Kingdom of the Blind

by Louise Penny

  The Baroness wore a paper crown from a Christmas cracker and a beaming smile and looked not unlike Margaret Rutherford.

  White hair. Jowls. Bright blue eyes sagging like a bloodhound’s. Huge bosom and trunk, made for wiping off flour-caked hands and hugging grandchildren.

  Looking at it, Armand could almost smell the vanilla extract.

  He found himself smiling, then handed it to Myrna.

  “Grand Duchess Gloriana,” he suggested, and her smile grew all the broader as she nodded.

  “The Mouse on the Moon.” Then Myrna’s expression became wistful as she studied the photo that had pride of place in her son’s living room. “Or Harvey.”

  * * *

  “You’ll take them, right,” said Lucien a few minutes later, when they were about to leave.

  It was a statement, not a question. “Them” being Myrna and Benedict. Like bags of salt. Only less useful.

  “I have a few more things to go over with Anthony Baumgartner,” said the notary.

  “Oui,” said Armand.

  Caroline was leaving with them, but Hugo had stayed behind with Anthony, to talk about the future of the farmhouse.

  A little while later, Myrna, Benedict, and Armand sat with Reine-Marie by the fire in the bistro. Clara, Ruth, and Gabri joined them, and drinks were ordered.

  The power was back on, and the phones repaired.

  “They can’t come until tomorrow afternoon,” Benedict reported, returning from the phone on the bistro bar.

  “Who?” asked Clara.

  “The garage,” said Benedict. “My pickup’s still at Madame Baumgartner’s farmhouse. It needs towing. And new tires.”

  He shot a look at Armand, who nodded approval.

  “I’ve called the township and strongly suggested they send inspectors to her home,” said Armand. “I think it needs to be condemned.”

  “It might be savable,” said Benedict. “If the Baumgartners would like me to try.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” said Armand. “Caroline was right. They should just tear it down and sell the land.”

  The sun was setting, the sky a soft blue before fading to black.

  “You’ll stay with us another night,” Reine-Marie said to Benedict.

  “But I don’t have any clothes.”

  “We’ll give you some,” said Gabri, assessing the young man. “I think you’re about Ruth’s size. Though she is a bit more masculine.”

  Over drinks they told the others about the meeting with the Baroness’s family and the fact she seemed to think she was an actual baroness. Descended from the Rothschilds.

  “Quite a descent,” said Ruth.

  “But even if it is true,” said Reine-Marie, “that wouldn’t necessarily mean there was a title and money.”

  “Or maybe it does,” said Clara. “How do you find out?”

  “Lucien’s checking into it,” said Myrna.

  “Sounds strange to hear her called ‘Madame Baumgartner,’” said Clara. “I know the Baroness, but this Bertha Baumgartner’s a stranger.”

  “I liked what you said.” Myrna turned to Armand. “She did look like Margaret Rutherford.”

  Ruth snorted scotch back into her glass and laughed. “Yes, that’s it. That’s who she reminded me of.”

  “But still,” Armand said to Myrna, “I think you were closer to the heart of the matter. Not her looks but her personality.”

  “How so?” asked Gabri.

  “Harvey,” said Myrna. “The whole meeting with the family reminded me of that movie.”

  Clara smiled. “Elwood P. Dowd.”

  “That’s just stupid,” said Ruth. “The Baroness looked nothing like Jimmy Stewart.”

  On seeing Benedict’s blank expression, Reine-Marie explained. “Harvey is an old movie. It’s about a man—”

  “Elwood P. Dowd,” said Myrna.

  “—whose best friend is a six-foot rabbit,” continued Reine-Marie.

  “Harvey,” said Myrna.

  “They go everywhere together,” continued Reine-Marie. “But no one else can see him.”

  “Obviously,” said Ruth. “He’s a six-foot white rabbit.”

  “They try to convince Elwood that Harvey doesn’t exist,” said Clara.

  “They think he’s crazy,” said Ruth, stroking Rosa. “Try to have him committed.”

