Kingdom of the Blind Read online

  “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?

  CHAPTER 10

  “Come in, come in,” said the neighbor, gesturing. “Get out of the cold.”

  She was young, in her mid-thirties, Gamache guessed. Only slightly older than his own daughter, Annie. And she probably shouldn’t be letting complete strangers into her home.

  But by the way she’d looked at him when she’d answered his knock, Gamache suspected he wasn’t a complete stranger. And that was confirmed a moment later when he took off his gloves and offered his hand as they crowded into her vestibule.

  “Désolé,” he said. “Sorry to disturb you, especially on a day like this. My name is Armand Gamache. I live down the road, in Three Pines.”

  “Yes, I know who you are. I’m Patricia Houle.”

  She took his hand, then turned to Myrna. “I know you too. You run the bookstore.”

  “I do. You’ve been in quite a few times. Nonfiction. Gardening books. But also biography.”

  “That’s me.”

  Lucien introduced himself, and then she turned to Benedict.

  “Benedict Pouliot,” he said. “Builder.”

  “Come in, get warm.”

  They followed her into the heart of the home, the kitchen, where a large woodstove was throbbing out heat.

  As with her home, there was nothing pretentious about Madame Houle. She seemed to be someone without need to impress, who, because of that, was impressive. Like her strong, simple home.

  “I have a pot of tea on. Would you like a cup?”

  “Not for me, thank you,” said Myrna. The others also declined.

  “We won’t take much of your time,” said Armand. “We just have a couple of questions.”

  “Oui?” asked Patricia.

  “Did you know the woman who lived next door?” Myrna asked.

  “The Baroness? Oh yes, though not well. Why?”

  She’d noticed her visitors exchanging glances but could not have known the significance of what she’d just said. Patricia Houle had just confirmed that Ruth was right. Bertha Baumgartner was the Baroness.

  “Nothing,” said Myrna. “Go on.”

  “Was it that I called her the Baroness?” asked Patricia, looking from one to the other. “It wasn’t our nickname for her. Believe me, we wouldn’t have chosen that one. She called herself that.”

  “How long have you known her?” Lucien asked.

  “A few years. Is everything all right?” She looked at Armand. “You’re not here officially, are you?”

  “Not in the way you think,” he said. “We’re liquidators of her estate.”

  “She died?”

  “Yes, just before Christmas,” said Lucien.

  “I hadn’t heard,” said Patricia. “I know she moved into a nursing home a couple of years ago, but I didn’t know she’d passed away. I’m sorry. I’d have gone to the funeral.”

  “You witnessed her will?” asked Armand. When she nodded, he went on. “Did she strike you as competent?”

  “Oh yes,” said Patricia. “She was all there. She was a little odd, granted. She did insist on being called Baroness, but we all have our eccentricities.”

  “I bet I can guess yours,” said Myrna.

  “I bet you can,” said Patricia.

  “You like poisonous plants. Probably have a bed dedicated to them.”

  “I do,” Patricia admitted with a laugh.

  “How did you know that?” Benedict asked.

  “The books she bought,” said Myrna. “The Poison Garden was one, as I remember. Another was…” Myrna strained her memory.

  “Deadliest Garden Plants,” said Patricia. She looked at Armand and cocked her head. “Bit of a clue, that.”

  Armand smiled.

  “That’s how I first got to know the Baroness and how I learned about poison gardens. She had one. Walked me through it and pointed out that foxglove is digitalis. Deadly. She also had monkshood, and lily-of-the-valley, and hydrangea. All toxic. Among other perennials, of course. But, strangely enough, the poisonous ones are the most beautiful.”

  Myrna nodded. She was also a keen gardener, though it had never occurred to her to dedicate a bed to plants that kill. But enough people did so that there were a number of books written about it. And Patricia Houle was right. The deadly flowers were among the most beautiful. And, perversely, the longest-lived.

  “There’re flowers that’ll really kill someone?” asked Benedict.

  “Supposedly,” said Patricia, “though I wouldn’t know how to get the poison out. You probably need a chemistry degree.”

  “And a desire,” said Gamache.

  His voice was pleasant, but his eyes took in Patricia Houle, and he amended his earlier impression. She gave off an aura not just of confidence but of competence.

  He’d noticed her car parked outside, completely cleaned off. The snow around it shoveled with crisp, straight lines.

  When she did a job, she did it well and she did it thoroughly.

  He suspected if she needed to, she could figure out how to squeeze poison from a daffodil.

  Thanking her for her help and hospitality, they left Madame Houle and headed next door.

  Bertha Baumgartner’s home seemed to be tilting even further under the weight of the new snow. It would be folly to go anywhere near it, and Gamache made a note to call the local town hall and get warning tape put up. And, as soon as possible, a bulldozer should be brought in.

  They dug out Myrna’s and Lucien’s cars, but when they’d cleared off Benedict’s pickup truck, Armand stopped the young man from getting in.

  “You can’t drive without winter tires.”

