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

by Louise Penny

  “Bertha Baumgartner,” said Gabri again, clearly enjoying the sound of it.

  “Don’t you dare,” said Olivier. He turned to Clara and Myrna. “He’s been looking for another name to sign to the letter inviting Prime Minister Trudeau to the carnival. We suspect Gabri Dubeau is on the straight-to-garbage list.”

  “I have sent him a few letters,” admitted Gabri. “And a couple photographs.”

  “And?” said Olivier.

  “A lock of hair. In my defense,” said Gabri, “it was Olivier’s.”

  “What? You bastard.” Olivier touched his head. Already thinning, each blond strand was precious.

  When Myrna came back down from her loft twenty minutes later in warm dry clothes, she discovered that Gabri and Olivier were out clearing paths.

  “They’re not digging out Ruth?” Myrna said to Clara.

  It was like releasing a chimera. Not something done lightly. And very hard to put back, once out.

  “Afraid so. And feeding her too. They took over soup in a scotch bottle, hoping she won’t notice the difference.”

  “Ruth might not, but Rosa will.”

  The duck was discerning.

  “Where’re you going?” asked Clara, following her to the door.

  “To Armand’s. We’re going to read the will.”

  “Can I come?”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Yes, I’d far prefer to walk into a blizzard than sit by the fire with my book and a scotch.”

  “Thought so,” said Myrna as she yanked open the door. Bending into the wind, she trudged through the thick snow.

  She did not know Bertha but was growing to dislike her. Intensely.

  Armand stood in the study, the phone to his ear.

  He could just see, through gaps in the blowing snow, Myrna making her way around the village green to their home.

  Reine-Marie had told him the phone was dead, but he thought he’d just check to see if the line had been restored.

  It had not.

  He looked at his watch. It was one thirty in the afternoon but felt like midnight.

  Three and a half hours since he’d received the call while sitting in his car outside Bertha Baumgartner’s home. Three and a half hours since the angry exchange of words.

  Thinking of it conjured the smell of wet wool, the sound of snow tapping his car.

  He’d said he’d get back to them. Made them promise not to do anything until they heard from him. And now this.

  Reine-Marie greeted Myrna, and, after replacing the dead phone, Armand joined them in the warm kitchen, for soup, sandwiches, beer, and the reading of the will.

  “Heard on the radio that the blizzard’s all over southern Québec,” said Myrna, trying to repair her hat head. “But should blow itself out sometime in the night.”

  “That widespread?” asked Armand.

  Reine-Marie examined his face. Instead of concerned, he seemed relieved.

  The lights of Annie and Jean-Guy’s apartment in the Plateau quartier of Montréal flickered.

  They stopped what they were doing to stare at the overhead light.

  It wavered. Wavered.

  Then held.

  Annie and Jean-Guy exchanged glances and raised their brows, then went back to their conversation. Jean-Guy was telling her about his meeting that morning with the investigators.

  “Did they ask you to sign anything?” asked Annie.

  “How did you know about that?”

  “So they did?”

  He nodded.

  “Did you?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  Once again he saw the sheets of paper pushed across the table at him, and their expectant faces.

  “You were right. They have an agenda. I think your father might be facing more than suspension or even being fired.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t really know. They didn’t make any accusations, but they kept going back to the drugs. The ones he let through.”

  “They already knew about that,” said Annie. “He told them right away. Alerted cops across the country and into the States. The DEA got back the junk that crossed the border, right?”

  “With your father’s help, yes.”

  “And yours.”

  “Oui. But there’s a whole lot still missing. Kilos of it. Here. In Montréal. Somewhere. We’ve spent months looking. Using all our informants. And nothing. When that shit hits the streets . . .”

  He left it hanging there, not sure how to finish the sentence.

  “It’s terrible stuff, Annie.”

  “I know.”

  He shook his head. “You think you do, but you don’t. Think of the worst. The very worst.”

  She did.

