Page 162 of The Grey Wolf
“But why would they send Langlois’s research to Saint-Gilbert?” asked Beauvoir as he navigated the heavy rush hour traffic. “Why try to keep it safe? If they’re involved in the plot, wouldn’t Caron and the Abbot want to destroy the evidence Langlois had collected?”
Gamache shook his head in frustration. “I don’t get it. I just don’t understand. Three people meet. At least one is deeply involved in a plot to poison Montréal’s drinking water—”
“We’re still not sure about that,patron. We suspect, but there’s no proof. It might be toxic spills.”
“Do you really think all this has been set up to cover up industrial waste?”
Beauvoir shook his head. No. A few days ago a disastrous toxic spill would have upset him. Now he was praying for it.
“Isabelle has to get in to see Brother Robert,” said Gamache.
“And we have to find those notebooks.”
“The Gilbertines have searched their abbey and so far nothing.”
Once again, Gamache checked his messages. There was one fromthe agent investigating the murder in the Saguenay. Probably to tell him that he’d arrived. Armand marked it with a red flag, to be read later.
“That must be how Jeanne Caron got the other half of the Chartreuse recipe,” Jean-Guy was saying. “Her uncle gave it to her.”
“And Dom Philippe must’ve gotten it while at Grande Chartreuse.”
“From Frère Robert? But why, and how? Don’t only two monks have access to the recipe?”
“We need to get our thoughts in order. Let’s go over it again. Brother Robert hears something in a confession that terrifies him. He suddenly applies for a job in the Curia, gets it, and leaves DC. But his conscience gets the better of him, and he asks Sister Irene to come to Rome, where he tells her that something horrific was going to happen, an attack that will kill thousands, but refuses to tell her more. She writes to Frère Sébastien at Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups and asks him to come to Rome and help her get the information out of their friend.”
“Right. He goes, but by then Robert has taken off again, this time to Grande Chartreuse.”
“Sister Irene doesn’t know what spooked him, but something obviously did. Maybe he wanted to avoid seeing Sébastien. You said there’d been a falling-out.”
“It seems an overreaction, doesn’t it?” said Jean-Guy. “There’re people I’d rather not see, but I don’t barricade myself in a monastery.”
“Either way, Irene and Sébastien follow him to Grande Chartreuse,” said Gamache. “But Robert refuses to see them. That’s when Sébastien had the idea of getting Dom Philippe over. Have you heard back from the parish priest in DC? Does he admit what happened?”
“That a monk took his place in confession? No. And he won’t. Neither will he tell us who his regular parishioners are, those who go to confession.”
“We need to go higher and ask the Archbishop then. Back to Dom Philippe. On Sébastien’s request he leaves Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups and goes first to Blanc-Sablon. He borrows his brother’s ID, credit card, and cash and heads to Grande Chartreuse, where BrotherRobert agrees to meet him. But once face-to-face, Robert apparently has misgivings about the Abbot. He told Dom Philippe something, but not everything. Dom Philippe then returns to Montréal and goes to The Mission.”
“And connects up with Parisi and his niece. Was that planned? Or a coincidence? Did the Abbot see Caron at The Mission and realize she was someone he could tell about a possible attack?”
“But if her uncle tells her he knows about the attack,” said Gamache, “why not just kill him too? He’d be dangerous to her. To them.”
“It looks like Jeanne Caron brought him into the plot,” said Beauvoir.
Armand shook his head. He just could not bring himself to see the Abbot siding with the black wolf.
But could it be what Beauvoir said? That isolation had driven Dom Philippe to the brink of madness, and when he finally left the monastery after forty years and saw the state of the world, he went over the edge? Did he now see himself as some sort of Old Testament avenging angel? Adopting muscular Christianity? Not just praying but acting.
“Is it possible,” Gamache said, choosing his words carefully, picking his way forward, “that Brother Robert told the Abbot enough so that Dom Philippe realized the Deputy PM was behind it? When he saw his niece, the Chief of Staff, at The Mission, he rekindled the relationship. Hoping to get more information. Maybe even intimating that he was willing to help.”
“You’re thinking he was just pretending to be sympathetic to the cause? In hopes of what? Gaining their trust and stopping it?”
His boss’s inability to see the Abbot as anything other than a decent man worried Jean-Guy.
“Oui, exactement.In hopes of finding out enough, getting enough evidence, and when he did, he’d come to me with it. He must’ve realized Brother Robert hadn’t been completely honest with him. The Abbot is an astute observer. A keen listener. He’s lived in community long enough, counseled enough monks to know when one wasn’t being entirely truthful. He knew that Frère Robert had more information. That’s why he pointed me there. In hopes I could get him to talk.”
Gamache checked his phone. Still nothing more from Isabelle. He tapped out a quick message to her.
You MUST get Robert to talk.
