Kingdom of the Blind

by Louise Penny

  He was staring blankly into the cheerful fire. Reine-Marie had just put a fresh log on, and Henri was lying in front of it, while Gracie slept on the sofa. It was, to all appearances, a tranquil domestic scene.

  But, as he’d just heard from Isabelle and Jean-Guy, there was delusion at work. And a certain madness.

  After he’d hung up, he called Myrna and asked her to come over.

  She had to hear this.

  “Would you like me to leave, Armand?” Reine-Marie asked. She recognized his manner and knew this was no longer a social occasion.

  “Non, stay if you’d like.”

  Just then Myrna arrived, shaking snow from her tuque and kicking off her boots. “This’d better be good. I left a bowl of soup and a glass of wine to come here.”

  But, taking a seat by the fire, Myrna could see that whatever was happening, it wasn’t good. It was bad.

  “What is it?” she asked, looking at Benedict, who seemed almost comatose. “What’s happened?”

  “In a moment,” said Armand as he went to the window. He’d seen headlights flash by.

  A minute later Jean-Guy walked in.

  “This,” said Beauvoir as he stepped aside, “is Katie Burke.”

  “Katie?” said Benedict, getting up.

  CHAPTER 33

  “Are you fucking with me?” Amelia shouted after the boy, who stopped and turned.

  They’d been wandering the back alleys for an hour. Marc was beginning to tremble, not from the cold, or fear, but from withdrawal. His mumbles had become a plaintive whine.

  “I need something. Anything.”

  He’d already taken a tab of acid, but he was used to stronger. Needed stronger. And was getting weaker and weaker.

  They all were.

  The junkies and trannies and whores who straggled along after Amelia as she followed the boy from alley to tenement to empty lot. Some had broken off, desperate now for a hit. Preferring to go it alone.

  Those who had stayed, the junkies and trannies and whores, were too far gone to make a decision. They just trudged after her, afraid of being left behind. Again.

  “No, no, he was here an hour ago,” said the kid, looking around. “He told me to come find you. It’s ready.”

  “What is?”

  “Dinner. He’s made dinner for you. What the fuck do you think I mean? The shit’s ready.”

  “Then why does he need me?” asked Amelia, feeling a surge of adrenaline.

  “How should I know?”

  Amelia looked over at Marc. Wanting to ask him, to ask anyone, for advice. She was tingling and wasn’t sure if it was excitement or a warning. This wasn’t right. Every instinct told her she was being set up. That she should stop. Turn around. Go back. Go home.

  But she had no home. There was no “back” back there. Only forward.

  The stud in her tongue knocked against her teeth as she considered her options.

  The kid was on the move again, slipping and sliding through the slush in his running shoes.

  “He must’ve left,” he was muttering, looking this way and that. But it was night, and hardly any light from the street penetrated down these back lanes. David could’ve been standing feet away and they wouldn’t see him.

  Making up her mind, Amelia grabbed Marc’s hand and dragged him, staggering, forward.

  Click. Click. Click.

  The sound of her stud joined the chattering of his teeth.

  * * *

  Katie and Benedict sat side by side on the sofa in front of the fireplace.

  A platter of roast beef, chicken, and peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches had been put out on the coffee table, along with drinks.

  Katie wore a long boiled-wool skirt over bright pink jeans and a sweater made up of what looked like meatballs but were actually brown pom-poms. They hoped.

  Henri was looking at her in a way that demanded monitoring.

  She had the same haircut as Benedict. Almost shaved on top, and from just above the ears down it was long.

  They held hands and looked very young as Katie stared at the adults surrounding them and Benedict stared at the sandwiches. And Armand stared at Henri. In warning.

  Once again Armand noticed a resemblance between the shepherd and the carpenter.

  “I hope you know,” he began, lifting his eyes to the young couple, “that it’s far too late for lies. And there’ve been far too many already.”

  While his words were firm, his voice was gentle. Encouraging. Like coaxing fawns from the forest.