  “That would be the very best that could happen,” he said.

  Annie smiled, thinking he was kidding. Certainly exaggerating. And then her smile faded.

  That bad.

  “I think they know there’s going to be a shitstorm once the stuff hits the streets. They need someone to blame.”

  “They?”

  “Them.” He lifted his hands. “I don’t know. I’m not good at this political crap. That was your dad’s job.”

  “But it is political?”

  “I think so. No one seems particularly worried about the poor sons of bitches who’re going to take the stuff. They’re all covering their own asses.”

  “Does Dad know?”

  “I think he suspects. But he’s still trying to get the stuff back. He isn’t looking in that direction. I honestly thought when I walked in there this morning that they were going to tell me they were ending the investigation and reinstating your father.”

  “Now what?” asked Annie.

  “I don’t know,” he said, leaning back heavily. “I’m tired of all this, Annie. I’ve had it.”

  “I know. It sucks. Thank you for sticking by Dad.”

  Jean-Guy nodded but didn’t say anything.

  He again heard Marie’s reassuring voice. All this will go away, Chief Inspector. Once you sign. Then you can get on with your life.

  CHAPTER 7

  Benedict, Myrna, and Armand stared down at the page in front of them.

  Then they looked up, and at each other.

  Then, as one, they turned to Lucien.

  “This’s a joke, right?” asked Myrna while, beside her, Armand took off his reading glasses and watched the notary.

  “I don’t understand,” said Benedict.

  “It’s all very clear,” said Lucien.

  “But it’s nonsense,” said Myrna. “It makes no sense.”

  Armand looked back down at the document in front of him. They’d finally reached the eighth section of the will, with the notary having read every preceding section, every clause, every word, in a sonorous voice. Given their exhaustion after the stresses of the morning, the meal they’d just had, the warmth from the woodstove, and now Lucien’s voice droning on, it was all they could do to remain conscious.

  Armand had noticed Benedict’s eyelids fluttering and his head drooping more than once, and then the young man had fought his way back to them. Opening his eyes wide, before the heavy lids slowly lowered again.

  But he was wide awake now. They all were.

  “It says here,” Myrna looked back down and put her finger under the line as she read, “I bequeath to my three children the sum of five million dollars each.’”

  She looked up again, hard at Lucien.

  “Five. Million. Dollars,” she repeated. “And that makes sense to you?”

  “Each,” Benedict pointed out. “That’s . . . fifteen million.”

  “Five million, fifteen million, a hundred million,” said Myrna. “It’s all the same. Nonsense.”

  “Maybe she meant Canadian Tire money,” said Benedict, trying to be helpful.

  It was not.

  “What’re we supposed to do with this?” Myrna asked.

  She gestured toward the will, the
n appealed to Armand, who looked at the notary and raised his brows.

  “Does she have it?” he asked.

  “Bertha Baumgartner?” asked Myrna. “Were we in the same house this morning? That woman, while apparently rich in imagination, was obviously not a multimillionaire.”

  “She might’ve been a . . . what’s the word?” said Benedict.

  “Miser?” asked Armand.

  “Lunatic,” said Benedict.

  “We haven’t finished yet,” said Lucien.

  His voice droned on, but now they were alert, following closely, as bequest followed bequest.

  Her home in Switzerland was to be sold, as was the building in Vienna. The proceeds to be divided among her children and grandchildren. With a million dollars going to the local animal shelter.

  “That’s nice,” said Benedict.

  Section 8, thought Armand, scanning the figures on the page. In the U.S. military that was the section for the mentally unfit. Benedict might have found exactly the right word.

  “‘The title will, of course,’” the notary read, “‘be passed to my eldest son, Anthony.’”

  “Huh?” said Myrna.

  By now words had failed her, and she could just make sounds.

  “Title?” asked Benedict. “What’s that?”

  “Must be the title to the property,” said Armand.

  All the lights in the kitchen flickered.

