Page 85 of The Grey Wolf
“I asked you a question, Frère Simon,” Gamache called after the receding figure, then strode down the long corridor after him. “Answer me. Did you open the mail?”
He almost reached out to grab the monk but stopped himself. He watched as Frère Simon was enveloped by the shadows, until the monk became just a glowing silhouette filled with darkness.
The bells were summoning the monks. It was compline, Gamache knew. The final service of the day. Before the Great Silence.
The Chief turned. “Follow me.” They headed back to Dom Philippe’s office.
At the end of the hallway, Frère Simon looked back. He’d heard, between the peals of the bells, the sound of the Chief Inspector’s feet on the flagstones, quickly approaching him. Which was disconcerting. Then he’d heard those feet stop. And recede. Getting farther away. Which was even more disconcerting.
“Why did you ask about the Abbot’s family?” asked Jean-Guy, once they were back in the office.
“Because there’s more than a month unaccounted for. What did Dom Philippe do when he left here? Where did he go? He can’t have had much money.”
“You think he went to family?”
“Or friends.” Gamache was opening and closing drawers. Previously, he’d been looking for a note from the Abbot explaining why he’d left. Now he was looking for personnel files. Or anything personal. Letters perhaps, from those left behind when he’d taken vows.
“The Abbot left here weeks ago and showed up in Three Pines days ago. What was he doing in the meantime?”
“There’s something else,patron. If we’re right, Dom Philippe tore the recipe and gave the other half to someone else. I don’t think he’d give it to Jeanne Caron, do you?”
“Non.” Gamache’s reply was categorical.
“So how did she get it?”
The Chief stopped what he was doing and looked at Beauvoir. “That, my son, is a very good question.”
Jean-Guy, who’d been lying on his side on the stone floor shining his phone flashlight under Dom Philippe’s desk, got to his feet.
“Caron must’ve taken it from someone,” he said, brushing dirt from his clothes. “From whoever the Abbot sent it to.”
“Though Sébastien himself might have sent the other half to someone.”
“Either way, Caron ended up with it. But why does that page matter? It’s not even the full recipe for Chartreuse. And honestly, even if it was, who really cares? What does this have to do with a plan to poison the water?”
And since there was no answer to that yet, he said, “Whoever was sent the other half must be dead. Otherwise, Caron wouldn’t have it. I think that’s a safe assumption.”
Gamache did not disagree.
“We should look for another body,” said Beauvoir.
Or perhaps, thought Gamache, they’d already found it. Hands tied behind their back. Bullet to the base of the skull. The Saguenay region, where the woman was murdered execution-style, was not all that far from where they were.
Was Jeanne Caron behind that murder? Those murders? Had the other half of the recipe been given to that woman in the Saguenay? Or that man on the Magdalen Islands?
If so, who were they?
How would Caron know the woman, or man, had it? And, to Beauvoir’s point, how could that recipe matter? He looked down at the two pieces of paper that he now possessed. Had two people, maybe more, been murdered for them?
And why, if she’d killed to possess the torn page, would Jeanne Caron then send it to him? What was he missing? A lot, it seemed.
“We need to get information on Dom Philippe,” he said. “His background.”
“We don’t even know if ‘Philippe’ is his real name,” said Jean-Guy.
“C’est vrai.” Gamache rubbed his face and felt stubble. He was, he suspected, in very real danger of turning into a fantasist. Imagining events that never happened. Seeing relationships and connections that might not exist. And wasting time pursuing them.
It was one of the great dangers for an investigator. Turning guesses into fact. Interpreting slim evidence to fit a convenient theory.