  “It’s a reminder that if someone’s happy, maybe that’s the only reality that matters,” said Reine-Marie. “What harm is there in believing in a giant white rabbit?”

  “Or a title,” said Clara, raising her glass. “The Baroness.”

  “The Baroness,” they said.

  “But it’s not just the title, is it,” said Benedict. “It’s the money too. Millions. I wonder if there’s harm in believing in a fortune that doesn’t exist.”

  “‘You have a lot to learn,’ young man,” said Ruth, quoting the movie. “‘And I hope you never learn it.’”

  CHAPTER 14

  “So what’re you going to do?” asked Annie as their car crept carefully down the hill into Three Pines. “Are you going to tell him?”

  “Which part?” asked Jean-Guy. “The investigation or—”

  He could feel the rear of the vehicle begin to slide sideways on the snow and ice, and he stopped talking to concentrate. His eyes sharp on the road, his focus complete. His hands gentle on the steering wheel.

  He glanced swiftly into the rearview mirror and saw Honoré buckled into his car seat, looking out the window.

  “I think it’s up to us to decide first, don’t you?” he finally said as the car made it safely down the hill, and they drove around the village green.

  Walls of snow mounted on either side so that nothing beyond was visible except the glow of hidden homes.

  Jean-Guy had never seen anything like it. It was both beautiful and alarming. Comforting and ominous. As though nature were trying to decide whether to protect or consume the little village.

  He pulled the car up to the opening chiseled into the banks, a snow tunnel leading to the Gamache home. But instead of getting out, Annie sat there, her face lit by the headlights bouncing back from the snow.

  “It’ll be all right,” she said, and, leaning over, she kissed him on the cheek.

  It was an act of such simplicity it would have been easy for Jean-Guy to overlook the glory of it.

  To be kissed. For no reason.

  For a man of reason, it was staggering.

  * * *

  “How did the meeting go yesterday?” asked Gamache as he and Jean-Guy settled into the study.

  They’d had their dinner. Shepherd’s pie and chocolate cake. Honoré was asleep in his room.

  The Gamaches’ unexpected guest, the young man with the weird hair, Benedict, had gone off to the bistro for a few drinks. He’d spent much of the time, after being introduced to Annie and Jean-Guy, playing with Honoré. Once Honoré was put to bed for the night and they’d had dinner, Benedict asked if they’d mind if he went out for a beer.

  “Nice kid,” said Jean-Guy.

  “Yes,” said Armand.

  “What do you know about him?” Jean-Guy’s voice was casual, but Armand knew him too well to be fooled.

  “You mean, is he likely to kill us in our sleep?”

  “Just wondering,” said Jean-Guy.

  It wasn’t as though this Benedict had been found hitchhiking, wearing a ski mask and carrying a machete. But really, what did Armand know about him?

  “I did a quick check,” said his father-in-law. “He is who he says he is. A builder. Lives in Montréal, apparently with a girlfriend.”

  “Apparently?”

  “Well, that is a little odd,” admitted Armand as they took their seats. “When the power and phones were out, Benedict didn’t seem at all stressed about not being able to contact his girlfriend to tell her where he was and that he was safe. Or in making sure she was okay. If it was me, cut off from Reine-Marie in a storm, I’d move heaven and earth to make sure s

he was safe.”

  Jean-Guy nodded. The same for him and Annie. It wasn’t even a choice, it was instinctive.

  “Maybe they’re not in love,” he said. “You think it’s something else?”

  “I think she might be a convenient fabrication,” said Armand with a smile. “I think he’s a handsome kid who needs a way to get out of uncomfortable situations.”

  “So he created a fictional girlfriend?” He looked at his father-in-law closely. “Don’t tell me you once had one?”

  Armand laughed. “When I was young, I had quite a few. Getting a real one was the problem.”

  “I can see why you’d have trouble, but why would this kid make up a girlfriend? I doubt he has any problem getting girls.”

  “And that might be why. This way he can fend off unwanted advances.”

  “The fictional lover. Clever.”

