by Louise Penny
Walking and talking.
They shook hands.
Anthony, Caroline, and Hugo.
Tall, fine-boned. The healthy complexions of people who ate well and looked after themselves.
Except Hugo.
He seemed to take after his mother. He was short, round, ruddy. A duckling among swans. Though, really, he more resembled a toad.
At fifty-two, Anthony Baumgartner was the oldest, followed by Caroline and finally Hugo. Although Hugo seemed much older than the others, with features that looked like they’d been worn down by the elements. A sandstone statue left out too long. His hair was iron-gray. Not the distinguished gray-at-the-temples of Anthony or the soft dyed-blond of Caroline.
Anthony held himself with ease and even a certain grace. But it was Caroline who’d moved forward first, her hand extended.
“Welcome, Chief Superintendent,” she said, using his rank though he himself had not. Her voice was warm, almost musical. “We didn’t realize my mother knew you. She never mentioned it.”
“Which was strange, for her,” said Hugo. His voice was unexpectedly deep, rich. If a trench in the earth could speak, it might sound like this man.
“We never actually met,” said Armand. “None of us knew your mother.”
“Really?” said Anthony, looking from one to the other. “Then why are you liquidators?”
“We were hoping you could tell us,” said Myrna.
The siblings consulted one another, perplexed.
“To be honest,” said Anthony, “we thought we were the liquidators. Came as a surprise when Maître Mercier here called.”
“Well, the Baroness must’ve had her reasons,” said Caroline. “She always did. There must be a connection.”
“Madame Landers and I live in a village called Three Pines,” said Gamache. “I believe your mother worked there.”
“That’s right,” said Hugo. “She said it was a funny little village in a sort of divot in the ground.”
He cupped his hand as he spoke.
While the word “divot” didn’t make it sound attractive, the actual gesture did. His strong hand cupped was suggestive not of emptiness but of holding something precious. Water in a drought. Wine at a celebration. Or some creature, near extinction, that needed protection.
And it struck Armand how very expressive this rough man was. With a small, common gesture, he’d conjured a world of meaning.
Like Armand, Myrna was watching these people closely. Not with any suspicion, more a professional interest in dynamics. Of groups. Of families. And what happened when strangers came into their midst.
These three seemed comfortable with one another. Though there was a hierarchy, with Anthony clearly at the top.
“Would you like something to drink?” Caroline asked their guests. “Coffee, tea? Something stronger perhaps.”
“I think we should get started,” said Lucien.
“I’ll take a beer,” said Hugo, and went into the kitchen.
“A tea would be nice,” said Myrna, and Armand agreed.
“I’ll take a beer too, if you’re offering,” said Benedict.
Caroline and Anthony followed Hugo into the kitchen while Armand joined Myrna at the bookcase.
“You said there was something I need to hear. What is it?”
“It’s about the Baroness. Why she’s called that.”
“Yes?”
Myrna gave him such a pained expression he wondered if she wasn’t in some sudden acute agony. Which, it turned out, she was, though not the physical kind.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why not? You just said I had to hear it.”
“You do, but you have to hear it from them.” She tilted her head toward the kitchen. “It’s kinda amazing. I wonder if it’s true.”
“Oh come on,” said Armand. “Now you’re just being annoying.”
“Sorry, but actually, they didn’t get to the full story before you arrived.” She looked toward the kitchen again. “What do you make of them?”
“The Baumgartners?” He glanced over there too. “I have no real opinion yet. They seem nice enough. You?”
“I’m always looking for psychosis,” Myrna admitted. “Too many years digging around people’s brains. If you search long enough and deep enough, you’re sure to find something. Even in the most well balanced of people.”
She gave him a meaningful look and he grinned.
“I’m glad it’s their turn now. And? Have you unearthed any psychosis in these nice people?”
“None. Which I find quite unsettling.”
He laughed. “Not to worry. If anything can expose craziness, it’s a will.”