  All the people in the kitchen fell silent, staring up at the chandelier over the pine table. Willing it to stay on.

  But willing something to happen, as they were discovering with Madame Baumgartner, and having it happen were often two different things.

  The lights wavered again, then came back to full brightness.

  They looked at one another and breathed a sigh of relief.

  Then the lights, all at once, went out.

  No flicker this time. Just gone. And with it went all sound. No hum of the fridge, no rumble of the furnace. No tick of a clock. They sat at the kitchen table in silence.

  Sunlight still struggled through the windows of the kitchen. But it was weak. As though it had fought long and hard to get that far.

  Before it too died.

  Armand struck a match and lit the storm lamps at either end of the table while Myrna lit the candles on the kitchen island. Put there in case.

  “You okay?” Armand asked, going to the door between the kitchen and the living room.

  There he saw the fire in the hearth and one lantern already lit.

  “No worries,” said Reine-Marie. “And no surprise.”

  “We’re almost finished. Be with you in a few minutes.”

  He took two small logs off the neat pile in the kitchen and shoved them into the wood stove. It was now their main source of heat. There was no emergency, yet. But if this blackout lasted a long time, days even, and the temperature dropped still further, and the fire went out . . .

  “Well, this’s nice,” said Benedict, looking around at the pools of light.

  “Let’s call it a day,” said Armand, and when Lucien protested, Myrna hauled herself out of the chair and just left. Taking her beer into the living room to join Reine-Marie.

  Benedict followed.

  Armand held his arm out, inviting Lucien to join them. After a moment’s hesitation, he grudgingly got up.

  Once seated, Myrna asked, “How’re we supposed to liquidate a will that makes no sense? We can’t give away money that isn’t there.”

  “Madame Baumgartner overestimated her estate?” asked Reine-Marie.

  “By about twenty million,” said Myrna.

  Reine-Marie grimaced. “That is overshooting.”

  “We’re all assuming she didn’t have the money,” said Lucien. “Maybe she did.”

  “You think so?” asked Armand.

  “Conrad Cantzen.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Armand.

  “Conrad Cantzen,” the notary repeated. “My father told me about him. Monsieur Cantzen was a bit actor on Broadway back in the 1920s. He’d beg for money and go through the garbage for food, and when he died, he left a quarter of a million dollars. It’s a lot of money today. Back when he died, that was a fortune.”

  They were silent, absorbing this.

  “You just never know,” said Lucien.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Armand, are you awake?”

  “Hmmmm.”

  He turned over so that he was on his side, facing Reine-Marie. The air was chilly, but the duvet was warm. He reached under the covers for her hand.

  They’d moved their mattress down to the kitchen and were camped by the woodstove. So that they could get up in the night and feed more logs into it.

  “This afternoon, when you heard that the blizzard covered most of Québec, you seemed pleased.”

  “Relieved,” he admitted.

  “Why?”

  That, he thought, was harder to explain.

  Henri and Gracie, curled on the floor beside them, stirred, and then, with reassuring pats from Armand and Reine-Marie, they went back to sleep.

  “I needed to go to the Sûreté Academy yesterday afternoon, to a meeting,” Armand whispered. “I told them not to do anything until I arrived. Then the storm hit and the phones went out, and I was worried that they’d proceed without me. But with the blizzard being so big, I knew nothing could happen. They were snowed in too.”

  And he could relax. Knowing for the next number of hours, as the blizzard howled, the world was on hold. Frozen in place.

  In the hectic, often frantic pace of life, there was something deeply peaceful about not being able to do anything. No Internet, no phone, no TV. No lights.

  Life became simple, primal: Heat. Water. Food. Companionship.

  Armand crawled out of bed, feeling the chill immediately, as the warmth of the duvet slid off and the cold took hold.

  Stepping over the other mattress on the kitchen floor, he fed more split logs into the fire.

  Before returning to the warm bed, Armand stared out the mullioned windows into the darkness. Then bent and tucked the duvet around Reine-Marie.

