Then his eyes slowed and he stared longer at one. Then the other.
When he lifted his eyes there was the spark of discovery in them, and the abbot smiled, as he might to a bright postulant.
“The neumes are different,” said Gamache. “No, not different. But there’re more of them on the page we found on the prior. Far more. Now that I see the two examples side-by-side it seems obvious. The one in your notebook, copied from the original, has just a few neumes per line. But the one we found on the prior is thick with them.”
“Exactly.”
“So, what does it mean?”
“Again, I can’t be sure,” the abbot leaned over the yellowed page. “Neumes serve only one purpose, Chief Inspector. To give direction. Up, down, fast, slow. They’re signs, signals. Like the hands of a conductor. I think whoever wrote this means for there to be many voices, going in different directions. This isn’t plainchant. This is complex chant, multi-layered chant. It’s also quite fast, a strong tempo. And…”
Now the abbot hesitated.
“Yes?”
“As I say, I’m not exactly the resident expert. Mathieu was that. But I think this was also meant to have music. I think one of the lines of neumes is for an instrument.”
“And that would be different from Gregorian chants?”
“It would make it a new creature. Something never heard before.”
Gamache studied the yellowed page.
How odd, he thought, that monks never seen should possess something never heard.
And one of them, their prior, had been found dead, curled around it in the fetal position. Like a mother, protecting an unborn child. Or a brother-in-arms, curled around a grenade.
He wished he knew which it was. Divine or damned?
“Is there an instrument here?”
“There’s a piano.”
“A piano? Were you planning to eat it, or wear it?”
The abbot laughed. “One of the monks arrived with it years ago and we hadn’t the heart to send it back.” The abbot smiled. “We’re dedicated to Gregorian chants, passionate about them, but the fact is, we love all church music. Many of the brothers are fine musicians. We have recorders and violins. Or are they fiddles? I’m never sure what the difference is.”
“One sings, the other dances,” said Gamache.
The abbot looked at him with interest. “What a nice way of putting it.”
“A colleague told me that. I learned a great deal from him.”
“Would he like to become a monk?”
“I’m afraid he’s beyond that now.”
The abbot again correctly interpreted the look on Gamache’s face, and didn’t press.
Gamache picked up the page. “I don’t suppose you have a photocopy machine?”
“No. But we have twenty-three monks.”
Gamache smiled and handed it over to the abbot. “Can you have it transcribed? If you can make a copy that would be helpful, so I don’t need to keep carrying around the original. And perhaps one of you could transcribe the neumes into musical notes? Is that possible?”
“We can try.” Dom Philippe called his secretary over and explained what was needed.
“Transcribe it to musical notes?” Simon asked. He looked not very optimistic. The Eeyore of the monastery.
“Eventually. Just copy it for now so we can give the original back to the Chief Inspector. As accurately as possible, of course.”
“Of course,” said Simon. The abbot turned away, but Gamache caught the flash of a sour look on Simon’s face. Aimed at the abbot’s back.
Was he the abbot’s man after all? the Chief wondered.
Gamache glanced through the leaded-glass window. It made the world outside look slightly distorted. But still he yearned to step into it. And stand in the sunshine. Away, even briefly, from this interior world of subtle glances and vague alliances. Of notes and veiled expressions.
Of vacant looks, and ecstasy.
Gamache longed to walk around the abbot’s garden. No matter how tilled and weeded and pruned it was, that control was an illusion. There was no taming nature.
And then he realized what had made him uncomfortable earlier, when he’d first seen the plan of the monastery.
He looked at it again.
The walled gardens. On the plan they were all the same size. But in reality, they weren’t. The abbot’s garden was much smaller than the animalerie. But on the plan they appeared exactly the same size.
The original architects had distorted the drawing. The perspectives were off.