  “But I have to. I’ll be fine.”

  Those were, Gamache knew, the last words of too many young people.

  “Yes, you will be fine,” he said. “Because you’re not going anywhere in that.”

  “And if I do drive?” asked Benedict. “What’re you going to do? Call the cops?”

  “He wouldn’t need to call,” said Lucien, and saw that Benedict still didn’t get it. “You really don’t know who he is?”

  Benedict shook his head.

  “I’m the head of the Sûreté du Québec,” said Armand.

  “Chief Superintendent Gamache,” said Lucien.

  Benedict said either “Oh shit” or “No shit.” Either way, merde was involved.

  “Really?”

  Gamache nodded. “C’est la vérité.”

  Benedict looked behind him, to his pickup, and mumbled something that sounded like “What fucking luck.”

  Gamache grinned. He’d had luck like this too, when he was Benedict’s age. Took a long time before he realized it was, in fact, good luck.

  “I guess I have no choice,” said Benedict.

  “Bon. Call the CAA when the phones come back. Have it towed to a garage and decent winter tires put on. Not the cheap ones. D’accord?”

  “Got it,” Benedict mumbled to the snow on his boots.

  “It’s all right,” said Gamache quietly. “We’ll pay for the tires.”

  “I’ll pay you back.”

  “Just give me that lesson in driving on snow you promised. We’ll call it even.”

  “Merci.”

  “Good.” Gamache turned to Lucien. “Let me know about the meeting with Madame Baumgartner’s children.”

  “I will,” said Lucien.

  As she drove Benedict back to Three Pines, Myrna looked at the thick snow in the yard. And thought of the poisonous plants buried there. Frozen, but not dead. Just waiting.

  Though the real threat, Myrna knew, didn’t come from the poison flowers. Those you could see. Those you knew about. And besides, they at least were pretty.

  No. The real danger in a garden came from the bindweed. That moved underground, then surfaced and took hold. Strangling plant after healthy plant. Killing them all, slowly. And for no apparent reason, except that it was its nature.

  And then it disappeared underground again.

  Yes, the real danger always came from the thing you couldn’t see.

  CHAPTER 11

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “What makes you think there’s a problem?” Armand asked.

  “You aren’t eating your … éclair.”

  Each of her words was carefully enunciated, though they were still muffled, as though wrapped in too much care and cotton batting.

  And her movements, as her hand brought her own pastry to her mouth, were also considered. Deliberate. Precise. Slow.

  Gamache visited Isabelle Lacoste at least once a week at her home in Montréal. When the weather was good, they’d go for a short walk, but mostly, like today, they sat in her kitchen and talked. He’d gotten into the habit of discussing events with her. Getting her take on things. Her opinions and advice.

  She was one of his senior officers.

  He looked now, as he always did, for any sign of improvement. Real was best, but he’d even settle for imagined. He thought perhaps her hands were steadier. Her words clearer. Her vocabulary richer.

  Yes. Without a doubt. Maybe.

  “Is it the internal investigation?” she asked, and took a bite of the mille-feuille that Armand had brought her from Sarah’s Boulangerie, knowing it was her favorite.

  “No. That’s just about over.”

  “Still, they’re taking their sweet time. What’s the problem?”

  “We both know the problem,” he said.

  “Yes. The drugs. Nothing more there?”

  She studied him. Looking for signs of improvement. Of reason to hope this really would all go away soon.

  The Chief looked relaxed. Confident. But then he almost always did. It was what he hid that worried her.

  Isabelle’s brow furrowed in concentration.

  “I’m tiring you out,” he said, and made to get up. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, no, please.” She waved him back down. “I need … stimulation. The kids are off school because of the storm and have decided I need to learn to count to a … hundred. We did that all morning before I kicked them outside. I tried to explain that I can count. Have been able to for … months, but still, they insisted.” She looked into Armand’s eyes. “Help me.”

  It was said with a comically pathetic inflection, intentionally exaggerated. But still, it broke his heart.

  “I’m kidding, patron,” she said, sensing more than seeing his sorrow. “More coffee?”

  “Please.”

  He followed her to the counter. Her gait was slow. Halting. Deliberate. And so much better than anyone, including her doctors, had dared hope.

  Isabelle’s son and daughter were outside, building snow forts with the neighborhood children. Through the windows Armand and Isabelle could hear shrieks as one “army” attacked those who held the fort.

  Playing the same games Armand had played as a child. The same ones Isabelle, twenty-five years later, had played. Games of domination and war.

  “Let’s hope they never know … what … it’s really like,” said Isabelle, standing by the window, next to her boss and mentor.

  He nodded.

  The explosions. The chaos. The acrid stink of gun smoke. The blinding grit as stone and cement and brick were pulverized. Choking the air.

  The screams. Choking the air.

  The pain.

  His grip tightened on the counter as it washed over him. Sweeping him up. Tossing and spinning. Drowning him.

  “Does your hand still tremble?” she asked quietly.

  He gathered himself and nodded.

  “Sometimes. When I’m tired or particularly stressed. But not like it used to.”

  “And the limp?”

  “Again, mostly when I’m tired. I barely notice it anymore. It was years ago.” Unlike Isabelle’s wounds, which were mere months old. He marveled at that. It seemed both ages ago and yesterday.

  “Do you think about it?” she asked.

  “What happened when you were hurt?”

  He turned to look at her. That face, so familiar from across so many bodies. So many desks, conference tables. So many hastily set-up incident rooms in basements and barns and cabins across Québec. As they’d investigated murders. Isabelle. Jean-Guy. Himself.

  Isabelle Lacoste had come to him as a young agent, barely twenty-five. Rejected by her own department for not being brutal enough, cynical enough, malleable enough to know what was right and to do wrong.

  He’d been the head of homicide then and given her a job in his department, the most prestigious within the Sûreté du Québec. To the astonishment of her former colleagues.

  And Isabelle Lacoste had risen through the ranks, eventually taking over from Gamache himself when he’d become head of the academy and then head of the whole Sûreté. As he was now.

  Sort of.

  She’d aged, of course. Faster than she should have, would have, had he not brought her on board. Had he not made her Chief Inspector. And had that last action against the cartels not taken place. Mere months ago.

  “Yes,” he said. “I think about it.”

  Isabelle hitting the floor. Shot in the head. What had seemed her last act had given them a chance. Had, in fact, saved them all. But still, it had been a bloody nightmare.

  He remembered that, the most recent action. But he also remembered, equally vividly, all the raids, the assaults, the arrests. The investigations over the years. The victims.

  All the sightless, staring eyes. Of men, women, children whose murder he’d investigated. Over the years. Whose murderer he’d hunted down.

  All the agents he’d sent, often led, into the gun smoke.

  And he remembered his hand raised, ready to knock on the closed door. The rapping of the Grim Reaper. To do murder himself. Not physically, but Armand Gamache was realistic enough to know this was a killing nevertheless. He carried with him always the faces of fathers, mothers, wives, and husbands. Inquisitive. Curious. Politely they opened the door and looked at this stranger.

  And then, as he spoke the fateful words, their faces changed. And he watched their world collapse. Pinning them under the rubble. Crushed under a grief so profound most never emerged. And those who did came out dazed into a world forever changed.

  The person they were before his arrival was dead. Gone.

  When a murder was committed, more than one person died.

  Yes. He remembered.

  “But I try not to dwell on it,” he said to Isabelle.

  Or, worse, dwell in it. Take up residence in the tragedies, the pain. The hurt. To make a home in hell.

  But leaving was hard. Especially his agents, men and women whose lives were lost because they’d followed his orders. Followed him. He’d felt, for a long time, that he owed it to them to not leave that place of sorrow. To keep them company there.

  His friends and therapists had helped him to see that that was doing them a disservice. Their lives could not be defined by their deaths. They belonged not in perpetual pain but in the beauty of their short lives.

  His inability to move on would trap them forever in those final horrific moments.

  Armand watched as Isabelle carefully lowered her mug to the kitchen table. When it was just an inch away from the surface, her grip slipped and the coffee spilled. Not much, but he could see her anger. Frustration. Embarrassment.

  He offered her his handkerchief to sop it up.

  “Merci.” She grabbed it from him and wiped. He put out his hand to take it back, but she kept it. “I’ll w-w-w … wash it and get it back to you,” she snapped.

  “Isabelle,” he said, his voice calm but firm. “Look at me.”

  She lifted her eyes from the soiled handkerchief to his face.

  “I hated it too.”

  “What?”

  “My body. I hated it for letting me down. For letting this happen.” He ran his finger along the scar at his temple. “For not moving fast enough. For not seeing it coming. For being on the ground, not being able to get up to protect my agents. I hated it for not healing fast enough. I hated when I stumbled. When Reine-Marie had to hold my hand to keep me steady. I could see people staring at me with pity as I limped or searched for a word.”

  Isabelle nodded.

  “I wanted my old body back,” said Armand. “The strong and healthy one.”

  “Before,” she said.

  “Before,” he nodded.

  They sat in silence, except for the far-off laughter of the children.

  “That’s how I feel,” she said. “I hate my … body. I hate that I can’t pick up my kids or play with them, or if I do get onto the floor with them, they have to help me up. I hate it. I hate that I can’t … read them to sleep, and that I get tired so easily, and lose my train of thought. I hate that some days I can’t add and some days I can’t … subtract. And some days—”

  Isabelle paused, gathering herself. She looked into his eyes.

  “I forget their names, patron,” she whispered. “My own children.”

  It was no use telling her he understood. Or that it was all right. She’d earned the right to no easy answer.

  “And what do you love, Isabelle?”

  “Pardon?”

  Gamache closed his eyes and raised his face to the ceiling. “‘White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, / Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; / Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust / Of friendly bread.’”

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