  He wished he’d thought of that, back in the day. Invitations to social events he didn’t want to attend, declined. Blamed on the girlfriend.

  Damn. If it was true, that Benedict was smarter than he looked. Though that would not be difficult.

  “Well, if she doesn’t exist, how do you explain that haircut?” Jean-Guy asked. “She did it, didn’t she?”

  “It is hard to explain. You didn’t see the sweater he was wearing yesterday. She’d made it out of steel wool.”

  “Then she must exist. What a young man will do for sex. I remember—” Just in time he realized who he was speaking to. And stopped.

  “Do you want me to check him out, patron?”

  “No, don’t bother. It’s none of our business.”

  “Of course, the other question is why he was chosen to be a liquidator of the woman’s will,” said Jean-Guy. “Why any of you were. Do you think she really was a baroness?”

  “No,” said Armand. “I don’t. I think her daughter was right. She made it up to comfort herself. We all have fantasies, especially when we’re children. But most grow out of it. I think Madame Baumgartner never did.”

  “And she passed it along to her own children.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. I think the daughter might’ve let it go, and the eldest son, Anthony, seemed amused by it, but the youngest son? Hugo? I don’t know.”

  “Maybe that’s why she chose you and Myrna. In a moment of sanity, she got that she’d really messed them up with her fantasies. Can you imagine the fighting if her kids were in charge of the will?”

  “But that doesn’t explain why us specifically,” said Armand. “And it sure doesn’t explain Benedict.”

  “No.” Jean-Guy thought for a moment. “Honoré likes him.”

  It seemed a non sequitur, but Armand knew it wasn’t. He’d noticed that too. It would be folly to trust the instincts of a baby. But it would also be a mistake to completely dismiss them.

  Armand shifted in his chair and then asked the question. “How did the meeting go yesterday?”

  “The one with the investigators?”

  There was a pause, and Jean-Guy immediately understood his mistake. In asking that question, he’d let drop that there’d been another meeting.

  Beauvoir waited for his father-in-law to ask.

  Had there been another meeting?

  But Gamache did not ask. Instead he crossed his legs and waited.

  “It went okay.”

  “Now, don’t forget who you’re speaking to.”

  It was said calmly, conversationally. But the warning was clear.

  Do not lie.

  Through the closed door, they could hear voices in the next room. Annie and Reine-Marie.

  There were few things more soothing, Jean-Guy thought, than hearing people you love talking softly in another room.

  Instead of a white-noise machine, or recordings of rain or the ocean, if he ever needed help falling asleep, he wanted the sound of these two women. He’d drift off, the unintelligible murmurs on a loop. Reminding him he was no longer alone.

  And the truth was, he hadn’t slept well the night before. He had a decision to make and was worried.

  Beauvoir cast his mind back to his meeting with the Sûreté investigators the day before. Wanting to be accurate. “They were friendly,” he said, his voice slow, careful. “But they seemed to be offering me an out. A lifeboat.”

  “And you didn’t realize the ship was sinking?”

  Beauvoir nodded. “I thought it was over. I really did. I expected to walk into the meeting and be told it was all cleared up. You’d be reinstated.”

  “Do you really expect that?”

  “Don’t you?”

  Gamache considered. Maybe, at first, he’d thought that was a possibility.

  Then, as more and more questions were asked, as he’d explained what happened and why, over and over again, he could see their minds working. And he could hear it, from their point of view.

  This whole thing had given him an interesting perspective on being a suspect. Trying to explain something that, in the cold light of day, seemed inexplicable.

  Though his thinking had been clear at the time.

  “I think, at this stage, anything is possible,” he said to Jean-Guy.

  Through the door the voices continued. They could hear soft laughter as one or the other said something amusing.

  There was silence in the small room. A silence like Jean-Guy had rarely experienced, though it reminded him a little of their time in the remote monastery. Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups. Where the quiet had been so profound he’d found it disquieting.

  He wanted to break this silence but knew instinctively that it was not his to break.

  And so he waited.

