“About ending the fight.”
“Why would she think Anthony would understand, more than the others?” asked Myrna.
“Something to do with a painting,” said Katie. “Of a crazy old woman who wasn’t really crazy, or something like that. Apparently the others hated it, but he wanted it. I didn’t really understand what she was saying. She was rambling by then. I think she was getting confused between the painting and herself. But for some reason the painting was important to her. And to him, I guess. Anyway, she decided her eldest son was the one to get the letter.”
“Did he?” Myrna asked.
Armand and Jean-Guy exchanged glances.
“We didn’t find anything like that among his papers,” said Jean-Guy.
Armand got up. “Will you come with me, please?” he asked Jean-Guy and Myrna.
They went to his study, and, closing the door, he made a call.
CHAPTER 34
“Do you know what time it is?” came Lucien’s voice.
Gamache looked at his watch.
“Ten past eight,” he said.
“At night.”
“Oui. I’m sorry for calling after hours. Myrna Landers is with me, as well as Chief Inspector Beauvoir. We have you on speaker. We have some questions.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“If it could, do you think we’d be calling?” asked Jean-Guy.
“Did Madame Baumgartner leave a letter to be given to her son Anthony?” Gamache asked.
The television in the background was put on mute.
“Yes, she did. I found it in my father’s file attached to the will.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about it?” asked Myrna.
“Why should I? Your job is to liquidate the will. This wasn’t part of that.”
“But still,” said Myrna, “you could’ve mentioned it.”
“And after Baumgartner was killed?” asked Beauvoir. “When it was clear it was murder? Didn’t you think to mention it then?”
“A house fell on him,” said Lucien. “The letter didn’t kill him.”
“How do you know?” asked Gamache. “Did you read it?”
“No.”
“The truth, Maître Mercier,” said Gamache.
“I did not. Why would I care what was in the letter?”
That at least had the ring of truth to it.
Unless the letter was about himself, which clearly it was not, Lucien Mercier would not be interested.
“When did you give it to him?” Beauvoir asked.
“Right after the reading of the will. After the rest of you left.”
“It was just the two of you?”
“No, I think Caroline and Hugo Baumgartner were still there.”
“Actually, Caroline left with us,” said Myrna.
“Did he read the letter while you were there?” asked Armand.
“No. I just handed it to him and left. I have no idea when, or even if, he read it. Why does it matter?”
“It matters,” said Beauvoir, “because her son has been murdered. And you gave him a letter just hours before it happened. A letter that might’ve led him to contact someone. Meet someone. That might explain why he went to the farmhouse and who he met there. Do you have any idea why he might’ve gone there that night?”
“No, none.”
“Do you know what was in the letter, Maître Mercier?” Gamache asked. Again.
“No.”
The three in the study exchanged glances. Not at all sure whether to believe him.
Though they could not think why he would lie.
“Lucien Mercier, the notary, confirmed that when the reading of the will was over and we’d left, he gave Anthony Baumgartner a letter from his mother,” said Armand when they’d returned to the living room.
“Does he know what was in it?” Reine-Marie asked.
“He says he doesn’t,” said Jean-Guy, sitting back down.
“So no one knows what was in the letter?” asked Reine-Marie.
“I think one of us does.”
Armand turned to Katie.
She looked at Benedict, who nodded.
“You’re right,” she said. “I was there when she wrote it. In the letter she explained about meeting the Baron. About hearing his side of it. About seeing he wasn’t a greedy monster at all, just an old man carrying on an even older fight. She said something about a horizon. I don’t know what that was about. But she did say in the letter that if Anthony loved her, as she knew he did, he’d do one last thing for her. If they won the court case, he’d share the inheritance with the Kinderoths.”
“A beautiful letter,” said Reine-Marie.
“And very clear,” said Armand, who continued to watch Katie.
“I wonder if he read it,” said Myrna. “And how he felt about it.”
“And if he told his siblings,” said Jean-Guy. “Pretty good motive. Without Anthony and the letter, the money was theirs. With him, they’d have to share. People are killed for twenty bucks. We’re talking millions.”
“That don’t exist,” Myrna pointed out.
“But how do we know?” asked Jean-Guy. “How do they know? We don’t and they don’t. Not until the court case is decided. And it doesn’t really matter if it exists, just that they believe it does, or hope it does.”
Myrna nodded. People were capable of believing almost anything. And hope was even more sweeping and powerful.
Reine-Marie was listening to this but watching Armand as he got up and threw another log on the fire, poking it and sending embers up the chimney. Then he turned around, the poker still in his hand.
“Who wrote the letter?” he asked.
“The Baroness,” said Katie. “I told you.”
But the meatballs on her sweater were trembling.
Her heart, Gamache knew. Beating so ferociously it was setting them off. Still, she was looking at him apparently calmly. Apparently coolly.
She has courage, Gamache thought. But he also thought it was a shame she needed it. So much courage demanded to look him in the eye and tell him such a lie.
“An elderly woman, declining mentally and physically, picked up a pen and wrote a letter?” he asked. “Setting it all out so clearly?”
Instead of being harsh, accusing, his voice was reasonable. Soft. Inviting her, once again, to come out of the woods.
“Yes. I watched.”
Benedict took her hand and held it. “Katie,” he said, and nothing else. Just the one word.
Katie.
She dropped her eyes to the rug. To the dog staring at her and drooling.
“She dictated it, but I wrote it for her.”
“Merci,” said Armand, replacing the poker and sitting back down. “You know what that means, of course.”
“It means even if you find the letter, it’s in my handwriting. There’s no proof they were her words.”
“Oui,” said Armand.
What he didn’t say, but that was clear to him and, he suspected, to Beauvoir, was that there was no proof of any of this. This could all be lies.
The reconciliation. The desire to marry. Wanting to share the inheritance.
It could all be a lie.
Anyone who could confirm the story was dead. The Baron. The Baroness. And now Anthony Baumgartner.
The other thing that was clear was that Benedict wasn’t the passive boy toy he appeared to be. Dressed, styled, molded, and manipulated by Katie Burke.
He had, with one word, gotten her to speak the truth. Not, Gamache suspected, because Benedict believed in telling the truth. But because he could see that lying was no longer working.
“There was one more thing in the letter,” said Katie.
“Let me tell them,” said Benedict.
He looked at Gamache. “The Baroness wanted the farmhouse torn down.”
“Why?”
“Because she wanted them to make a clean break. Start their own lives, fresh. She knew they’d never move on as long as that house was standing. It was where she’d brought them up. Where she’d told them all those stories about the inheritance. She wanted it gone.”
“Is that why you went there?” asked Armand.
“Yes,” said Benedict. “I wanted to go at night, when I knew the Baumgartners wouldn’t be there. I needed to see how hard it would be to take it down. I know you said you’d have it condemned, sir, but suppose that took a while, or what if it wasn’t? I felt it was up to me to make sure it was done.”