After a minute or so he spoke. “I wondered if he and the abbot…”
It was as far as he could go, for the moment. There was another pause.
“There were many years when they were inseparable. Besides myself, the prior was the only other person ever invited into the abbot’s garden.”
For the first time, Gamache began to wonder if the garden existed on different planes. It was both a place of grass and earth and flowers. But also an allegory. For that most private place inside each one of them. For some it was a dark, locked room. For others, a garden.
The secretary had been admitted. And so had the prior.
And the prior had died there.
“What do you think the prior meant?” asked Gamache.
“I think there’s only one possible interpretation. He knew he was dying and he wanted absolution.”
“For being a homosexual? I thought you just said he probably wasn’t.”
“I don’t know what to think anymore. His relationships might’ve been platonic, but he might’ve privately yearned for more. He knew it. And God knew it.”
“Is it the sort of thing God would condemn him for?” Gamache asked.
“For being gay? Maybe not. For breaking his vow of chastity, probably. It’s the sort of thing that would need to be confessed.”
“By saying ‘homo’?” Gamache was far from convinced, though when a person was dying reason played a very small part, if any. When the end came and there was time for only one word, what would that be?
The Chief Inspector had no doubt what his last words would be. And were. When he’d thought he was dying he’d said two words, over and over until he could speak no more.
Reine-Marie.
It would never occur to him to say “hetero.” But then, he carried no guilt about his relationships. And maybe the prior did.
“Do you have his personal records I might see?” asked Gamache.
“No.”
“‘No,’ you don’t want to show me, or ‘no,’ you really don’t have files.”
“We really don’t have files.”
On seeing the Chief Inspector’s expression, Frère Simon explained. “When we enter the religious life we’re rigorously tested and screened. And our first abbey would’ve kept records. But not Dom Philippe, not here at Saint-Gilbert.”
“Why not?”
“Because it can’t possibly matter. We’re like the French Foreign Legion. We leave the past behind.”
Gamache stared at this religieux. Was he really that na?ve?
“Just because you want to leave your past at the gate doesn’t mean it stays there,” said the Chief. “It has a way of creeping through the cracks.”
“If it comes all this way, then I suppose it was meant to find us again,” said Frère Simon.
By this logic, thought Gamache, the prior’s death was also God’s will. Meant to happen. God clearly had his hands full with the Gilbertines. The French Foreign Legion of religious orders.
It fit, Gamache thought. No retreat was possible. There was no past to go back to. Nothing outside the walls but wilderness.
“Speaking of cracks, do you know about the foundations?” Gamache asked.
“The foundations of what?”
“The abbey.”
Frère Simon looked confused. “You need to speak to Frère Raymond about them. But give yourself half a day and be prepared to come away knowing more about our septic system than is probably healthy.”
“So the abbot didn’t say anything to you about the foundations of the abbey? And the prior didn’t either?”
Now it dawned on Frère Simon. “Is there something wrong with them?”
“I was asking if you’d heard anything.”
“No, nothing. Should I have?”
So the abbot had kept it to himself, as Gamache had suspected. Only the abbot and Frère Raymond knew that Saint-Gilbert was crumbling. Had, at best, a decade of life left.
And maybe the prior also knew. Maybe Frère Raymond, in desperation, had told him. If so, the prior had died before he could tell anyone else. Was that the motive? To shut him up?
Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?
“You knew the prior had been murdered, didn’t you?”
Frère Simon nodded.
“When did you realize?”
“When I saw his head. And…”
The monk’s voice petered out. Gamache stayed completely quiet. Waiting.
“… and then I saw something in the flower bed. Something that shouldn’t be there.”
Gamache stopped breathing. The two men became a tableau vivant, frozen in time. Gamache waited. And waited. His breathing now was shallow, quiet, not wanting to even disturb the air around them.
“It wasn’t a stone, you know.”
“I know,” said the Chief. “What did you do with it?”
He almost closed his eyes to pray that this monk hadn’t picked it up and thrown it over the wall. To disappear back into the world.
Frère Simon got up, opened the main door into the abbot’s office, and stepped into the corridor. Gamache followed, presuming the monk was leading him to some hiding place.
But instead, Frère Simon stopped at the threshold and reached over, then presented Chief Inspector Gamache with the murder weapon. It was the old iron rod, used for hundreds of years to gain admittance to the abbot’s most private rooms.
And used, yesterday, to crush the skull of the prior of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups.