The Beautiful Mystery

“At the very end of the bay a fortress stood, like a rock cut. Its steeple rose as though propelled from the earth, the result of some seismic event. Off to the sides were wings. Or arms. Open in benediction, or invitation. A harbor. A safe embrace in the wilderness. A deception. This was the near mythical monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups. The home of two dozen cloistered, contemplative monks. Who had built their abbey as far from civilization as they could get. It had taken hundreds of years for civilization to find them, but the silent monks had had the last word. Twenty-four men had stepped beyond the door. It had closed. And not another living soul had been admitted. Until today. Chief Inspector Gamache, Beauvoir and Captain Charbonneau were about to be let in. Their ticket was a dead man.”

The setting is crucial to understanding the work facing the characters. The monastery is a “seismic event” like an earthquake, leaving the landscape permanently altered—and perhaps, on a fault line that will collapse. The monastery is compared to many things, some of them contradictory: Gamache and Beauvoir will have to piece together how a place that seems like a “safe embrace” is also a “deception.” The paradoxical description continues in the phrase the “silent monks had the last word”—their silence is more powerful than speech. Penny emphasizes the abbey’s long years of isolation—visiting it is as grand an event as Charlie getting to Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory, as the word “ticket” suggests. But this “ticket” is a corpse—what is ahead of them is not a wonderland but a cloistered world newly marked by violence.

“In each murder case, Gamache followed those feelings, the old and decaying and rotting ones. And at the end of the trail of slime, Gamache found the killer. While the Chief followed feelings, Beauvoir followed facts. Cold and hard. But between the two men, together, they got there. They were a good team. A great team. Suppose he isn’t happy? The question snuck up on Beauvoir, out of the woods. Suppose he doesn’t want Annie to be with me? But that was, again, just fancy. Not fact. Not fact. Not fact.”

Beauvoir, from the first, sets up a contrast between himself and his longtime mentor. Gamache does not look away from humanity’s worst aspects, despite the “decay” and “rot” he finds. Beauvoir portrays himself as an empiricist, only interested in “cold and hard” facts. Much to his later undoing, however, in reality Beauvoir is given to deep and overwhelming feelings: positive ones, like his love for Annie, and negative ones, like the fear of abandonment that triggers his addiction.

“But what struck the Chief, what must have struck every man, every monk, who entered those doors for centuries, was the light. The corridor was filled with rainbows. Giddy prisms. Bouncing off the hard stone walls. Pooling on the slate floors. They shifted and merged and separated, as though alive. The Chief Inspector knew his mouth had dropped open, but he didn’t care. He’d never, in a life of seeing many astonishing things, seen anything quite like this. It was like walking into joy.”

The characters are not prepared for the monastery’s awe-inspiring lightshow: Gamache is “astonished” and overwhelmed by the spectacle. The rainbows are a biblical reference: in Genesis, God presents Noah with the rainbow as a covenant to never again flood the world. The novel often juxtaposes beauty with ugliness and loss. Here, Gamache can only see these lights because the murder victim, the dead prior, no longer can.

“In the brief moment Chief Inspector Gamache and the monk had stared at each other, locked eyes, Gamache had realized two things. The monk was barely more than a boy. And he was extremely upset, and trying to hide it. Like a child who’d stubbed his toe on a rock but didn’t want to admit to the pain. Strong emotions were the rule at a murder scene. They were natural. So why was this young monk trying to hide his feelings?”

This early moment confirms Beauvoir’s view of Gamache as a keen observer of behavior. Gamache immediately reads meaning into Frère Luc’s youth and strong emotions, noting that the monk does not behave in the way he would expect—there must be a reason Frère Luc’s feelings are distasteful to him, though Gamache does not yet know what it is. Even without context, the skilled investigator can sense something unusual.

“Armand Gamache believed in them. He believed in the Sûreté and in Service and Integrity and Justice. He could do better. They could do better. As individuals and as a force. By the end of the talk the thousand officers were on their feet, cheering. Revitalized. Inspired. Except, Captain Charbonneau had noticed, a small cadre. In the front row. They too stood. They too clapped. How could they not? But from his position off to the side, Charbonneau could see their hearts were not in it. And God only knew where their heads were at. These were the superintendents of the Sûreté. The leadership. And the Minister of Justice.”

Charbonneau’s recollection of his previous encounter with Gamache establishes him as a moral leader who inspires loyalty—his speech about values brings jaded officers to “cheer” for him and for their higher ideals. Nevertheless, the unhappiness of the leadership showed that Gamache is a man with influence, but he is at odds with institutional power. 

“But more than the physical change, Beauvoir now seemed happy. Indeed, happier than Gamache had ever seen him. Not the feverish, giddy highs of the addict, but a settled calm. Gamache knew it was a long and treacherous road back, but Beauvoir was at least on it. Gone were the mood swings, the irrational outbursts. The rage and the whining. Gone were the pills. The OxyContin and Percocet.”

Gamache and Beauvoir’s regard and concern for each other is mutual. Despite Beauvoir’s fears, Gamache cares for him deeply, even if the reader does not yet know Gamache approves of his relationship with Annie. Gamache sees Beauvoir through the prism of their shared past: the younger man’s injuries and painkiller addiction. Gamache knows that recovery is fragile, so he remains protective, mindful of the past, but at this stage confident in the future.

“It was, Gamache knew, the simple truth. It was also the reaction of a father. To protect. Or a shepherd, to keep the flock safe from a predator. Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups. Saint Gilbert among the wolves. It was a curious name for a monastery. The abbot knew there was a wolf in the fold. In a black robe, and shaved head, and whispering soft prayers. Dom Philippe had called in hunters to find him.”

Gamache compares the abbot to a parent and a shepherd, recognizing that sacred authority comes with emotional bonds. The protection of sheep is also a significant metaphor in the New Testament, as Jesus compares himself to a shepherd and his followers to a flock. Gamache too is a devoted parent and father figure to Beauvoir—which perhaps explain why he recognizes this in the abbot. Gamache is also interested in symbolism. Wondering why a wolf is an emblem for a sanctuary, he compares the killer to a wolf, using the old proverb about a wolf in sheep’s clothing to connect his disparate thoughts.

“‘To deliver a message. The abbot apparently wanted to meet with the prior this morning after the eleven A.M. mass.’ The words sounded strange on Beauvoir’s tongue. Abbots and priors and monks, oh my. They weren’t part of the vocabulary of Québec anymore. Not part of daily life. In just a generation those words had gone from respected to ludicrous. And soon they’d disappear completely. God might be on the side of the monks, thought Beauvoir, but time wasn’t.”

Beauvoir’s thoughts reflect one of the persistent themes of the work: the tension between the secular world and the monastic life. Beauvoir’s profound discomfort with religion is not merely personal but also cultural and generational: Québec’s secularization process began in the 1970s, and Beauvoir is, in a sense, its culmination. Church language has become so “ludicrous” that Beauvoir imagines even the words disappearing, erased by time. For him, the monks are a kind of endangered species, but one that was previously invasive and harmful.

“That must have been where the man now laid at their feet had stood, and sat, had bowed and prayed. And led the choir in these dull chants. Beauvoir had earlier amused himself by wondering if the prior had possibly done it to himself. Stoned himself to death rather than have to live through yet another mind-numbing mass. It was all the Inspector could do to not run shrieking into one of the stone columns, hoping to knock himself out. But now he had a puzzle to occupy his active mind. It was a good question. Who was leading this choir of men, now that their director was dead?”

Beauvoir finds religious life “dull” and decides that it could drive one to suicide; he cannot imagine what it means to those around him. The dark turn of his thoughts here underlines that the isolation of the monastery brings out his vulnerabilities and fragile mental health.

“The world had come calling. Some curious. Some desperate for the peace these men seemed to have found. But this ‘gate,’ made from trees felled hundreds of years ago, held firm. It did not open for strangers. Until today. It had opened to let them in, and now it was about to open again, to let them out. The portier came forward, the large black key in his hand. At a small sign from the abbot he inserted it in the lock. It turned easily, and the door swung open. Through the rectangle the men saw the setting sun, its reds and oranges reflected in the calm, fresh lake. The forests now were dark, and birds swooped low over the water, calling to each other. But by far the most glorious sight was the oil-stained boatman, smoking a cigarette and sitting on the dock. Fishing.”

Gamache’s recollection of the aftermath of the recording emphasizes the monastery’s isolation. The “gate,” like that of a fortress, resists the emotional demands of outsiders compelled by the recording to seek entrance. But it cannot resist Gamache’s authority and the abbot’s call for justice. The colors reflect Gamache’s foreboding: Frère-Luc’s key is black, opening the way to darkness, while the world outside is full of the colors of the sunrise. Even the boatman is a “glorious sight” since he offers the possibility of escape.

“‘I’m far from an expert on music but even I know a great choir isn’t just a collection of great voices. They have to be the right voices, complementary. Harmonious. I think these monks are here by design. I think they were specially chosen, to sing the chants.’ ‘Maybe they were specially bred for this,’ said Beauvoir, his voice low and his eyes mock-mad. ‘Maybe this is some Vatican plot. Maybe there’s some mind control in the music. To lure people back to the Church. Produce a zombie army.’ ‘My God, man, that’s brilliant! It’s so obvious.” Gamache looked at Beauvoir with awe.’”

Gamache’s hypothesis about the choir emphasizes how steeped in secrecy the monastery is, partly because of the secularism of the investigators, partly due to the abbot’s inherent reticence until questioned. Gamache presents the monastery as a carefully constructed “design,” which leads Beauvoir to make a joke, imagining a Vatican plot so elaborate it must end in a “zombie army.” The laughter cements the connection between mentor and mentee and unites them in the face of the fractured monks.

“‘Pissed off, perhaps, but not pissed,’ said the Chief, with a smile. ‘Seems, Beauvoir, we’ve landed in the only monastery on earth that doesn’t make liquor.’ Beauvoir touched the Chief’s arm to slow him down and Gamache stopped in the middle of the corridor. ‘You old…’ At a look from Gamache, Beauvoir stopped what he was about to say, but also smiled. ‘That was all an act,’ Beauvoir lowered his voice, ‘you storming out. You wanted to show that asshole monk you wouldn’t be pushed around, unlike the abbot.’ ‘It wasn’t entirely an act, but yes. I wanted the others to know it was possible to challenge that monk. What’s his name anyway?’”

Gamache uses humor when alone with Beauvoir, a side of himself he does not show to others. He plays the word for anger off against the British word for “drunk” and laments that they have found the only monks who do not brew beer. His tone clues Beauvoir in to the fact that Gamache has only been pretending to be riled up in the hopes of manipulating the monks into further confidences. Beauvoir smiles once he realizes—his mentor is a strategist, a shrewd evaluator of human behavior.

“Wolf in sheep’s clothing. It was from the bible, but was famously quoted by Thomas à Becket, who’d called his killers ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing.’ T. S. Eliot had written a play about those events. Murder in the Cathedral. ‘Some malady is coming upon us,’ Gamache quoted under his breath. ‘We wait. We wait.’ But the Chief Inspector didn’t have long to wait. Within moments the silence was broken. Chanting. Getting closer. The Chief took a few steps, but couldn’t get all the way off the altar before he saw the monks, hoods up, filing toward him. Each carrying a candle. They walked right by him as though he wasn’t there, and took their accustomed places at the benches. Their chanting stopped and as a man they removed their hoods. And twenty-three pairs of eyes stared at him. A man in pajamas and dressing gown, standing in the middle of their altar.”

Alone with his thoughts, Gamache turns back to the monastery’s emblem of two wolves. He imagines wolves as threats, turning both to the Bible and to church history, rather than nature. His intellectual side is active even when he is somewhat fearful, and the allusion suggests a coming threat. The monks arrive just as these thoughts erupt, suggesting, perhaps, that they are the threat: Gamache focuses on their hoods, which obscure their faces and make them seem like a single unit, a powerful collective, while Gamache, in this moment, is ridiculous in his nightwear, interrupting sacred space.

“‘By yesterday morning the monastery had been laid to waste. Except that the bodies were still walking and the walls still standing. But Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups was dead in every other way.’ Gamache thought about that for a moment, then thanking Frère Bernard he handed him his basket of eggs and left the enclosure, returning to the dim monastery. The peace had been not simply shattered, but murdered. Something precious had been destroyed. And then a rock had landed on Frère Mathieu’s head. Shattering it too.”

Frère Bernard describes the monastery like a war zone, though he notes that all of the inhabitants were alive, until the prior’s murder. He calls the monastery “dead,” referring to it as a collective organism, capable of being “murdered.” In this metaphor, religious communities have hearts and minds, and can be irrevocably harmed victims. The metaphor continues, as the prior’s corpse symbolizes the “shattered” monastery. The language here is particularly evocative given that the monks are supposed to live a life of peaceful service, not wage a civil war against each other.

“‘It’s joy, I suppose,” said the abbot. ‘When I even think of the chants I feel freed of cares. It’s as close to God as I can get.’ But Gamache had seen that look on other faces. In stinking, filthy, squalid rooms. Under bridges and in cold back alleys. On the faces of the living, and sometimes on the dead. It was ecstasy. Of sorts. Those people got there not through chants, but through needles in the arm, crack pipes and little pills. And sometimes they never came back. If religion was the opiate of the masses, what did that make chants?”

Beauvoir does not have a monopoly on skepticism about organized religion or Catholicism. The abbot equates the chants with proximity to God, but Gamache recalls vivid scenes from his life as a detective, comparing religion to addiction. The imagery here is profane, not sacred: He thinks of dirt, smells, death, and isolation, and those who die homeless and alone. Gamache quotes Karl Marx, who imagined religion as a distraction from class struggle, painting the chants as an escape rather a goal.

“‘When he asks to be taken out of the porter’s room and comes to join the rest of us. Or he uses the key and leaves.’ Another heavy gourd landed in Beauvoir’s basket. Frère Antoine moved down the row. ‘He’s in a sort of purgatory there,’ said the monk, searching among the huge leaves for more squash. ‘Of his own making. It must be very painful. He seems paralyzed.’ ‘By what?’ ‘You tell me, Inspector. What generally paralyzes people?’ Beauvoir knew that answer. ‘Fear.’ Frère Antoine nodded. ‘Frère Luc is gifted. By far the best voice we have here, and that’s saying something. But he’s frozen with fear.’”

Antoine emphasizes that monastic life is defined by free will. Frère Antoine describes Frère Luc’s indecision as purgatory—the Catholic theological concept of the place where sinners go after death to be purified and prepared for heaven. Caught between two worlds, the sacred and the secular, Frère Luc is paralyzed—unable to choose. Beauvoir can empathize with this kind of indecision. This scene underlines that while the monks may not know who the killer is, they know where the weak spots in their community are.

“Francoeur had given it to him not as recognition for all the lives Gamache had saved that terrible day, but as an accusation. A permanent reminder. Of all the young lives lost. Beauvoir could have killed Francoeur at that moment. Again he felt a clawing in the pit of his stomach. Something was trying to rip its way out. He wanted desperately to change the subject. To wipe away the memories. Of the ceremony, but mostly of that horrific day. In the factory. When one of the lives lost had almost been his own. When one of the lives lost had almost been the Chief’s. Beauvoir thought about the tiny pills the size of wild blueberries. The ones still hidden in his apartment. And the burst they brought. Not of musky flavor, but of blessed oblivion.”

Beauvoir’s memories from earlier events in the series reveal his continued trauma and his acute awareness of the internal politics of the police force. Francoeur is cruel, using Gamache’s medal as an “accusation” to wound Gamache. Beauvoir is still nursing his own hurt—the pain in his stomach, the site of his original wound, is like a creature inside him, trying to “rip its way out.” Beauvoir is haunted by his brush with death; the opiates he craves are like the sweet fruit on the monastery grounds, offering the “blessing” of oblivion. Ironically, Beauvoir invokes religious language of healing and favor as a sign that he is tempted to relapse.

“When given a choice, given free will, the Church had chosen to protect the priests. And how better to protect those clerics than to send them into the wilderness. To an order all but extinct. And build a wall around them. Where they could sing, but not speak. Was Dom Philippe as much guard as abbot? A saint who kept watch over sinners?”

Beauvoir reflects on the devastating consequences of the church’s choice to protect predators rather than the vulnerable. He imagines the wilderness around him not as a sanctuary but as a hiding place for even greater wrongs. He imagines the vow of silence and the music as a sinister cover for predation and assault. He wonders if the abbot is a guard, likening the abbey to a prison.

“‘But Armand Gamache isn’t the man you think he is. He made a hatchet job of that rescue. Four Sûreté agents were killed. You yourself almost died. You were left to bleed to death on the floor. The man you so respect and admire led you in there, then left you to die. I see it every time I watch the tape. He even kissed you good-bye. Like Judas.’ Francoeur’s voice was calm, reasonable. Comforting. Familiar.”

To convince Beauvoir to abandon Gamache, Francoeur emphasizes his incompetence and his abandonment. He repeats the verb “left,” stressing Beauvoir’s vulnerability and his wounds. Francoeur claims he, like Beauvoir, has watched the video of the warehouse raid multiple times, creating a kinship of shared horror. Perhaps in recognition of their surroundings, he calls Gamache “Judas” betraying his friend with a kiss, as in the New Testament account of the events leading up to the crucifixion.

“‘There is one person I’ve saved.’ Beauvoir stopped and turned around. The monk was standing in the dim corridor outside his cell. ‘Myself,’ Beauvoir snorted, shook his head and turned his back on Frère Antoine. He hadn’t believed a word of it. Certainly hadn’t believed the monk when he talked about his love of the monastery. It was impossible to love the pile of stones and the old bones that rattled around inside it.”

Beauvoir, relapsing into active addiction, reproaches Frère Antoine. Beauvoir is contemptuous of the monk’s point that he has saved his own soul, refusing to believe the monastery can be any kind of haven. Yet Beauvoir has failed to safeguard himself from Francoeur, and is in exactly the kind of danger the monk alluded to.

“This monk had followed the neumes here. For hundreds of years the Church had been looking for the starting point. The Gilbertine recording of the Gregorian chants had unwittingly provided that. Frère Sébastien seemed to be weighing his answer, then finally he nodded. ‘When the Holy Father heard the recording he knew at once. It was the same in every way as all the other Gregorian chants sung in monasteries around the world. Except, these were divine.’ ‘Sacred,’ agreed Frère Luc. Both monks looked at Gamache, their eyes intense. There was something frightening about that level of zeal. For a single dot. In the beginning. The beautiful mystery. Finally solved.”

As befits his status as a “hound of the Lord,” the newly arrived Dominican is tracking the starting note of Gregorian chant. Frère Sébastien and Frère Luc are united by their certainty that the chants at Saint-Gilbert are special. Gamache is “frightened” by their intensity, their single-minded focus. They, like him, are solving a mystery—but theirs is an origin point from the distant past. The Dominican, while he represents orthodoxy, shares the killer’s perspective—underlining Gamache’s anxiety about the ideological loyalties of the men around him.

“The music had swarmed over the abbot’s final defenses. Walls he didn’t realize he still had. And the notes, the neumes, the lovely voice had found the chord at Dom Philippe’s core. And for a few moments the abbot had known complete and utter bliss. Had resonated with love. Of God, of man. Of himself. Of all people and all things. But now all he heard was the sobbing in the stall beside him. Frère Luc had finally made his choice. He’d left the porterie and killed the prior.”

The abbot likens the new musical form to a seduction—a lowering of inhibitions, akin to sexual or romantic ecstasy. It dispels his initial anger and replaces it with love. Where the abbot experienced the new chant on a deep and spiritual level, connecting him to the universe, Frère Luc saw it as a shattering of his world, bringing him to ruin and moral destruction. These notes of tragedy replace the abbot’s earlier memories of the prior’s art.

“‘Then why didn’t you say anything?’ asked Francoeur. ‘Are you ashamed? Hoping it’ll be short lived? That your daughter’ll come to her senses? Maybe that’s why he wants to humiliate you, Inspector Beauvoir. Maybe that’s why he’s suspended you and wants to ship you off to rehab. In one coup-de-grâce he’ll end your career, and your relationship. Do you think she’ll want an addict for a husband?’ ‘We respected your privacy.’ Gamache ignored Francoeur and continued to speak only to Beauvoir. ‘We knew you’d tell us when you were ready. We couldn’t be happier. For both of you.’ ‘He’s not happy,’ said Francoeur. ‘Look at him. You can see it in his face.’”

Beauvoir’s final trial recalls the story of wolves from the abbey’s emblem: As Francoeur and Gamache speak over each other, one is Beauvoir’s savior and the other his damnation. Francoeur insists that Gamache wants Beauvoir “humiliated” professionally and personally, invoking the younger man’s greatest fears to convince Beauvoir to abandon his mentor. Gamache insists he respects Beauvoir and welcomes him as his daughter’s partner. Like the man in the parable, Beauvoir must choose which wolf to feed—unfortunately, this ends up being the one who supports his ongoing addiction.