Kingdom of the Blind

CHAPTER 9

Reine-Marie, eyes half open, half asleep and half awake, slid her hand along the bedding toward Armand, feeling the curved ridges of the blow-up mattress.

But that side of the bed was cold. Not simply cooling. Cold.

She opened her eyes and saw soft early-morning light through the windows.

Flames were roiling in the woodstove. It had been stoked recently.

She got up onto one elbow. The kitchen was empty. Not even Ruth and Rosa. Or Henri and Gracie.

Putting on her dressing gown and slippers, she tried the light switch. The power was still out. Then she noticed a note on the pine kitchen table.

Ma Chère,

Ruth, Rosa, Henri and Gracie and I have gone to the bistro to talk to Olivier and Gabri. Join us if you can.

Love, Armand

(6:50 a.m.)

Reine-Marie looked at her watch. It was now 7:12.

She went over to the window. Snow had climbed halfway up, blocking most of the light and almost all the view. But Reine-Marie could see that the blizzard had blown itself out and left in its wake, as the worst storms often did, a luminous day.

Though it was, as any good Quebecker knew, an illusion. The sun was gleaming off its fangs.

“My God,” Reine-Marie gasped as the warmth of the bistro enveloped her. “Why do we live here?”

Her cheeks were bright red and her eyes, tearing up, took time to adjust to the dim light. The short walk over to the bistro through the brilliant sunshine had rendered her almost snow-blind. It wasn’t enough that the bitter winter wanted to kill them, first it had to blind.

“Minus thirty-five,” said Olivier proudly, as though he were responsible.

“But it’s a dry cold,” said Gabri. “And no wind.”

It was their refrain when trying to comfort themselves as they looked out on a day so inviting and so brutal.

“I smell something,” said Reine-Marie after taking off her coat and hat and mitts.

“It’s not me,” said Ruth. But Rosa was looking a little sheepish. Though ducks often did.

“I was wondering why you two braved the cold to come here,” said Reine-Marie, following her nose, and the aroma, to the table and the empty plates smeared with maple syrup.

Armand shrugged in an exaggerated Gallic manner. “Some things are worth risking life and limb.”

Olivier came out of the kitchen with a plate of warm blueberry crêpes, sausages, and maple syrup, and a café au lait.

“We left some for you,” said Gabri.

“Armand made us,” said Ruth.

“Oh heaven,” she said, sitting down and putting her hands around the mug. “Merci.” Then a thought struck her. “Do you have power?”

“Non. A generator.”

“Hooked up to the espresso machine?”

“And the oven and fridge,” said Gabri.

“But not the lights?”

“Priorities,” said Olivier. “Are you complaining?”

“Mon Dieu, no,” she said.

Her eyes settled on Armand. For all the kidding, she knew her husband would not bring an elderly woman into the bitter cold without a good reason.

“You came here with Ruth for more than crêpes.”

“Oui,” he said. “Ruth knows who Bertha Baumgartner was.”

“Why didn’t you tell us last night?”

“Because it only came to me this morning. But I wasn’t really sure.”

Reine-Marie raised her brows. It was unlike Ruth to be anything other than absolutely sure of herself. It was others she doubted.

“I needed to speak to Gabri and Olivier, to see what they thought,” said Ruth.

“And?”

“Did you ever hear of the Baroness?” asked Gabri, taking a seat beside Reine-Marie.

It did sound vaguely familiar. Like a memory of a memory. But it was so removed that Reine-Marie knew she would never get it.

She shook her head.

“We were introduced to her when we first moved here,” said Olivier. “Years ago. By Timmer Hadley.”

“The woman who used to own the old Hadley house,” said Reine-Marie.

She gestured in the direction of the fine house on the hill, overlooking the little village. The house where the “rich” family had once lived and had, a century ago, lorded it over the great unwashed below.

“I met the Baroness at Timmer’s home,” said Ruth.

“And she came to us too,” said Gabri. “When we opened the B&B.”

“A regular? A friend?” asked Reine-Marie.

