Kingdom of the Blind (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #14)

by Louise Penny

  And then, the warmth too painful, she got up and walked back into the cold. In search of a drug so new, so powerful, it could take her away, far away, from there. Forever.

  * * *

  Reine-Marie found Armand nodding by the fire.

  On seeing her, he roused and told her about Benedict. “I need to stay here.”

  “Oui,” she said, and, after adjusting the pillow and blankets, she pulled up a chair and sat beside him. Holding his hand and talking softly about Honoré. About their granddaughters in Paris. About Gracie and Henri.

  Until he fell into a deep and peaceful sleep.

  CHAPTER 19

  The sun was streaming through the mullioned windows of the bistro, hitting the wide-plank floors, the comfortable chairs, the pine tables. The patrons.

  But it didn’t quite reach into the far corner, beside the large open fireplace, where Myrna, Benedict, and Armand sat with Lucien.

  Armand had called the notary and asked him to meet them there and to bring some documents with him.

  The notary listened, his face getting more and more slack as Myrna and Benedict related what had happened the day before.

  “The house I was just in?” he asked when they’d finished. “Fell down?”

  “Yes, we’re feeling much better,” said Myrna, responding to a question unasked. “Some bruising, but the bath last night helped. Thank you.”

  Lucien looked at her, puzzled.

  They sat in wing chairs, their breakfasts and cafés au lait in front of them. Beside them the fire roared, fed by large maple logs.

  “A body was found when the farmhouse fell,” said Armand. “It was Anthony Baumgartner.”

  The notary’s eyes widened. “Monsieur Baumgartner? He’s dead?”

  “Oui.”

  “But we were just with him.”

  “He must’ve gone to the house after we left,” said Myrna.

  “But why?” asked Lucien.

  “We don’t know.”

  Gamache had decided not to tell them, yet, that Beauvoir was investigating it as a homicide. The longer that could be kept quiet, the fewer people who knew, the less guarded that people would be.

  It would come out soon enough.

  “Did Monsieur Baumgartner say anything to you after we left, about going to the house?” asked Gamache.

  Lucien shook his head. “No, nothing. We just made small talk while I organized the papers. I didn’t stay long, but it all seemed normal.”

  Both Myrna and Armand knew that Lucien might not be the best judge of what was normal human interaction. But even he would’ve noticed a fight breaking out.

  “Do you know why they were replaced as liquidators in their mother’s will?” Gamache asked.

  “Not a clue,” said Lucien. “And we don’t really know that they were ever liquidators. They thought they were, but who knows?”

  “Your father would’ve known,” said Myrna. “And there must be an old will around.”

  “If there is, I don’t know about it.”

  “Did you bring his papers with you?” Armand asked.

  When he’d called the notary, Gamache had asked him to go through his father’s files and bring anything relating to the Baumgartners. Now Lucien placed a neat pile of papers on the table.

  “Your father wasn’t the notary for Anthony Baumgartner, was he?” asked Gamache, putting on his reading glasses.

  “No. Just for the mother.”

  “Have you read what’s in there?” Gamache asked, pointing to the stack.

  He blinked a few times and squinted a little, trying to get his still-blurry eyes to clear.

  When he woke up that morning, he found that while his body was stiff and sore from the events in the collapsing house, his eyes were less irritated. But still the words in front of him refused to come into sharp focus, and he struggled to read.

  “No,” said Lucien. “I didn’t have to. I’ve found what we’re looking for.”

  “An old will?” asked Myrna.

  “A very old will,” said Lucien. “But not one belonging to Madame Baumgartner. This’s one I found when I did my own search. I believe I know why Bertha Baumgartner called herself ‘Baroness.’”

  Myrna turned in her chair to fully face him. Armand removed his reading glasses. And Benedict, after taking a huge bite of toasted buttered brioche, leaned forward.

  Lucien paused, enjoying the moment.

  “Oh for God’s sake, just tell us,” snapped Myrna.