  As he did that, a voice, sharp and unexpected, came to him out of the darkness.

  * * *

  The evening before, those who weren’t snowed in dug out those who were, clearing paths from homes to the road.

  Gabri and Olivier had been invited over to the Gamaches’ after they’d finished but had declined.

  “Want to keep the bistro open,” Olivier explained.

  “And we have unexpected guests at the B&B,” Gabri shouted into the battering wind. “Can’t get their cars out to drive home.”

  “Can’t find their cars.” Olivier used his shovel to point to the burial mounds around the village green.

  “Do you think we can get kids to do it? Convince them that it’s a game?” Gabri yelled into Olivier’s tuque. “Whoever digs a car out first wins a prize?”

  “The prize would have to be a brain,” said Olivier.

  A path had been shoveled to Ruth’s home, and Reine-Marie had knocked, but the old woman had refused to open the door.

  “Come to our place for dinner,” Reine-Marie shouted through it. “Bring Rosa. We have plenty of food.”

  “And drink?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, I don’t want to leave.”

  “Ruth, please. You shouldn’t be alone. Come over. We have scotch.”

  “I don’t know. The last bottle I had tasted strange.”

  Reine-Marie could hear the fear in her voice. An old woman leaving her home to venture into a blizzard. Every survival instinct screamed no. While Ruth Zardo was not well endowed with survival instincts, she still had managed to claw her way into her eighties.

  And not by walking into snowstorms.

  One by one over the course of the early evening, they’d gone over to Ruth’s, clearing the fresh snow ahead of them. And one by one they’d been rebuffed.

  “Okay, enough of this,” said
Armand, getting up.

  He grabbed a Hudson Bay blanket before heading to the door.

  “What’re you going to do?” asked Reine-Marie.

  “I’m going to get Ruth here, if I have to break down her door.”

  “You’re going to kidnap her?” asked Myrna.

  “Isn’t that against the law?” asked Reine-Marie.

  “It is,” said Lucien, who had no ear for sarcasm. “Who’s this Ruth? Why’s she so important?”

  “She’s a person,” said Armand, his parka and boots now on.

  “But is she really?” Myrna mouthed to Reine-Marie.

  “You do know if you kidnap her, no one will pay the ransom,” said Reine-Marie. “And we’ll be stuck with her.”

  “Ruth’s not so bad,” said Myrna. “It’s the duck that worries me.”

  “Duck?” asked Lucien.

  “I’ll go with you, sir,” said Benedict.

  “You don’t think I can take her on my own?” asked Armand with some amusement.

  “Her, yes,” said Benedict. “But the duck?”

  Armand looked at him for a moment, then laughed. Unlike Lucien, Benedict had slipped easily into the stream of conversation. Understanding what was banter and what was important.

  Benedict got his boots, parka, tuque, and mitts on, and Gamache opened the door. Only to step back in surprise.

  Ruth was standing there, covered in snow. Her heavy winter coat bulging and squirming.

  “I hear there’s scotch,” she said, walking past them as though they were the guests and she the owner of the place.

  As she walked, she dropped tuque, mitts, coat on the floor. And left puddles from her huge boots.

  “Who’re they?” Ruth used Rosa to indicate Lucien and Benedict.

  Reine-Marie introduced them. “They’re not drinking scotch,” she said, rightly assuming that was all Ruth really wanted to know.

  A buffet of bread, cheese, cold chicken, roast beef, and pastries had been set out on the dining table at the far end of the living room, with storm lanterns and candles placed on it.

  “Does the name Bertha Baumgartner mean anything to you?” Armand asked Ruth as he handed her a plate he’d made for her and joined her on the sofa.

  “No,” said Ruth.

  Myrna stepped from the buffet table long enough to whisper into Armand’s ear. “Unless it’s Johnnie Walker or Glenfiddich, she’s not interested. Watch and learn.”