Page 93 of The Grey Wolf
“If they’d had those little chocolate-covered blueberries, absolutely. But since they don’t…”
Jean-Guy picked up a stone, examined it, then he skipped it across the lake. “One, two…” He counted five skips, then turned to Gamache.
“Tell me about the wolf.”
They could hear singing. Very, very softly, it drifted out of the monastery, as though the building itself were exhaling prayers.
“There’s nothing to tell,” said Armand. “It just appeared. It was foolish of me to walk alone in the woods at dawn.”
“Oui.But I meant the ones in the name. You were just thinking of it. It’s a strange thing to call a monastery, isn’t it? After wolves. Aren’t they normally called something like Saint Gilbert of the Sacred Heart? Or Saint Gilbert of Eternal Life. It’s like calling it Saint Gilbert of the Disembowelment. Not very welcoming.”
“It’s not ‘Among the Wolves.’”
“What do you mean?”
Armand picked up a pebble. He studied it for a moment, dropped it, and after choosing another, he cocked his arm and whipped it across the smooth water in a practiced movement. Plop, plop…
Four skips. “Not as good as you.”
“Stick with me, kid. I’ll teach you all I know,” said Jean-Guy, with a grin. “So, if that isn’t the name of this place, what is?”
“When we were here last, the Abbot told me it’s actually Saint Gilbert Between the Wolves.”
“Between, among, does it matter?”
“Probably not. You asked. That’s the answer.” He turned to look at the high thick walls of the building. “Their robes are black with a white hood, but I’ve only just noticed on this visit that it isn’t white, it’s actually a light grey.”
“You didn’t get much sleep, did you? You might need a nap on the plane.”
Gamache smiled. “I might.” He wondered if he should tell Jean-Guy the rest. Where the abbey actually got its strange name. But that would risk opening an old wound. And it probably didn’t matter.
Probably.
He looked down at the map he still clasped. And thought of Charles Langlois and Dom Philippe. And nosy Frère Simon. And felt more anxious than ever to get back inside Saint Gilbert Between the Wolves.
“What did you mean when you said that it’s possible neither Simon nor the Keeper of the Keys was lying about the letters from the Vatican?” said Beauvoir. “They contradicted each other. One must be.”
They’d found comfortable rocks and were now sitting on the shore, watching the sky shift from mauve to a soft blue. Only the morning star remained, bright on the horizon.
“Let me ask you this,” said Gamache. “If you discovered someone at work was opening and reading your mail, what would you do?”
“I’m thinking pistol-whip them isn’t the answer you’re looking for.”
“The first thing you’d do, before anything else, is make sure it stopped.”
“By—”
“No, not by pistol-whipping them. You’d tell the person collecting the mail to hand it directly to you from now on. Cut out the middle person.”
“Honestly, that’s not what I’d do. And neither would you. You’d discipline the person and probably transfer them out.”
“Eventually, yes, but first I’d make sure that person did not have access to any more mail. Get rid of the problem first, then deal with blame.” He tossed a stone into the lake and saw minnows scatter. He thought, for a moment, what that must have been like, from the minnow’s point of view. To have the equivalent of a bomb drop on them.
“The Sûreté isn’t a monastery,” Gamache continued, and watched as one, then two minnows approached the stone and seemed to stare at it. In wonderment? In fear? Were they brave, foolhardy, curious? Had the stone become a god?
“This is a closed community.” He looked at Jean-Guy. “Saint-Gilbert is essentially a lifeboat. You need to live with these people, you can’t make war on other passengers in the lifeboat. Any transgression must be handled delicately.”
“You think the Abbot told the Keeper to stop giving mail to Frère Simon, and to hand it out directly.”