  The moment, it seemed, had passed.

  “Fine. After our meeting with the family yesterday, and the extraordinary provisions of the will, I decided to try something. I did a will search under ‘Kinderoth.’ It took me a while, but I finally came on this.”

  He picked up a sheet of paper from the top of the pile and handed it to Myrna.

  It was a printout of an old document, written in longhand with official-looking stamps all over it.

  “This’s in German,” she said.

  “Yes. I read a little,” said Lucien. “It seems to be a case contesting the will of one Shlomo Kinderoth. The Baron Kinderoth.”

  Myrna’s eyes widened, and she gave Armand a meaningful look, then handed him the paper.

  He studied it, squinting, then handed it to Benedict and took off his glasses. “Does the date at the top of that say 1856?”

  “It does. This”—Lucien grabbed it from Benedict and held it up—“is a printout of the original filing in a court in Vienna in 1856. Seems Shlomo Kinderoth left everything to his two sons.”

  “Yes,” said Myrna.

  “Equally.”

  “Oui,” said Armand.

  “I’m not putting this well,” said Lucien, and no one contradicted him. “He left everything to his twin sons. Both men inherited the title as well as his wealth, which was, according to the filing, vast. Estates in Switzerland. Homes in Vienna and Paris—”

  “Wait,” said Myrna, holding up her hand. “Are you saying he left the same thing to both?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But how can he?”

  “He can’t. That’s the thing,” said Lucien, enjoying himself now. “That’s how all this started. I guess they didn’t get along. They sued each other.”

  “And?” asked Benedict.

  “And nothing. It was never resolved.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Benedict.

  “You’re not saying the will is still being contested,” said Myrna. “That’s a hundred and fifty years ago.”

  “One hundred and sixty-one,” said Lucien. “And no, of course I’m not saying that. The Austrians are almost as efficient as the Germans. No, this would’ve been decided long ago. I just haven’t found the judgment yet.”

  “But we can assume it wasn’t in favor of Madame Baumgartner’s side of the family,” said Armand.

  “Then why would she believe she was entitled to it?” asked Myrna

  But even as she asked that, and saw Armand’s grim face, she knew the idiocy of her question.

  Bertha Baumgartner clung to that belief because she wanted to. It served her purposes.

  The Baroness lived in a fantasy world, where the fork in the road favored her. A world where she was both victim and heiress. A baroness cleaning woman. A walking Victorian melodrama.

  How many clients had Myrna sat across from as they complained about having been “done wrong”? Whose grip on grievances was so tight it strangled reason. They’d give up sanity before giving up these injustices.

  In some cases, in some people, it went on for years and years. The thorn planted firmly in their side. And while Dr. Landers had listened, guided, made suggestions on how to try to let their pain go, still they’d let it fester, until she’d finally realized some clients didn’t want freedom from their resentments, they wanted validation.

  Entitlement was, she knew, a terrible thing. It chained the person to their victimhood. It gobbled up all the air around it. Until the person lived in a vacuum, where nothi
ng good could flourish.

  And the tragedy was almost always compounded, Myrna knew. These people invariably passed it on from generation to generation. Magnified each time.

  The sore point became their family legend, their myth, their legacy. What they lost became their most prized possession. Their inheritance.

  Of course, if they lost, then someone else had won. And they had a focus for their wrath. It became a blood feud for the bloodline.

  Myrna looked at Armand, who had taken back the document from Lucien and written something on it.

  “So she thought her side of the family got screwed,” said Benedict.

  Myrna compressed her lips. All her psychology classes, her Ph.D., her years of study and work, and this young man put it more succinctly than she could.

  Bertha thought her family had been screwed. For generations.

  “What do you think, Armand?” Myrna asked.

  “The sins I was told were mine from birth,” he remembered Ruth’s obscure poem, “and the Guilt of an old inheritance.”

  “There’s a reason Anthony Baumgartner went into that farmhouse,” he said.