“We already have plenty of that,” she agreed. “Do you think they’re upset that we’re the liquidators?”
“I’m not sure. They were certainly surprised. I wonder why their mother didn’t tell them they’d been replaced.”
“I wonder why she did it,” said Myrna, glancing through the open door into the kitchen. “Do you think one of them’s a little off?” She lifted her hand to her temple and rotated it. “But she felt she couldn’t just drop him, so she replaced them all?”
“Him? Do you have someone in mind? Hugo, maybe?”
“Because he looks the part? Poor fellow, imagine being raised with two gorgeous siblings. It could warp a person. But my money’s on Anthony.”
Armand watched the three Baumgartners prepare the refreshments. Caroline and Anthony together making the tea and putting out cookies. Hugo alone, farther down the counter, pouring two beers.
On the surface, friendly. And yet they barely said a word to one another.
“Why Anthony?” he asked.
“Because he doesn’t look the part. I’m always suspicious of people who seem too well balanced.”
“Sometimes a cigar . . .” said Armand, to Myrna’s laugh.
He noticed something behind her, on the bookcase, and reached to pick it up.
It was a small photo. The silver frame was tarnished, and the black-and-white snapshot had faded, but he knew who they were and where it was taken.
The three Baumgartner children, two skinny, one plump, arms lazily slung over one another’s shoulders, stood in front of the farmhouse. It was summer, and they wore sagging bathing suits and huge, toothy grins.
Behind them, in the garden, he saw tall spires of foxglove and the easily identified monkshood.
“What’s that?” He pointed to another clump.
“Huh,” said Myrna. “The Baroness must’ve been quite a gardener. I didn’t think that would grow here, but I guess the house protects it. Or maybe she planted it as an annual. That’s deadly nightshade. Also known as belladonna.”
Armand replaced the photo of the three kids, growing like weeds amid the poisonous plants.
“Here you go,” said Caroline as Anthony carried in a tray with tea things and Hugo followed with the beers.
It did seem his natural place, Gamache was beginning to see. A few steps behind his brother and sister. Separated from them. Just a little. Close enough to see their closeness but far enough away not to be included.
“Can we continue?” asked Lucien, who’d refused all offer of refreshments.
“I think we need to back up a bit, now that Armand is here,” said Myrna. “He didn’t hear what Caroline said just before he arrived.”
“It’s not pertinent,” said Lucien. “We’re here to read the will and that’s all.”
“You were telling us why your mother liked to be called Baroness,” Myrna prompted Caroline.
“Liked?” Anthony threw another log on the fire. “She didn’t ‘like’ to be called Baroness, she insisted.”
He settled back into his chair.
Caroline turned to face their guests, tucking her skirt in. Her knees together, her ankles crossed. The doyenne entertaining.
“Our mother called herself Baroness because she was one.”
Armand stared at her, then at the other
s. His mouth didn’t exactly drop open, but his eyes certainly widened.
Myrna turned to him. She was beaming. If she could have combusted with pleasure, she would have. What had started as a chore, accepting to be the liquidator of a stranger’s will, was quickly becoming not just entertaining but kinda wonderful.
A baroness, her glowing eyes said. A noble cleaning woman. Does it get better than this?
Across from them the Baumgartner siblings had their own reactions. Anthony seemed to share the joke and had raised his brows in a Parents. What can you do? expression.
Caroline was composed, but her complexion betrayed her. Little pink patches had appeared on her cheeks.
And Hugo—
“She might be,” he said. “We don’t know.”
“I think we do,” said Anthony. “Some things just have to be faced, Hug. No matter how unpleasant.”
He pronounced it as “Oog” and was staring at his brother.
“I’ve never met a real baroness,” said Benedict. “This’s kinda cool.”
“And you still haven’t,” Myrna pointed out.
“Why would she think she’s a baroness?” asked Armand.
“Well, among other things, there’s the family name,” said Anthony.
