firmly in their side. And while Dr. Landers had listened, guided, made suggestions on how to try to let their pain go, still they’d let it fester, until she’d finally realized some clients didn’t want freedom from their resentments, they wanted validation.
Entitlement was, she knew, a terrible thing. It chained the person to their victimhood. It gobbled up all the air around it. Until the person lived in a vacuum, where nothing good could flourish.
And the tragedy was almost always compounded, Myrna knew. These people invariably passed it on from generation to generation. Magnified each time.
The sore point became their family legend, their myth, their legacy. What they lost became their most prized possession. Their inheritance.
Of course, if they lost, then someone else had won. And they had a focus for their wrath. It became a blood feud for the bloodline.
Myrna looked at Armand, who had taken back the document from Lucien and written something on it.
“So she thought her side of the family got screwed,” said Benedict.
Myrna compressed her lips. All her psychology classes, her Ph.D., her years of study and work, and this young man put it more succinctly than she could.
Bertha thought her family had been screwed. For generations.
“What do you think, Armand?” Myrna asked.
“The sins I was told were mine from birth,” he remembered Ruth’s obscure poem, “and the Guilt of an old inheritance.”
“There’s a reason Anthony Baumgartner went into that farmhouse,” he said.
“Maybe he just missed his mother,” said Benedict.
Maybe, thought Gamache.
There was, after all, something precious in the house. The one thing that couldn’t be stripped away.
The place was filled with memories.
He saw again the growth chart. And the photograph in Anthony’s home, of the three children in the garden of flowers, beautiful and treacherous.
Armand Gamache knew that memories weren’t just precious, they were powerful. Charged with emotions both beautiful and treacherous.
Who knew what lived on in that rotten old home?
Gamache studied the printout again. It was written in German, so he couldn’t understand much. And he could barely read the writing anyway.
Is this what started it all? A crazy will written one hundred and thirty years ago. And another, equally crazy one, read two days ago?
“Where was Madame Baumgartner when she died?”
“In a seniors’ home. The Maison Saint-Rémy,” said the notary. “Why?”
“Cause of death?” Armand asked.
“Heart failure,” said Lucien. “It’s on her death certificate in your dossier. Why?” he asked again.
“But there was no autopsy?”
“Of course not. She was an elderly woman who died of natural causes.”
“Armand?” asked Myrna, but he just gave her a quick smile.
“Do you mind if I take this?” He picked up the printout.
“I do,” said Lucien. “I need it for my files.”
“Désolé, but I shouldn’t have put it in the form of a question,” said Gamache, folding it up and putting it into his breast pocket. “I’m sure you can print out another copy.”
He got up and turned to Myrna. “Is your bookstore open?”
“It’s unlocked,” she said. “Comes to the same thing. Help yourself.”
Armand spent the next few minutes browsing the shelves of Myrna’s New and Used Bookstore before he found what he wanted. Leaving money next to the till, he put the book into his coat pocket.
When he returned to the bistro, he saw Billy Williams heading to his truck.
“He shouldn’t be driving,” said Myrna, going to the door. “With his bad ankle.”
She called to him, and, as Gamache watched, Billy turned, saw Myrna, and smiled.
“He’s a nice man,” said Armand. “A good man.”
“A handy person to have around,” she said. “That’s for sure.”
They watched as Billy approached the bistro. And while Armand couldn’t understand a word Billy Williams said, he did understand the look on his face.
And he wondered if Myrna saw what he did.
CHAPTER 20
Jean-Guy Beauvoir stared down at the body of Anthony Baumgartner as the coroner went over the autopsy results.
Unlike Gamache, Beauvoir had not seen him in life, but still he could tell that Baumgartner had been a handsome, distinguished-looking man. There was about him, even now, an air of authority. Which was unusual in a corpse.
“An otherwise healthy fifty-two-year-old man,” said Dr. Harris. “You can see the wound to the skull.”
Both Gamache and Beauvoir leaned in, though it was perfectly obvious even from a distance.
“Any idea what did it?” asked Gamache, stepping back.
“I’d say, by the shape of it, a piece of wood. Something similar to a two-by-four, with a sharp edge, but bigger, heavier. It would’ve been swung like a bat.” She mimicked a swing. “Hitting him on the side of