Page 63 of The Grey Wolf
Given all the people, all the churchmen, who’d abandoned the Archbishop of Canterbury, only one had stood by him. Stood up for him. At great peril to himself. An unlikely hero.
Saint Gilbert. Though he wasn’t a saint at the time. That came later, for reasons that were unclear since the man had done nothing to distinguish himself except that one glorious, courageous, unlikely act. He’d stood up and, in the face of great peril, had defended his archbishop.
And now Monsieur Gilbert had visited Three Pines. And brought with him some malady.
What malady? Though Armand feared he knew.
He sat there in the uncertain light of the chapel and waited. And waited. For his mind to calm, and for the answer to come. Though, to be honest, he’d known as soon as he’d seen those two words. A threat maybe. More likely a warning.
Placed together, the two halves read,Some malady… water.
And on the other side of the paper were the words both halves shared.Angelica stems.Was it just coincidence that the paper had been torn just there? But Armand was beginning to think few things about these events had been left to chance.
Like a competitor in a race to solve the Rubik’s Cube, everything had twisted and clicked into place.
The soft singing.
The baggy clothing.
The vague recognition.
The sense of calm he’d had as he’d locked eyes with the older man.
The name the man had given to Olivier and Gabri. Monsieur P. Gilbert.
And now, the quote. That was the clincher. It put it beyond doubt.
What remained unclear was the purpose of the note someone, two someones, had wanted him to have. A list of herbs and spices. And the scribbled words on the back.
And what about the cocktail? The Last Word?
Armand closed his eyes and tipped his face to the cathedral ceiling. There was something someone had said yesterday. Isabelle? Reine-Marie?
It was Jean-Guy. Opening his eyes, Armand brought from his breast pocket the other half of the note. He reread the list of herbs. Until he came to the demi-words, the last words, clinging to the bottom of the page.Angelica stems.
Named after an archangel. The obscure herb often mistaken for its poisonous look-alike. It was used to make, among other things, theliqueur Chartreuse. And Chartreuse was the main ingredient in the cocktail. The Last Word.
Armand lowered his hand slowly, until it rested on the pew, the one page sitting beside the other. Reunited. The page made whole.
He knew now what that list was. It was part of the recipe for the liqueur Chartreuse.
And the elderly man who’d come to Three Pines and left it for him? Armand had met him a few years ago.
Dom Philippe, the Abbot of the remote monastery Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups. P. Gilbert.
And now Armand felt sure that the other half of the recipe had come from the Abbot’s opposite number. Charles Langlois had given his jacket to his boss, and she’d returned it to Armand.
That horror, Jeanne Caron, had slipped it into his jacket. Two halves of a whole. Heaven and Hell.
Armand was still sitting there when he heard the door to the chapel open, and footsteps down the aisle.
He’d been so lost in thought that the drumming of rain, heavy now against the windows and on the roof, came as a surprise. But the voice that greeted him did not.
“Olivier said you’d be here.” Jean-Guy slipped in beside him. “Annie and I brought the kids down. Daniel and Roz have just arrived with Florence and Zora. Your home sounds like a day care. Are you claiming sanctuary here? Can I come too?”
Armand gave a grunt of laughter. He could almost hear the earsplitting shrieks of the grandchildren playing together, to be followed by wailing as one or the other, or all four youngsters, either fell or suffered hurt feelings. Both events were inevitable.
“I saw the security video you sent,” Armand said.