“Baumgartner?” asked Benedict.
“No,” said Caroline. “That was our father’s name. Her maiden name was Bauer. But her grandfather, our great-grandfather, was a Kinderoth.”
She looked at them intently, apparently expecting something.
“Kinderoth,” Hugo repeated.
“We heard,” Myrna said. “Is there something you’re trying to say?”
Benedict’s eyes were narrowed, and his lips moved as he lifted his fingers. Obviously trying to work out the relationship.
“Kinderoth,” he finally said. “Child roth.”
“Child roth,” Armand repeated, then paused. “Roth child? Rothschild?”
Hugo nodded.
“That’s ludicrous,” said Lucien with a snort. Then he looked at the Baumgartner siblings. “You’re not saying that Bertha Baumgartner was a Rothschild?”
Anthony leaned back in his chair, apparently distancing himself from the claim.
Caroline looked politely defiant, as though daring them to challenge it. And Hugo looked triumphant.
“Yes.”
“The Rothschilds?” asked Myrna. “The banking family? Worth billions?”
“Well, a branch of the family,” said Caroline. “The one that came to Canada in the 1920s and decided to invest everything in the stock market.”
“They were the lucky ones,” said Anthony. “They at least got out.”
“And there was no ‘everything,’” said Hugo. “They came here because it’d all been stolen from them. Us.”
“Enough,” said Anthony, lifting his hand. “We’ve been through this all our lives. It hounded our parents, our grandparents. It drove them near mad with resentment. Let’s just stop.”
“Anthony’s right,” said Caroline. “Even if it’s true, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Maman said—” Hugo began.
“Maman was an embittered old woman who made things up to make her feel better about cleaning other people’s toilets,” she said. “She raised us with love and bile and made us promise to continue the fight. But we were children when we made that promise.”
“Kinder,” said Benedict.
Caroline looked at him with some annoyance.
“How do you know that word?” asked Myrna.
“Kinder?” said Benedict. “My girlfriend’s family is German. Besides, I went to kindergarten. Didn’t everyone?”
Kindergarten, thought Gamache, and glanced over at the bookshelf where the tarnished frame sat. The photo of children in a deadly garden.
“We’re not German,” said Hugo. “Austrian.”
“Ahh,” said Benedict, then he lowered his voice. “Were they convicts?”
“Of course not,” said Caroline.
They stared at him for a moment before Myrna got it.
“Not Australian. Austrian. Like the von Trapp family.” When he looked blank, she went on. “The Sound of Music? ‘The hills are alive’? Help me, Armand.”
“Oh I think you’re doing just fine.”
From off to his left, he heard the thin strains of a voice singing, “ ‘Edelweiss, edelweiss . . .’” before it petered out.
They looked over, and Hugo dropped his head, apparently studying his hands.
“Maman used to sing it to us,” Anthony explained. “We must have watched that movie a hundred times.”
Armand had seen the movie too. More times than he could count, with his children. And now his grandchildren. And he’d sung that haunting song to them as they fell asleep.
Edelweiss. Their heavy lids would close. Edelweiss.
“Can we continue?” asked Lucien. He handed around copies of Bertha Baumgartner’s will to her children, while the liquidators brought out their own copies.
“Please turn to page fifteen,” said Lucien. “I’ll go over the highlights. She leaves each of her three children five million dollars, as well as buildings in Geneva and Vienna.”
“And the title goes to the eldest son,” said Lucien, speaking earnestly, as though the title actually existed. He looked at Anthony. “To you.”
“Merci,” he said.
It could have come out as sarcastic, but instead he just sounded sad. And he wasn’t alone. Armand looked at the others. Their sorrow was palpable.
The Baroness might’ve been delusional. Might’ve even been bitter. But she loved these three, and they loved her.
Lucien read the rest of the document, and when he’d finished, he looked at them.
“Any questions?”
Benedict raised his hand.