“A cleaning woman.”

“Hurry up,” called Myrna, tugging at Benedict’s arm.

Lucien was a few paces ahead, but Benedict had stopped and Myrna had had to backtrack to get to him.

It felt akin to running back into a flaming building.

The skin on her face was so cold it burned. It had even penetrated her thick mittens and was biting at her fingers. She squinted through the searing sunlight.

But Benedict, instead of hurrying to the bistro like any sensible Québécois, had stopped. His back to the shops, his immense red-and-white tuque dragging on the ground, he was staring at the three huge pine trees, laden with snow, and the cottages that ringed the village green.

“It’s beautiful.”

His words came out in a puff, like a dialogue cloud in a cartoon.

“Yes, yes, beautiful, beautiful,” said Myrna, pulling at his arm. “Now, hurry up before I kick you where it hurts.”

They’d arrived in the blizzard, so this was Benedict’s first look at Three Pines. The ring of homes. The smoke drifting out of the chimneys. The hills and forests.

He stood and looked at a view that hadn’t changed in centuries.

And then he was tugged away.

A few minutes later, another table had been dragged over to the open fire, and they too were enjoying breakfast and coffee in the bistro.

Clara, having seen everyone running over, had joined them.

“If it’s this cold for carnaval, I’m not taking my clothes off,” she said, rubbing her arms.

“Excuse me?” said Armand.

“Nothing,” said Gabri. “Never mind.”

“What were you talking about when I came in?” asked Clara, accepting the mug of hot coffee. “You were all looking pretty shocked.”

“Ruth figured out who Bertha Baumgartner was,” said Armand.

“Who?”

“Do you remember the Baroness?” asked Gabri.

“Oh, yeah. Who could forget her?”

Clara lowered her fork and locked eyes with Ruth.

Then her gaze traveled across the bistro, to the windows. But she didn’t see the sun hitting the frost-etched panes. She didn’t see the village under the deep snow and the impossibly clear blue sky.

She saw a plump older woman, with small eyes, a big smile, and a mop she held like a North Pole explorer about to plant a flag.

“Her name was Bertha Baumgartner?” asked Clara.

“Well, you didn’t think it was the ‘Baroness,’ did you?” asked Ruth.

Clara frowned. She’d actually given it no thought.

“Do you know why she was called the Baroness?” asked Armand.

They looked at Ruth.

“How the hell should I know? She never worked for me.” She looked at Myrna. “You’re the only cleaning woman I’ve ever had.”

“I’m not—” Myrna began, then said, “Why bother?”

“Then why do you think this Bertha and the Baroness are the same person?” asked Armand.

“You said her home was down Mansonville way?” said Ruth, and he nodded. “An old farmhouse by the Glen?”

“Oui.”

“I dropped the Baroness off once, when her car broke down, years ago,” said Ruth. “It sounds like the same place.”

“What was it like? Can you remember?”

But, of course, Ruth remembered everything.

Every meal, every drink, every sight, every slight, real and imagined and manufactured. Every compliment. Every word spoken and unspoken.

She retained it all and rendered those memories into feelings and the feelings into poetry.

I prayed to be good and strong and wise,

for my daily bread and deliverance

from the sins I was told were mine from birth,

and the Guilt of an old inheritance.

Armand didn’t have to think hard to know why that particular poem of Ruth’s, a fairly obscure one, came to mind.

“Her house was small, sort of rambling. But inviting,” said Ruth. “Window boxes planted with pansies and barrels of flowers on either side of the steps up to the porch. I could see a cat lying in the sun. There were all sorts of trucks and farm equipment in the yard, but there always are in these old farmhouses.”

Once Armand stripped away the snow and straightened the crooked house, he could just about see it. As the home had been, once. On a warm summer day. With a younger Ruth and the Baroness.

“You haven’t seen her lately?” he asked.

“Not for years,” said Gabri. “She stopped working, and we lost contact. I didn’t know she’d died. Did you?”

Clara shook her head and dropped her eyes.