  “Maybe he just missed his mother,” said Benedict.

  Maybe, thought Gamache.

  There was, after all, something precious in the house. The one thing that couldn’t be stripped away.

  The place was filled with memories.

  He saw again the growth chart. And the photograph in Anthony’s home, of the three children in the garden of flowers, beautiful and treacherous.

  Armand Gamache knew that memories weren’t just precious, they were powerful. Charged with emotions both beautiful and treacherous.

  Who knew what lived on in that rotten old home?

  Gamache studied the printout again. It was written in German, so he couldn’t understand much. And he could barely read the writing anyway.

  Is this what started it all? A crazy will written one hundred and sixty years ago. And another, equally crazy one, read two days ago?

  “Where was Madame Baumgartner when she died?”

  “In a seniors’ home. The Maison Saint-Rémy,” said the notary. “Why?”

  “Cause of death?” Armand asked.

  “Heart failure,” said Lucien. “It’s on her death certificate in your dossier. Why?” he asked again.

  “But there was no autopsy?”

  “Of course not. She was an elderly woman who died of natural causes.”

  “Armand?” asked Myrna, but he just gave her a quick smile.

  “Do you mind if I take this?” He picked up the printout.

  “I do,” said Lucien. “I need it for my files.”

  “Désolé, but I shouldn’t have put it in the form of a question,” said Gamache, folding it up and putting it into his breast pocket. “I’m sure you can print out another copy.”

  He got up and turned to Myrna. “Is your bookstore open?”

  “It’s unlocked,” she said. “Comes to the same thing. Help yourself.”

  Armand spent the next few minutes browsing the shelves of Myrna’s New and Used Bookstore before he found what he wanted. Leaving money next to the till, he put the book into his coat pocket.

  When he returned to the bistro, he saw Billy Williams heading to his truck.

  “He shouldn’t be driving,” said Myrna, going to the door. “With his bad ankle.”

  She called to him, and, as Gamache watched, Billy turned, saw Myrna, and smiled.

  “He’s a nice man,” said Armand. “A good man.”

  “A handy person to have around,” she said. “That’s for sure.”

  They watched as Billy approached the bistro. And while Armand couldn’t understand a word Billy Williams said, he did understand the look on his face.

  And he wondered if Myrna saw what he did.

  CHAPTER 20

  Jean-Guy Beauvoir stared down at the body of Anthony Baumgartner as the coroner went over the autopsy results.

  Unlike Gamache, Beauvoir had not seen him in life, but still he could tell that Baumgartner had been a handsome, distinguished-looking man. There was about him, even now, an air of authority. Which was unusual in a corpse.

  “An otherwise healthy fifty-two-year-old man,” said Dr. Harris. “You can see the wound to the skull.”

  Both Gamache and Beauvoir leaned in, though it was perfectly obvious even from a distance.

  “Any idea what did it?” asked Gamache, stepping back.

  “I’d say, by the shape of it, a piece of wood. Something similar to a two-by-four, with a sharp edge, but bigger, heavier. It would’ve been swung like a bat.” She mimicked a swing. “Hitting him on the side of the head, with enough force to do that sort of damage. Not as easy as you might think, to cave in a skull. What is it?”

  Gamache was frowning.

  “Are you sure it was done before the building collapsed?”

  It was, of course, a vital question. One was accident. One was murder.

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  His eyes, still bloodshot and watery, watched her closely.

  Dr. Harris sighed, and, stripping off her surgical gloves, she tossed them into the garbage can.

  She knew Chief Superintendent Gamache and Inspector Beauvoir well. Well enough to call them Armand and Jean-Guy. Over drinks.

  But over a body they were Chief Superintendent, Chief Inspector, and Doctor.

  She didn’t take offense at being pushed on this point. The Chief was a careful man, and nowhere was that care more necessary than in tracking down a killer.

  And while she knew that Gamache was still on suspension, she’d continued to consider him head of the Sûreté, until someone forced her not to.

