The Beautiful Mystery

Beauvoir goes for a walk and finds Frère Bernard picking blueberries with unusual depth of flavor. The two discuss the ways the abbey map distorts reality. Frère Bernard likes Gamache, and asks Beauvoir about Francoeur. Beauvoir explains Gamache’s role in bringing down the corrupt former superintendent, Pierre Arnot, who was deliberately encouraging the murder of Cree natives as a matter of policy. Gamache arrested Arnot against orders, but the public outcry in the aftermath of the discovery meant that Francoeur now cannot remove Gamache without creating more scandal.

Beauvoir remembers Gamache nearly coming to blows with Francoeur after Francoeur publicly decorated Gamache for bravery as a backhanded insult: “Francoeur had done it to humiliate. Publicly rewarding Gamache for an action that had left so many Sûreté agents dead and wounded” (186). Beauvoir loathes the senior officer and is haunted by memories of his injury and addiction.

Beauvoir asks why Frère Bernard backed the abbot and not the prior. Frère Bernard had previously sought election as abbot but denies feeling any animosity. He insists that Frère Luc is not ready to be soloist and is particularly offended at the idea that the prior appointed soloists based on sexual attraction.