“You were right about the rift,” said Frère Simon. “As soon as that first recording was a success things started falling apart. Ego, I suspect. And power. Suddenly there was something worth fighting over. Up until then we were all equal, just sort of meandering through our days in a rickety old monastery. We were quite happy, certainly content. But the recording brought so much attention, and so much money so quickly.”
The monk raised his palms to the gray sky and gave a little shrug.
“The abbot wanted us to take it slowly. To not rush off and leave our vows behind. But the prior and others saw the success as a sign from God, that we needed to be out in the world more. To share our gifts.”
“Each claimed to know God’s will,” said the Chief.
“We were having some difficulty interpreting it,” Frère Simon admitted with a small smile.
“Perhaps not the first religieux to have that problem.”
“You think?”
It was as Gamache had heard from everyone except the abbot. Before the recording the monastery was falling apart but the congregation was solid. After the recording the monastery was being repaired but the congregation was falling apart.
Some malady is coming upon us.
The abbot was stuck trying to figure out the will of a God who seemed himself conflicted.
“The abbot and his prior were good friends, even loving friends, before the recording.”
The monk nodded.
Gamache thought the Gilbertines could begin a new calendar. There was BR, before the recording. And AR.
Some malady is coming upon us. Disguised as a miracle.
They were now roughly two years AR. Plenty of time for a close friendship to turn to hate. As only a good friendship could. The conduit to the heart was already created.
“And the piece of paper,” Gamache asked, indicating the yellowed chant he still held. “What part could this have played?”
Frère Simon thought about that. As did Gamache.
The two men stood in the garden, as the mist slipped over the wall.
“The abbot loves plainchant,” said Frère Simon, speaking slowly, working his way through this. “And he has a wonderful voice. Very clear, very true.”
“But?”
“But he isn’t the most gifted musician in Saint-Gilbert. And he isn’t fluent in Latin. Like the rest of us, he knows scripture and the Latin mass. But beyond that, he wasn’t a Latin scholar. You might have noticed, all his books are in French, not Latin.”
Gamache had noticed.
“I doubt he’d know the Latin word for ‘banana,’ for instance.” Simon pointed to that silly phrase.
“But you did,” said Gamache.
“I looked it up.”
“As could the abbot.”
“But why would he look up and use a string of nonsense words in Latin?” asked Frère Simon. “If he was going to put Latin words on paper he’d probably use bits of prayers or chants. I doubt he was Gilbert to the prior’s Sullivan. Or the other way around.”
Gamache nodded. That had been his reasoning as well. He could see the abbot braining the prior, in a fit of passion. Not sexual passion, but a much more dangerous kind. A religious fervor. Believing Frère Mathieu was going to kill the monastery, kill the order. And it was Dom Philippe’s burden, given by God, to stop him.
It was also Dom Philippe’s job, as father to his sons, to protect them. And that meant protecting their home. Defending their home. Gamache had looked into the eyes of too many grieving fathers not to know the force of that love.
He felt it himself, for his own son and daughter. He felt it, God help him, for his agents. He chose them, recruited them, trained them.
They were his sons and daughters, and every day he sent them after murderers.
And he’d crawled over to each and every mortally wounded one, and held them and whispered an urgent prayer.
Take this child.
As gunshots exploded into walls and floors, he’d held Jean-Guy, protecting him with his own body. He’d kissed his brow and whispered those words too. Believing this boy he loved was dying. And he could see in Jean-Guy’s eyes, he believed it too.
And then he’d left him. To help the others. Gamache had killed that day. Coolly taken aim and seen men lose their lives. He’d killed deliberately, and he’d do it again. To save his agents.
Armand Gamache knew the power of a father’s love. Whether it be a biological father or a father by choice. And fate.
If he could kill, why couldn’t the abbot?
But Gamache couldn’t, for the life of him, see what role the neumes might have played. It all made sense. Except for the mystery he held in his hand.
Like a father himself, the prior had died hugging it.
*
The Chief Inspector left Frère Simon and went in search of Beauvoir, to bring him up to speed and to give him the murder weapon for safekeeping.
Gamache doubted the iron knocker had much to tell them. Frère Simon had admitted washing it off, scrubbing it down, and replacing it by the door. So that anyone wanting admittance to the abbot’s locked rooms yesterday morning would put their fingerprints and DNA on it. And many had. Including Gamache himself.
The prior’s office was empty. A few monks were working in the animalerie, feeding and cleaning the goats and chickens. Down the other corridor, Gamache looked in the dining hall and then opened the door to the chocolaterie.
“Looking for someone?” Frère Charles asked.
“Inspector Beauvoir.”
“I’m afraid he isn’t here.” The medical monk put a scoop into the vat of melted chocolate and brought out a ladle filled with dripping blueberries. “Last batch of the day. Picked by Frère Bernard this morning. He had to go out twice, poor man. Apparently he ate the first harvest himself.” Frère Charles laughed. “An occupational hazard. Like some?”
He gestured to the long rows of tiny, dark brown spheres already cooled and ready to be packaged and shipped south.