  Katie nodded, and Benedict’s eyes met Armand’s.

  “How did this begin?” Gamache asked. There was no doubt that the question was aimed at Katie.

  “Well, I guess it started before I was born—”

  “Maybe the more recent events,” said Armand. “How did Benedict get onto Madame Baumgartner’s will?”

  “She knows?” asked Myrna.

  “And she knows why you’re on too,” said Beauvoir. “Don’t you?”

  Katie nodded again. She might look like a lunatic, but her eyes were sharp and bright and glowed with intelligence.

  She was, Gamache suspected, a remarkable young woman. Certainly a one-off.

  “I met Madame Baumgartner in the seniors’ home,” said Katie Burke. “I don’t know if you know, but there aren’t all that many Anglo homes around.”

  “Why would it matter?” asked Jean-Guy.

  Katie looked at him with a weary patience, as though she were the adult and he was very, very young.

  “What language would you choose to die in? It matters. We were lucky to get my grandfather into this one. I was visiting him and noticed that this one old woman hardly ever had visitors. Her family came when they could, and they seemed to care, but the days are long when you’re sitting all alone. She always smiled at me and had the nicest face. A little eccentric, you know?”

  The adults, as one, nodded. They could see that this young woman would be drawn to the eccentric.

  “So one day I took her a tin of homemade cookies.”

  “Those cookies with a hole on the top filled with jam,” said Benedict. “Except Katie’s holes are different shapes—”

  Katie patted his hand, and he stopped talking.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Far from being a way to shut him up, it was said with great kindness.

  Affection, thought Armand. He was not only listening closely, he was watching them closely as well. Studying the dynamic. Often what seemed obvious was not a fact, or even the truth.

  “We got to talking,” Katie continued the story, “and she asked me to call her ‘Baroness.’ Well, I thought that was strange.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” said Myrna.

  “No, I mean I found it strange because I called my grandfather ‘Baron.’”

  “Why?” asked Myrna, her voice wary.

  “It was just what he liked to be called. He was Baron, and my grandmother was Baroness. I didn’t think anyone else did that. Madame Baumgartner reminded me of my grandmother, who I adored, so I’d sit with her in the home and we’d talk. Then one day I suggested they should meet. The Baron and this new Baroness. My grandmother had died the year before, and I know he was lonely.”

  “Did you know who she was?” asked Armand.

  “By then, yes.”

  “And, knowing who she was, you still suggested they meet?”

  Armand was leaning forward. His voice was friendly, as though this were a pleasant gathering of friends and murder wasn’t hovering in the background.

  “Yes.”

  “Did he know?” he asked.

  Katie smiled for the first time. It was, they both knew, the vital question.

  “He did. The Baroness Baumgartner.”

  Armand sat back on the sofa, not bothering to hide his amazement. “Did she know who he was?”

  “No. I was afraid she’d refuse to see him. It wasn’t until I introduced him that she found out.”

  “Who was he?” aske

d Myrna.

  “The Baron Kinderoth,” said Jean-Guy. “Katie here is a Kinderoth.”

  He’d discovered that when he’d been going over the file on the Kinderoths from Taylor and Ogilvy. In it were notes on the estate and who got the small amount of money in the investment account. The Kinderoths had two daughters. One had married a Burke and moved to Ontario. And had a daughter named Katherine. Katie Burke.

  While Jean-Guy had started with the Kinderoths and ended up with Katie, Isabelle Lacoste had started with Katie and ended up with the Kinderoths.

  She too had called Gamache and told him her findings, confirming what Beauvoir had just told him.

  Different roads, but the same destination. Here. Now.

  Myrna stared at Jean-Guy, taking this in. Then turned to Katie. “You’re a Kinderoth?”

  The young woman nodded.

  “And you knew the history between the Kinderoths and the Baumgartners?” asked Myrna.

