Empty Mansions

in her commodious apartment on Fifth Avenue. Surely she employed a butler or secretary to receive and screen her calls. I telephoned her attorney to inquire about the situation.
    “She’s not going to provide you a number,” he replied curtly.
    She missed me again the next month, leaving this message:
    Hello, Paul, this is your Aunt Huguette, and I did call the other number, but I didn’t get an answer. So I will call you up soon again, because just now I have the chicken pox—of all things to get at my age. Imagine! So, anyway, I’m getting along fine. The fever went down and everything’s okay. And thank you for the photos. Your daughter is beautiful! And your little grandson, Eric—
    At that point, the message timed out. Surprisingly, this aged relative, so well known in the family for being reclusive and on guard, seemed comfortable going on informally about personal medical matters and inquiring about my immediate family even though we had never met. But I still didn’t have her number.
    I continued writing to her through the next year, and in October 1995 I let her know I would be in New York, and gave her the phone number of my hotel. I had accepted an invitation from one of my Clark cousins, André Baeyens, at the French consulate up Fifth Avenue from Huguette’s apartment. André, a great-grandson of the senator and a career diplomat, was the French consul general in New York. Huguette had asked André to contact me, and we became friends. Upon my return to my hotel room that night, around eleven, the phone rang.
    “Hello, Paul, this is your Aunt Huguette.”
    At last, nearly a full year after my initial letter, we were in conversation.We remained in conversation for nine years. We talked about six times a year. Sometimes the calls were brief, just a few minutes of light chatter, but on other occasions we talked for a half hour or longer. Selections from our chats are included throughout this book as pieces entitled “In Conversation with Huguette.”
    She shared with me her favorite books and some of her memories. We discussed current events and family history. And she extended to me the rare treat of visiting her Santa Barbara home, Bellosguardo. I would call her attorney to arrange a time, and Huguette would call as requested, sometimes a few minutes early. What she never shared was her phone number.
Bill Dedman and Paul Newell
    I N M AY 2011, just two weeks before her 105th birthday, Huguette Clark died in Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. Court records soon answered one mystery while raising another. Huguette had not signed “a will” to distribute her fortune, but had signed two wills with contrary instructions. Both had been signed in the spring of 2005, when she was nearly ninety-nine.
    The first will left $5 million to her nurse and the rest of her fortune to her closest living relatives, who would have inherited anyway if she had signed no will at all. These heirs were not named in the document.
    Six weeks later, Huguette had signed a second will, leaving nothing to her relatives. She split her estate among her nurse, a goddaughter, her doctor, the hospital, her attorney, and her accountant, but directed that the largest share go to a new arts foundation at Bellosguardo, her California vacation home.
    Thus began a court battle—with more than $300 million at stake—to determine Huguette’s true intentions. Nineteen relatives, from her father’s first marriage, challenged her last will, saying that Huguette was a victim of fraud, that she was mentally ill, unable to understand what she had signed.
    • • •
    In
Empty Mansions
, we have joined together to explore the mystery of Huguette Clark and her family. Our aim is to tell their story honestly, wherever it leads. We believe it’s a story worth telling, not only for Huguette’s sake but because of the light it may throw on American history.
    On one level, our tale of the copper king and his family traces the rise and fall of a great fortune. Americans are familiar with the names Rockefeller and Carnegie and Morgan, but why has W. A. Clark nearly vanished from history? At what cost, with what sacrifices, did he achieve wealth and political power? What sort of life did his young wife, Anna, and their daughters, Andrée and Huguette, enjoy amid such incredible wealth and public scrutiny? Why did Huguette withdraw from the public eye? In her old age, was she competent to control her finances or was she, as her relatives