The Beautiful Mystery

Gamache’s longtime lieutenant Beauvoir is in his 30s, athletic, energetic, and ambitious. He is less cerebral than his mentor and considers himself an empiricist in contrast to Gamache’s more psychological approach: “While the Chief followed feelings, Beauvoir followed facts. Cold and hard. But between the two men, together, they got there” (22). Beauvoir idolizes his mentor, looking at him as a father figure he deeply respects.

In The Beautiful Mystery, Beauvoir is still vulnerable from a recent shooting and his recovery from opioid addiction. He is newly energized by his relationship with Gamache’s daughter Annie, who brings much needed emotional stability and openness into his life, but he remains deeply traumatized by his past, particularly when a video of the shooting went viral, triggering his doubts about why Gamache left him wounded to continue the rescue attempt. These emotional fault lines allow the conniving Francoeur to break up the investigative team, playing on Beauvoir’s insecurity about Gamache’s true feelings about him and the class distinctions between the two men. Francoeur suggests Beauvoir is merely a tool for Gamache, and the self-abasing Beauvoir finds this convincing. Beauvoir’s continued struggles and ultimate recovery are a major theme of the subsequent work in the series, How the Light Gets In.

An older man who has been at Saint-Gilbert for much of his adult life, the abbot faces the possible destruction of his beloved community before the murder takes place: The abbey building is falling apart, and the monks are splitting into factions over the future of the beautiful Gregorian chants they prize above all else. The abbot favors seclusion and isolation, deciding not to release another chant recording and to maintain the order’s vow of silence. His entrenched position pleases those monks who see the order as a refuge from the world.

The abbot becomes a key source of information for Gamache about the history of the Gilbertines and the relationships in the abbey. Because he blames himself for not foreseeing and preventing the murder of the abbey’s prior, his close friend until their falling out over the recordings, the abbot is willing to fully cooperate with Gamache’s investigation and orders the flock to the do the same. Gamache eventually realizes that this guilt also causes the abbot to give himself a flimsy alibi.

The abbot never loses sight of his pastoral role. Ever after Frère Luc confesses to killing the prior, the abbot hears his confession and feels compassion for the young monk’s suffering: “[the prior] was human, and so was this young man” (366). The abbot has a profound faith in God and believes that adherence to tradition will preserve the community. 

The youngest monk and the newest arrival to Saint-Gilbert, Frère Luc has an extraordinarily beautiful singing voice and was recruited by the prior specifically to participate in the chant choir. Frère Luc holds the key to the monastery’s front door and spends his days in the small front room near the entrance, studying the Gregorian chants that are his great spiritual love. He is always “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” (26)—an emotional reaction to the fact that he murdered the prior for ostensibly committing sacrilege by authoring new Gregorian chants that didn’t adhere to tradition.

Frère Luc’s passion for the chants borders on the maniacal. Still, he is “paralyzed” (158) about whether to fully join the community because the prior whom he idolized turned out to be comfortable creating new music that Frère Luc objected to. With the help of Frère Sebastien, Gamache forces a confession out of Frère Luc by using the prior’s chants.

The abbot’s secretary, Frère Simon found the prior’s body as he did the gardening in the abbot’s private space. Frère Simon is devoted to the abbot and not particularly talkative. Eventually, though, Gamache uses the medical report’s hypothesis that the prior lived for some time after the attack to get Simon to admit that he heard what he imagined was the prior’s last word: “homo.” Frère Simon also concealed the murder weapon, a door knocker, which he finally shows to Gamache. Simon’s greatest fear was always for his abbot, and everything he did was meant to help the abbot in case he turned out to be the murderer.

One of the prior’s men, Frère Antoine attracts Beauvoir’s notice because he is so close to his own age and they share a love of hockey but otherwise lead such different lives. Frère Antoine believes that the abbot is a weak leader, calling him a “frightened old man, clinging to the past” (162). But the abbot shrewdly names Frère Antoine the new choirmaster in an effort to heal the rift between the various monk factions—showing that the abbot is a better leader than Frère Antoine gave him credit for. Antoine helps the abbot realize that the prior’s last words were “Ecce homo,” a Biblical allusion to Pontius Pilate’s insistence that Jesus was just a man like any other. Antoine’s faith disconcerts Beauvoir more after his relapse: Beauvoir argues that police work has done more good in the world, while Antoine points out that his faith has saved his soul.

The monastery doctor Frère Charles refuses to take sides in the community’s dispute, declaring that “a civil war is never civil” (210). Frère Charles insists that the monastery is fundamentally a place of healing where the entire community is recovering from trauma: “Our wounds were bound. The holes inside us were filled with faith” (277). A competent doctor with a state-of-the-art infirmary, Frère Charles takes particular note of Gamache’s hand tremor, a residue of his previous wounds, and tends to Beauvoir after his relapse, showing at least some prior familiarity with diagnosing overdose.

Francoeur is Gamache’s boss and his longtime adversary. Francoeur considers Gamache weak and incompetent, and resents his anticorruption efforts as they have contributed to Gamache’s popularity and made him more difficult to fire. The two frequently spar verbally and hold each other in contempt.

To maneuver around the cannier Gamache, Francoeur directs his machinations at the vulnerable Beauvoir, hoping to split up the team and thus have an easier time getting rid of Gamache. Francoeur skillfully preys on Beauvoir’s insecurities, telling him that Gamache is only using him and declaring, “I came here to save you. From him” (246). Francoeur further undermines Beauvoir’s stability by exposing him to the video of the warehouse raid, which makes Beauvoir doubt that Gamache is investigating who leaked the video. This seed of doubt completely unhinges Beauvoir, who no longer believes that Gamache cares about him or wants him to be Annie’s romantic partner. Francoeur pushes Beauvoir back into active addiction by slipping him OxyContin, promises that he does not need to go to rehab, and thus lures him away from Gamache and onto his own side.