protect you, or protect us?”
“I don’t understand,” said Frère Bernard. But Beauvoir could see by his expression that he understood perfectly well. He could also see that the monk’s basket, with its mother lode of berries, was now empty. The perfect offering gone.
“Maybe your precious abbot was neither a savvy politician nor a saint. But a jailer. Maybe that’s why he was so against another recording. So adamant about keeping the vow of silence. Was he just enforcing a long tradition of silence? Or was the abbot afraid of loosing some monster into the world?”
“I can’t believe you just said that,” said Bernard, trembling with the effort to contain himself. “Are you talking about pedophilia? Do you think we’re here because we violated little boys? Do you think Brother Charles, Brother Simon, the abbot—” he sputtered. “—I … You can’t possibly…”
He could go no further. His face was red with rage and Beauvoir wondered if his head might explode.
But still, the homicide inspector said nothing. He waited. And waited.
Finally silence was his friend. And this monk’s enemy. Because in that silence sat a specter. Fully grown. Fully fleshed. Of all the little boys. All the choirboys. The schoolboys. The altar boys. The trusting boys. And their parents.
That lived forever, in the silence of the Church.
When given a choice, given free will, the Church had chosen to protect the priests. And how better to protect those clerics than to send them into the wilderness. To an order all but extinct. And build a wall around them.
Where they could sing, but not speak.
Was Dom Philippe as much guard as abbot? A saint who kept watch over sinners?
NINETEEN
“Do you know why the Gilbertines have black robes and white hoods? It’s unique, you know. No other order wears it.”
Chief Superintendent Sylvain Francoeur was sitting behind the prior’s desk, leaning back casually in the hard chair, his long legs crossed.
Chief Inspector Gamache was now in the visitor’s chair, on the other side of the desk. He was trying to read the coroner’s report and the other papers Francoeur had brought with him. He looked up and saw the Superintendent smiling.
It was an attractive smile. Not slimy, not condescending. It was warm and confident. The smile of a man you could trust.
“No, sir. Why do they?”
Francoeur had arrived at the office twenty minutes earlier and given the reports to Gamache. He’d then proceeded to interrupt the Chief’s reading with trivial statements.
Gamache recognized it as a twist on an old interrogation technique. Designed to irritate, to annoy. Interrupt, interrupt, interrupt, until the subject finally exploded and said far more than they normally would have, out of frustration at not being allowed to say anything at all.
It was subtle and time consuming, this wearing away at a person’s patience. Not used by the brash young agents of today. But the older officers knew it. And knew, if they waited long enough, it was almost always effective.
The Chief Superintendent of the S?reté was using it on his head of homicide.
Gamache, as he listened politely to Francoeur’s mundane observations, wondered why. Was it just for fun, to toy with him? Or was there, as there always was with the Chief Superintendent, some deeper purpose?
Gamache looked into that charming face and wondered what was going on inches from the smile. In that rotting brain. In that Byzantine mind.
As much as Jean-Guy might consider this man an idiot, Gamache knew he wasn’t. No one rose to be the most senior police officer in Québec, in one of the most respected forces in the world, without having skills.
To dismiss Francoeur as a fool would be a grave mistake. Though Gamache could never totally shake the impression Beauvoir was partly right. While Francoeur wasn’t an idiot, he wasn’t as clever as he appeared. And certainly not as clever as he thought he was. After all, Francoeur was skilled enough to use an old and subtle interrogation technique, but arrogant enough to use it on someone who’d almost certainly recognize what it was. He was really more cunning than clever.
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 S?reté 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.
At that the Superintendent looked at Gamache as though at a credulous child.
Gamache simply continued, giving concise character sketches of the monks.