Chapter 38

C HAPTER 38

"There's a back door," Beauvoir instructed Sargent Gauthier. "Cover it."

The RCMP officer headed around the church, drawing his weapon as he ran.

Gamache and Beauvoir mounted the front steps, careful not to make any noise. The shadows were long, reaching out toward them from the forest. Beauvoir pulled his gun, and when Gamache nodded, he yanked open the large door and the two men went through.

" Bonjour , Armand."

Claude Dussault crossed himself, then slowly, methodically, moved his flashlight over and around the body of Brother Robert. Behind him the monks of Grande Chartreuse, led by the Abbot, were standing in a semicircle, chanting prayers.

There was nothing clutched in the dead man's hands. Nothing under his fingernails. No signs the monk had fought for his life.

If he was thrown from the wall—Dussault looked up and saw Lacoste looking down—then it was probably from behind. A shove. It would not take much.

There was no evidence. No reason to suspect murder. Beyond the fact the dead man was the key to stopping a terrorist attack. Which seemed enough. That and what the Abbot had said.

There was no reason to be up there. No one had been, it seemed, in decades.

Which was why it would make a perfect place for a clandestine meeting, and murder.

Isabelle Lacoste played the flashlight of her phone over the stone floor of the turret. It was thick with bird droppings and tiny skeletons of hatchlings that must have fallen out of the nest.

There were sticks and twigs and leaves that had either blown in or were brought there by brooding birds building their nests. Not realizing that it was too high. The wind too strong. Their babies too vulnerable.

Grande Chartreuse had been built when monasteries were also fortifications. From the rampart Isabelle Lacoste could see into the distant mountains. She could see an enemy coming. Though she knew she did not have to look nearly that far.

Dropping her eyes, she took a photo of the monk who had fallen from such a great height. And the monks around him praying for his soul. One of whom had fallen even further.

The friendly voice froze Armand and raised the hairs on his forearms.

He would recognize it anywhere. Anytime. Though it was more mature, more melodic, with more resonance than that first time, which was also the last time, they'd met. Years ago.

Beauvoir had his gun clasped in both hands and was pointing it at the Chief of Staff to the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, and the Abbot of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups. His body tense, his stare intense.

Instinctively, Jean-Guy had stepped slightly in front of the unarmed Gamache.

Armand had stopped dead in his tracks. The sound of her voice had paralyzed him, just for an instant. But for a cop, that was literally a lifetime. It was how long it took to pull a trigger. It was what he was afraid would happen. What he thought he'd prepared for. But apparently not quite enough.

He immediately felt ashamed of himself, for leaving Jean-Guy vulnerable for that split second. Then, as quickly as he'd frozen, he pulled himself together. Though he could feel the flush of cold sweat and his heart throwing itself against his rib cage, trying to get at Jeanne Caron. The unforgiven.

Caron and the Abbot stood at the front of the small chapel. As though waiting for them.

"You're under arrest," said Gamache.

"Hands out. I need to see your hands," commanded Beauvoir. When neither moved, he bellowed, "Your hands! Now!"

There was a moment when the earth stopped moving. When time was suspended. When all the ghosts who followed Armand stood staring at the scene. Wondering if another was about to join them, and if so, who would it be?

Then the Abbot's hands shot out and up. "Arrested? Why, Armand? We haven't done anything. We came here to find you. Jeanne is my niece. We're here to ask for your help."

"Help?" demanded Beauvoir. "She's behind it."

Dom Philippe turned to Jeanne Caron, then back to Beauvoir. "What're you talking about? Something terrible's about to happen. She's trying to stop it."

"That's why I was calling you," said Caron, who hadn't yet moved.

Gamache had seen Jeanne Caron often enough on the news, standing behind Lauzon, as he made some sort of announcement. He'd seen her age. And yet, in his mind, he still saw the woman in her late twenties who'd looked him in the eyes, so sure of herself, her position, her power. So sure she could bring him down. And she almost had. She'd almost ruined not just him, but young Daniel as well. His son. She'd almost killed his child.

This woman, standing once again in front of him. Slender, elegant, with hair now dyed and lines in her face almost covered by makeup. What hadn't changed were her eyes. In them he saw the same cold calculation. That certainty that she would win.

"Hands!" snapped Beauvoir.

She finally moved her arms away from her body. "I needed to see you, to warn you, Armand."

Armand. She called him Armand, as though they were friends. Still, he tried not to focus on such a trivial detail. No doubt meant to get under his skin. And, dare he admit, it had. Was he so very thin-skinned when it came to her?

