The Chief Inspector lowered his head slightly. Death always meant loss. Violent death tore the hole wider. The loss seemed greater. But to lose this man? Armand Gamache looked back at the body on the ground, curled into a ball. His knees as far up to his chin as he could get them. Before he died.
Frère Mathieu. The choir director of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups. The man whose music Gamache had been listening to on the flight there.
Gamache felt as though he knew him. Not by sight, obviously. No one had seen him. There were no photographs, no portraits of Frère Mathieu. But millions, including Gamache, felt they knew him in ways far more intimate than physical appearance.
This was indeed a loss, and not just to this remote and cloistered community.
“The choirmaster,” the abbot confirmed. He turned around and looked at the man on the ground. Dom Philippe spoke softly. Almost whispering. “And our prior.” The abbot turned back to Gamache. “And my friend.”
He closed his eyes and became very still. Then he opened them again. They were very blue. The abbot took a deep breath. Gathering himself, thought Gamache.
He knew the feeling. When there was something deeply unpleasant, painful, to do. This was that instant, before the plunge.
On the exhale Dom Philippe did something unexpected. He smiled. It was subtle, almost not there. He looked at Armand Gamache with such warmth and openness the Chief Inspector found himself almost paralyzed.
“All shall be well,” said Dom Philippe, looking directly at Gamache. “All shall be well; and all manner of thing shall be well.”
It wasn’t at all what the Chief had expected the abbot to say and it took him a moment, looking into those startling eyes, to respond.
“Merci. I believe that, mon père,” said Gamache at last. “But do you?”
“Julian of Norwich wouldn’t lie,” said Dom Philippe, again with that slight smile.
“Probably not,” said Gamache. “But then Julian of Norwich wrote of divine love and probably never had a murder in her convent. You have, I’m afraid.”
The abbot continued to watch Gamache. Not, the Chief felt, in anger. Indeed, the same warmth was there. But the weariness had returned.
“That is true.”
“Would you excuse me, Père Abbé?”
The Chief stepped around the abbot and examined the ground, picking his way carefully across the grass and through the flower bed. To Frère Mathieu.
There he knelt.
He didn’t reach out. Didn’t touch. Armand Gamache just looked. Taking in the evidence, but also the impressions.
His impression was that Frère Mathieu had not gone gently. Many people he knelt beside had been killed so quickly they barely knew what happened.
Not the prior. He knew what had happened, and what was going to happen.
Gamache looked back to the grass. Then to the dead man. The side of Frère Mathieu’s head had been bashed in. The Chief Inspector leaned closer. It looked like at least two, perhaps three blows. Enough to mortally wound. But not enough to kill instantly.
The prior, Gamache thought, must have had a hard head.
He sensed, rather than saw, Beauvoir kneel beside him. He looked over and saw Captain Charbonneau beside Beauvoir. They’d brought their evidence kits.
Gamache glanced back to the garden. Scene of Crime tape had been put up around the grass and outlined a trail to the flower bed.
The abbot had rejoined the other monks and together they were reciting the Hail Mary.
Beauvoir brought out his notebook. A fresh one for a fresh body.
Gamache himself did not take notes, but preferred to listen.
“What do you think?” the Chief asked, looking at Charbonneau.
The captain’s eyes widened. “Moi?”
Gamache nodded.
For a horrible moment Captain Charbonneau thought nothing. His mind went as blank as the dead man’s. He stared at Gamache. But far from being haughty or demanding the Chief Inspector was simply attentive. This was no trap, no trick.
Charbonneau felt his heart slow and his brain speed up.
Gamache smiled encouragingly. “Take your time. I’d rather have a thoughtful answer than a fast one.”
“… pray for us sinners…”
The three monks intoned while the three officers knelt.
Charbonneau looked around the garden. It was walled. The only entrance and exit through the bookcase. There was no ladder, no evidence anyone had climbed into or out of there. He looked up. The garden wasn’t overlooked. No one could have witnessed what had happened here.
What had happened here? Chief Inspector Gamache was asking for his opinion. His educated, thoughtful analysis.
Christ, he prayed. Christ, give me an opinion.
When Inspector Beauvoir had called and asked that one of the local S?reté officers meet the plane and accompany them to the monastery, Captain Charbonneau had taken the job himself. As head of the detachment he could have assigned anyone. But that was never a consideration.
He wanted it for himself.
And not just to see the inside of the famous abbey.
Captain Charbonneau also wanted to meet Chief Inspector Gamache.
“There’s blood on the grass over there.” Charbonneau waved to a section cordoned off with crime scene tape. “And by the marks on the grass it looks as though he dragged himself a few feet, over here.”
“Or was dragged,” suggested Gamache, “by his killer.”
“Unlikely, patron. There’re no deep footprints on the grass or in the flower bed here.”
“Good,” said Gamache, looking around. “Now why would a dying man drag himself here?”
They all considered the body again. Frère Mathieu was curled into a fetal position, his knees up, his arms wrapped tightly around his stout stomach. His head tucked in. His back was against the stone wall of the garden.
“Was he trying to make himself small?” asked Beauvoir. “He looks like a ball.”
And he did. A quite large black ball that had come to rest against the wall.
“But why?” Gamache asked again. “Why not drag himself toward the monastery? Why move away from it?”
“Maybe he was disoriented,” said Charbonneau. “Was going more on instinct than thought. Maybe there was no reason.”
“Maybe,” said Gamache.
All three continued to stare at the body of Frère Mathieu. Captain Charbonneau glanced across at Gamache, who was deep in thought.
He was inches from the man. Could see all the lines of his face. Both natural and man-made. He could even smell the man. The slightest hint of sandalwood and something else. Rosewater.
He’d seen the Chief Inspector on television, of course. Charbonneau had even flown to Montréal to attend a police conference where Gamache was the keynote speaker. The topic was the S?reté motto, “Service, Intégrité, Justice.”