  “Anthony Baumgartner had been dead at least half an hour before the place came down. I can tell by the condition of his organs and the internal bleeding. Besides, he was hit on the side of the head. A building doesn’t normally collapse sideways.”

  “I’m going to make a call,” said Chief Inspector Beauvoir, pulling out his cell phone and stepping away.

  “There were two collapses, is that right?” Dr. Harris asked Gamache.

  “Yes. A partial one sometime in the night and then the final one yesterday afternoon.”

  “The one you were caught in,” she said. “That revealed the body.”

  “Oui.”

  He explained, briefly.

  “Sit down,” said Dr. Harris, indicating a stool.

  “Why?”

  “So I can flush your eyes out.”

  “I’m fine, they’re getting better.”

  “Do you want to go blind?”

  “Good God, no. Is that a possibility?”

  She could see he was genuinely shocked.

  “Remote, but who knows what material was in that building? The sooner you can get all the grit out, the better. It’s possible it’s scratching the retina. Or worse, getting behind the eyeball.”

  He sat, and she leaned into his face, first taking a close look at his eyes, and then she brought the water up and squirted. He winced away as the water hit.

  “Sorry, should have warned you it would sting.”

  When she’d finished, he grimaced, widening, then blinking his eyes.

  “Don’t rub,” she warned, and took a good look in both eyes, finally clicking off the light on the instrument. “Better. Much better.”

  They didn’t feel better. Now he could barely see, and his eyes were both irritated and painful. He sat on his hands.

  “What did you say to him?” asked Beauvoir, returning from a call. “You’ve made him cry.”

  Dr. Harris laughed. “I told him the bistro had run out of croissants.”

  “Are you trying to kill the man?” asked Jean-Guy.

  “Enough. I can still hear, you know,” said Gamache. His sight was coming back and the irritation subsiding. “What did Inspector Dufresne say?”

  “They’re going over the wreckage, looking for the weapon,” said Beauvoir. “And trying to work out w
here he was when he was killed.”

  “What do they think?” asked Gamache.

  “Dufresne thinks probably in a second-floor bedroom. When the roof finally collapsed, it brought his body with it. That’s what it looks like now.”

  Dr. Harris walked to the sink while Armand returned to the metal autopsy table. Clasping his hands behind his back, he stared down at Anthony Baumgartner.

  So unlike his mother, who looked like an elderly British character actress playing a monarch in a comedy.

  This man appeared to be the real thing. Even in death there was something almost noble about Anthony Baumgartner. Gamache wondered, in passing, who the title went to now. Caroline or Hugo?

  Did primogeniture apply to fictional titles?

  He picked up the white sheet and replaced it over Anthony Baumgartner’s face.

  And still the Chief Superintendent considered the sheet, and what was under it, for a long moment before he spoke.

  “Do you think this was meant to look like an accident?”

  “That seems pretty obvious,” said Beauvoir. “Yes. We’re supposed to think he was killed when the house fell down. And we might have, if Benedict hadn’t been there and said there was no one else in there. No one living, anyway.”

  “True. But for it to look like an accident, the farmhouse had to fall down.”

  “Well, yes,” said Dr. Harris, glancing over her shoulder from the sink.

  But Beauvoir returned to the table, looking first at the Chief, then down at the white sheet.

  “That’s true,” he said. Understanding what it was that Gamache meant.

  It wasn’t just a simple statement of fact. It was a vital element of the investigation.

  Then Dr. Harris, drying her hands, turned around, and Jean-Guy could see that she also understood what Gamache was saying.

  “How did the killer know the house would collapse?” asked the coroner.

  “There’s only one way,” said Beauvoir.

  “He had to make it fall,” said Gamache.

  “And there’s only one person in the picture right now who might be able to do that,” said Beauvoir.

  Gamache stepped away from the body and put in a call.

  * * *

  After listening to Chief Superintendent Gamache, Isabelle Lacoste considered for a moment.