"About what?" Gamache's voice was steady, his gaze unyielding.

"There's going to be an attack on Montréal's drinking water." She was pleading, almost begging. "You have to stop it."

And yet, those eyes. Those eyes as she watched for his reaction. When there wasn't any, she said, "But you already know. You followed our trail."

Caron took a step forward.

"Stop!" commanded Gamache. He'd had enough. Turning to Beauvoir, he said, "Give me the gun."

Without hesitation, he did and watched the Chief walk up to Caron and the Abbot. Dom Philippe took a step back, but Caron held her ground.

Gun in hand, Armand stood where Jean-Guy and Annie had gotten married. On the spot where his grandchildren had been baptized, Armand put a gun to Jeanne Caron's head.

The Mountie entered the chapel. She shifted her eyes to him. "For God's sake, make him stop, make him believe me."

Gauthier did not move.

"I need to know where and when and how it will happen," said Gamache.

"If I knew that, I could stop it myself, but I don't." She was cringing away now, her hands up as though in defense against a bullet.

"What do you know?" he demanded.

"I know it's soon. I know Lauzon's behind it. I know the target is one of the six treatment plants, but I don't know which one. Not for sure."

He knew she was lying, or, like most accomplished liars, she'd mixed the lie in with the truth. Gamache just hoped if he kept questioning her, some of that truth would slip out.

And that he'd recognize it.

"How did Charles Langlois fit into this?"

"I hired him to do some investigating, figuring no one would suspect him. I was wrong."

Gamache turned to the Abbot, who was watching this with wide eyes.

"And you? How did you get involved?"

"Does it matter, Armand? Please, time's short—"

"How?" Gamache all but shouted.

"My prior." Philippe took another step away from Gamache. "He wrote and asked me to go to Grande Chartreuse. There was some crisis. We had to meet in secret."

"And you went? All that way? He just had to ask?"

"Would this young man"—the Abbot pointed to Beauvoir—"have to ask twice? When I got there, one of the monks, a Brother Robert, told me what he'd heard in a confessional."

"And what was that?"

"That Montréal's water was going to be poisoned."

"That's all? No more?"

"No. And he had no proof. But he was terrified, Armand. Panicked."

"Who told him that?" demanded Beauvoir.

"I asked, but he didn't know. At least, I think he did know but wouldn't say. He begged me not to tell Sébastien, my prior, or his friend Sister Irene. He didn't want to put them in danger. I lied to them and said he hadn't told me anything."

"What did Brother Robert give you?" Gamache asked.

"You mean evidence? Nothing, I told you, he had nothing to prove any of it." The Abbot stared at Gamache, who just waited. We wait. We wait. And finally Dom Philippe understood. "I asked him to write out a page of the Chartreuse recipe, and to give me a bottle."

"Why?" Beauvoir seemed mesmerized by this soft-spoken man.

"If anything happened to me, I wanted those found in my possession so that whoever investigated would know I'd been to Grande Chartreuse. I'm pretty sure Brother Robert has more to say, but I couldn't get it out of him. We said a prayer together, then I left."

"You left them here for me," said Gamache. "Why?"

"I knew I couldn't stop whatever was going to happen. And neither could Jeanne. We didn't have proof. And I had to be careful. But you'd figure out who'd left them and go there. And get more out of him. You could stop it."

" Some malady ," said Armand.

The Abbot nodded. "You obviously found them, but you're here, not there. You didn't understand."

Beauvoir was about to say that Lacoste was there, talking to Brother Robert, but some instinct told him not to.

Gamache's mind was working quickly, picking up the various shards of evidence and conjecture, examining them, then moving to the next. What the Abbot said fitted with what they'd discovered.

"You said Brother Robert told you he wanted to protect his friends—"

" Oui. "

"Think carefully. Did he actually say that, or was that your conclusion?"

The Abbot's eyes narrowed as he cast his mind back to that great reckoning in the small cell. Brother Robert's moment of truth.

"No. He didn't actually say that, but why else would he ask me not to tell them anything?"

Isabelle Lacoste was not afraid of heights, but still, it was difficult not to succumb to the terrible, the traitorous temptation to let herself be dragged right over the edge in a sort of hypnotic state.

Is that what had happened to Robert? Was it an accident after all? Had he arranged to meet someone up here and then been lured over the edge by his own phobia? Had his fears finally killed him?

But even so, how had Brother Robert managed to climb those steep stairs in the first place? How desperate was he that he'd agreed to a meeting in the most terrifying place in his world?

Who could possibly lure him up there?