  “Yes. I was raised on the story. That my great-great-grandfather was the eldest son. And the money, the title, the estates were ours. But the Baumgartners—filthy, greedy, cheating, and lying Baumgartners—had been trying to steal it for more than a hundred years.”

  “A hundred and thirty-two,” said Benedict.

  “What happened when they met?” asked Myrna.

  “I introduced my grandfather. The Baron Kinderoth. He was in a wheelchair but managed to get up. He offered her the flowers he’d asked me to buy for him. Edelweiss. Then he bowed and called her Baroness.”

  The only sound in the room now was the muttering and crackling of logs in the fireplace. Shadows from the fire threw macabre, distorted shadows against the walls.

  “And Madame Baumgartner?” asked Armand.

  “She stared for a long time. It seemed forever,” said Katie.

  “A hundred and thirty-two years,” said Benedict.

  “Then she got up too. I went to help, but she refused. She stood straight, staring at the Baron. I thought she was going to say, or do, something awful. Then she reached out and took the flowers. ‘Danke schön,’ she said.” Katie smiled. “‘Baron Kinderoth.’”

  They sat in silence. Imagining the moment.

  Then, very softly, as though from far away, Myrna heard humming.

  Edelweiss. Edelweiss.

  She looked at Benedict. Edelweiss, he hummed.

  “What happened then?” Myrna asked.

  “I wish I could say all was forgiven on both sides, but it wasn’t,” said Katie. “Each time I visited, I’d take my grandfather into the solarium to have tea with the Baroness. They’d sit in silence. Then, one week, they were already there. Talking quietly together. I just left the cookies in their rooms and went home.”

  “They became friends?” asked Reine-Marie.

  “It took a while,” said Katie. “But yes.”

  “So how’d they get over all that history?” asked Myrna.

  She’d known clients of hers when she was a practicing psychologist who never got over much less deep-seated resentments.

  “Loneliness,” said Katie. “They needed each other. They understood each other in ways no one else could.”

  “Ahhh,” said Myrna. There was nothing like the pain of the present to cure the pain of the past.

  “After a month or so, they were almost inseparable. Eating every meal together. She got him out into the garden, and he got her playing cribbage.”

  “Did they tell their families?” Armand asked.

  If they had, the Baumgartner siblings had chosen not to mention it.

  “They were planning to,” said Katie. “But they were worried that too much damage had been done. They knew the judgment in Vienna was coming soon, and both worried that when it was announced, whichever family won wouldn’t want to share. And the family that lost would have their bitterness cemented in place. But they had a solution.”

  “They’d get married,” said Benedict. And, not for the first time, he saw a group of people staring at him as though he were mad.

  “Married?” asked Myrna. “Because of the money?”

  “Because they loved each other,” said Katie. “I think he loved her even more than he loved my grandmother. She made him laugh. He’d had a hard life, and it’d hardened him. But with her he could just be himself. A taxi-driver baron.”

  “And she could be a cleaning-woman baroness,” said Reine-Marie.

  “Yes. They thought if they made that sort of commitment to each other, not just in words but in action, the rest of the family would have to accept it and drop the feud.”

  “And share the fortune?” said Myrna. “No matter who won?”

  “Yes. The plan was to leave everything to each other, with the proviso it be split equally among both families, when the last one died. But of course they wanted their children to not just accept grudgingly but wholeheartedly. As they had.”

  “But—” said Myrna.

  “But my grandfather died before they could get married.”

  “Oh,” said Reine-Marie as though she’d suffered a physical blow. “It must’ve been awful for the Baroness.”

  “It was. She hadn’t told her children, and by then it was too late. His death sent her into a tailspin. Partly physical, but mostly mental. She became confused. She called the notary in, with the intention of changing her will, as she and the Baron had discussed. Leaving everything, in the event she won the case in Vienna, split equally between the families.”

  “But the notary wouldn’t do it,” said Benedict.