“From the family,” said Lucien.
“How does this work?” Caroline asked. “Given that none of this exists?”
“And what about what does exist?” asked Anthony. “She had some small investments, a little in the bank. The home? We didn’t sell it while she was alive. Out of respect. She always hoped maybe she’d return.”
“I’m glad you mentioned the farmhouse,” said Gamache. “We were there yesterday. It’s in pretty bad shape and should probably be torn down.”
“No,” said Hugo. “I’m sure it can be saved.”
Armand shook his head. “It’s too dangerous. Especially with the weight of this snow. I’m afraid I’m going to have to make a call to have it inspected and possibly condemned.”
“That’s fine with me,” said Caroline. “We can just sell the land. Maman hadn’t lived there for a couple of years. I have no sentimental attachment.”
“You grew up there?” asked Myrna.
It was rare that kids, no matter how old they were, held absolutely no attachment to their childhood home. Unless it had been an unhappy place.
“Your father—” she began.
“What about him?” asked Anthony.
“Your mother was widowed, it says in the will.”
“Yes, he died thirty years ago.”
“Thirty-two,” said Hugo.
“Accident on the farm,” said Caroline. “He was run over by the combine while haying.”
Myrna winced, and while Armand’s professional face held, his mind conjured the image.
“Tony found him,” said Hugo. “Went out looking when he didn’t come in for lunch. He died right away. Probably didn’t feel a thing.”
“Probably not,” said Armand, and hoped his tone didn’t betray what he really thought.
“That’s when the Baroness went out to work,” said Caroline. “Had to support us.”
“I got a job bagging groceries at the IGA,” said Anthony. “And, Caroline, you went out babysitting.”
“Remember when that couple hired you to look after their goats?” asked Hugo with a laugh.
“Oh Jesus, yeah,” said Anthony, also laughing, as was Caroline. �
�You’d put up a notice in the church hall saying you loved kids and would like to look after them.”
“Hey, those kids were way better behaved than the human ones,” said Caroline. Relaxing back in her seat, her smile wide, her eyes gleaming.
“Except when they kicked,” said Hugo. “I remember going with you a few times to help.”
He rubbed his shins.
“They just didn’t like you.”
Armand listened as the brothers and their sister went over clearly familiar ground. Part of the family liturgy. The same stories, told over and over. They looked, for a moment, like the children in the photo.
For his part, Armand kept his eyes on Anthony Baumgartner.
He must have been all of sixteen when he found his father in the field.
That was a sight that could never be unseen. A memory that would take up more than its fair share of Anthony’s longhouse. Squeezing other, happy childhood memories into corners.
Armand’s own parents had died, in a car accident, when he was a child. And to this day he could remember every moment of when the police arrived at the door.
That day, that moment, had affected every moment of the rest of his life.
And he hadn’t found his parents. Had not seen their bodies. He remembered the scent of the peanut-butter cookies that had been baking, and to this day it made him nauseous.
This man remembered the mangled, bloody body of his father.
“I think we should try to save the place,” Hugo was saying.
“Why don’t you stay behind after everyone leaves,” said Anthony. “We can discuss it then.”
“As for the rest of her assets,” said Lucien, “we’ll do an inventory, and you can sign off.”
“Do you have any photographs of your mother?” Armand asked.
He followed Anthony to the fireplace, where there was a framed picture on the mantel.
“May I?” When Anthony nodded, he picked it up.
“That was taken last Christmas,” said Caroline, who’d joined them.
Armand recognized the hearth he was standing in front of. In the picture it was decorated with garlands of pine and bright red bows, and in the background stood a Christmas tree heavy with baubles and strings of popcorn and candy canes. Brightly wrapped gifts tumbled out from beneath the tree. But the focal point of the photo, the point of the photo, was the elderly woman in the large chair. Children were festooned over it and around her, and her own three stood behind the chair. Everyone was smiling. Some were laughing.