“My mother was a cleaning lady,” said Reine-Marie, rightly interpreting how Clara was feeling. “She grew close to the families she worked for, while she worked for them. But then she lost track of them. I’m sure many died and she had no idea.”

Clara nodded, grateful to her for pointing out that it went both ways.

“Do you think if the Baroness Baumgartner wrote to Justin—” Gabri began.

“Non.”

“What was she like?” Armand asked.

“A strong personality,” said Olivier. “Liked her own voice. Used to talk about her kids.”

“Two boys and a girl,” said Gabri. “The most wonderful children on earth. Handsome, beautiful. Smart and kind. Like their mother, she used to say, then laugh.”

“And we were always expected to say, ‘Don’t laugh, it’s true,’” said Olivier.

“And did you?” asked Reine-Marie.

“If we wanted our house cleaned, we did,” said Gabri.

As they described the Baroness’s personality, Clara could see her. Almost always with a smile. Sometimes warm and kind. Often with a touch of cunning. But never malicious.

A woman who was less like a baroness would be hard to find.

And yet Clara also remembered the Baroness really leaning into the mop or brush. Working hard.

There was a nobility in that.

Clara wondered why it had never occurred to her to paint the Baroness. Her small, bright eyes, at once kind and needy. Cunning, but also thoughtful. Her worn hands and face.

It was a remarkable face, filled with generosity and bile. Kindness and judgment.

“Why’re you asking?” asked Gabri. “Does it matter?”

“Not really,” said Armand. “It’s just that the provisions of her will are a little odd.”

“Oooh, odd,” said Gabri. “I like that.”

“You like queer,” said Ruth. “You hate odd.”

“That is true,” he admitted. “So what was odd about the will?”

“The money,” said Benedict.

“Money?” asked Olivier, leaning forward.

Lucien told them about the bequests.

Olivier’s expressive face went from dumbfounded to amused and back to dumbfounded.

“Fifteen million? Dollars?” He looked at Gabri, who was also gaping. “We should’ve kept in touch.”

“Oui,” said Lucien, pleased with the reaction. “And a home in Switzerland.”

“And one in Vienna,” said Myrna.

“She was always a little loopy,” said Gabri, “but she must’ve gone right around the bend.”

“No. My father would never have allowed her to sign the will if he thought she wasn’t clearheaded.”

“Oh come on,” said Ruth. “Even I can see it’s madness. And not just the money, but choosing three people she didn’t even know to be her liquidators? Why not one of us?”

Armand looked at Gabri, Olivier, Ruth, and Clara.

They’d known her. And hadn’t known her.

They knew the Baroness. Not Bertha Baumgartner.

Is that why?

He and Myrna had no preconceptions. They saw her as a woman, not a cleaning woman, and certainly not a baroness.

But why would that matter?

Maybe it was their skill set. He was a cop, an investigator. Myrna was a psychologist. She could read people. They both could. But again, why would that matter to Madame Baumgartner in the execution of her will?

And how did she even know about them, when they didn’t know her?

And what about…? Armand turned to Benedict. How do you begin to explain him as liquidator?

“Who were the witnesses?” he asked, sitting forward again.

“Neighbors,” said Lucien. “Though they wouldn’t have seen the contents of the will.”

Armand looked at his watch. It was coming on for eight thirty in the morning. The power hadn’t yet been restored, but the tiny village of Three Pines was often among the last to be remembered by Hydro-Québec.

“You need to go?” asked Reine-Marie, remembering their conversation of the evening before.

“I’m afraid so.”

“What about us?” asked Lucien.

“I’ll drive you back to the farmhouse. We can dig your cars out together.”

“The heirs need to be contacted,” said Lucien. “I’ll try to set something up for this afternoon. No use waiting.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Benedict.

Armand nodded. “Just let me know when and where.”

“The Guilt of an old inheritance,” he thought as he walked toward his car, his boots squealing on the hard-packed snow.

Is that what was in the crumbling farmhouse? Guilt, and sins that were there from birth?