  “He saw the state she was in,” said Katie, “and said he couldn’t in all conscience allow her to change her will. He thought her mind wasn’t sound. He knew the family history, the court challenges, and felt she must’ve been coerced somehow. He believed that the Baroness, who’d been so embittered about it all her life, would never willingly share with a Kinderoth.”

  “Just what the Baron and Baroness had feared from their families,” said Reine-Marie.

  “Yes,” said Katie. “It confirmed her fears. If the notary thought she was nuts, her family sure would. But he did allow her to change one thing.”

  “The liquidators?” asked Myrna. “Is that when she put us on the will?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why?” asked Armand.

  “So that you could execute not just the will but her real desires. She knew that her children never would. There was too much history there. But with new liquidators there’d be none of that. The notary was right, of course. She was confused. But one thing was clear to her. The plan she had with the Baron to share the fortune had to be followed through. It became an idée fixe. A kind of obsession. It wasn’t about the money, it was about letting go of all the bitterness. They could see the damage they’d done in passing it along to their children. Freeing them of it would be their real inheritance.”

  “But if it was that important to her,” asked Reine-Marie, “why not just write her own will and sign it? Isn’t that legal?”

  “A holographic will,” said Armand. “As long as it’s written in longhand and signed by witnesses, yes, it’s legal in Québec. But the notary had already seen her and decided she wasn’t of sound mind.”

  “Exactly,” said Katie. When she nodded, as now, her entire meatball sweater bobbed up and down.

  It was amusing, disconcerting, and slightly nauseating. A cross between performance art and dinner.

  Henri sat up and started drooling.

  Armand motioned with his hand for the shepherd to lie back down, which he did, reluctantly.

  “So,” said Myrna, “the only thing the Baroness could do was change the liquidators.”

  “Yes. She took her three children off and put you on.”

  “But again,” said Myrna. “Why us? We didn’t even know her.”

  “Exactly. That’s why. We needed someone who had no idea of the history.”

  “We?” asked Armand.

  “I meant she.”

  “Of course,” said Armand. “So that’s why she changed liquidators, but why us specifically? Madame Landers and me?”

  “The Baroness had heard that the head of the Sûreté had moved into the nearby village. She was enough of a snob to like the idea that someone so prominent would be executing her will. She also figured you’d keep her family in line. To be honest, her next choices were the queen, followed by the pope. But when she heard about you”—Katie turned to Myrna—“she immediately agreed you’d be perfect.”

  “A senior police officer and a respected psychologist,” said Myrna, nodding. “Makes sense.”

  “You’re a psychologist?” said Katie. “No, apparently Madame Zardo told the Baroness you were a cleaning woman. That’s why she wanted you. Someone who’d understand.”

  Myrna’s eyes narrowed in a glare, daring anyone to laugh.

  The only one not smiling was Armand.

  “How did the Baroness know to ask about changing the liquidators?” he asked.

  “Like I said, the notary wouldn’t let her change the actual will—”

  “Yes, I heard. But does anyone else here know that it might be possible to change the liquidators?”

  He looked around, and they all, to a person, shook their heads. Including Benedict. Who, after a sharp squeeze of his hand, stopped.

  “So let me ask again,” said Armand. “How did an elderly and admittedly confused person know to even ask about the liquidators?”

  There was a pause before Katie answered. “It was my idea. I looked it up and suggested it to her. The Baroness agreed it was worth a try.”

  “And the choice of liquidators?” asked Armand.

  “Was hers.”

  That sat there, taking in the odor of a lie. Armand let the pause stretch on. And the stench sink in. Before he finally spoke again.

  “Including Benedict?”

  Reine-Marie was watching this closely. Not Katie but Armand. Watching him take away, with a civility that was almost frightening, the props for her story. Until it collapsed.

  “That was my idea,” Katie admitted. “The Baroness actually wanted me as the third, but I said that wouldn’t work. If they found out my mother’s maiden name was Kinderoth, her family would accuse me of influencing her.”

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