  Gamache sat in the familiar chair, and yet everything, for a moment, felt unfamiliar. And he realized he had, in fact, harbored a hope that he’d be exonerated.

  That Jean-Guy would call yesterday after his meeting with the investigators to tell him it was over. And then he’d get a call from the Premier Ministre, telling him he’d been cleared and would be reinstated.

  The call hadn’t come. But then the phones had been down, allowing this phantom hope to remain alive.

  Gamache smiled to himself and understood Madame Baumgartner a little better. We all had our delusions.

  He could see now how wrong he’d been.

  Someone had to be blamed. If the drugs hit the streets, as they surely would any day now, they’d throw the book at him. And why not? The blame was, after all, his. Alone.

  That much was a comfort. When the ship did sink, he’d take no one else down with him. It would be a result of his own decisions. And friendly fire.

  He saw his mother kneeling beside him, adjusting his mitts and cap. Tying his huge scarf at his neck and patting it as he headed out into the bitter-cold Montréal morning, to school. She looked at him and said, “Remember, Armand. If you’re ever in trouble, you find a police officer.”

  She’d held his eyes, as serious as he’d ever seen her, and didn’t smile again until he’d solemnly agreed.

  Cross my heart and hope to die.

  And now, fifty years later, he sat in his own home and smelled a slight scent of peanut-butter cookies.

  Then he heard, through the door, the soft laughter of his wife and daughter. He thought of his grandson, asleep. He thought of his son, Daniel, and daughter-in-law and two granddaughters in Paris.

  He looked into the eyes of his son-in-law. His second-in-command. His friend.

  Safe. And he had no regrets.

  Then Armand glanced at his desk and the book sitting there. The one that had, literally, been thrown at him earlier in the day.

  It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

  * * *

  “Your old room,” said the landlady.

  Her pudgy hand with its nicotine-yellowed fingers was splayed on the door as it swung open, releasing a stale odor.

  Despite the bitter-cold night, the place was stifling, the old iron radiators unregulated. Pumping out heat that only hurried the decay. It smelled like something decomposing.

  In the time since Amelia had lived in the rooming house in East End Montréal, very little had changed.

  There was still the reek of urine. Still the moans, groans, of men. As their lives slipped away. Through their fingers and down the drain.

  The landlady had grown fatter, softer. A single tooth hung by a thread of gum, waving as she chortled. Her breath like a slaughterhouse.

  The door closed, and Amelia could hear her shuffling back down the hallway.

  Amelia breathed through her mouth, and clicked the stud against her teeth, and tossed the book-laden knapsack onto the single bed. Regretting throwing that book at Gamache. Not the act of violence. That had felt good. But she regretted not having Marcus Aurelius to keep her company.

  When she opened the door to leave, Amelia almost tripped over the mop and pail. The landlady must’ve left it there. Her job, in exchange for a room, was to clean. A place that had not, it appeared, been cleaned since she’d last lived there.

  “Fuck it,” she said, kicking the bucket over and watching the suds rush down the hallway.

  That would wait. She had far more pressing things to do than hang around this shithole.

  * * *

  “Walk with me,” said Gamache, and to Jean-Guy’s surprise, and disappointment, he saw that Armand did not mean walk into the kitchen for more chocolate cake.

  Instead Armand went to the front door and took his parka off the hook.

  “Going somewhere?” asked Reine-Marie, turning in her seat to watch them.

  “Just a stroll.”

  “To the bistro?” asked Annie, getting up to join them.

  “No. Around the village green.”

  She plunked back down onto the sofa. “Bye.”

  Henri and Gracie raced to the front door, expecting yet another walk, but Armand explained it was too cold for them.

  “But not for us?” asked Jean-Guy. Yet followed him anyway.

  Once outside, they walked down the snow tunnel to the road. There was no need of a flashlight. It was a clear night, and quiet. Just the squeal and crunch and munch of their heavy winter boots on the snow.

  The Chief often said that everything could be solved by walking. For himself, Beauvoir was pretty sure everything could be solved in the kitchen with a piece of cake.

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