Empty Mansions

appropriately, but she willfully refused the hearing aid. Her eyes were worse now, and she used a magnifying glass to sign cards and checks. (She had started printing Hadassah’s name on gift checks as “H. Peri.”) On March 28, her weight was recorded as eighty-five pounds, including her hospital gown, slippers, and six layers of cashmere sweaters.
    On April 12, the hospital’s Catholic chaplain tried to visit on his rounds. Huguette had received prayer cards from friends, and she would say the Lord’s Prayer before bedtime—in Spanish if one of the Latina cleaning ladies was there. But she refused to see the priest.
    • • •
    A nurse on the hall in the 10 Linsky section at Beth Israel was on his way to help a patient with a tracheotomy tube when Hadassah Peri called him into Room 4. He was needed for just a minute to witness the signing of a document. It was April 19, 2005, and the copper king’s daughter was about to sign her last will and testament.
    If one were teaching a law school class in estates and trusts, demonstrating how not to handle the signing of a will for an elderly client with hundreds of millions of dollars, this ceremony would be Exhibit A.
    Along with the nurse from the hall, the other witness was attorney Bock’s secretary. The entire event took five minutes at most. Huguette sat on the side of the bed. Another lawyer from Bock’s firm presided, asking Huguette to confirm that she intended this to be her last will and testament. Bock’s secretary recalled that Hadassah helped Huguette hold the pen to direct where to sign but said there was no sign of any distress or coercion. Other witnesses said they didn’t recall Hadassah helping her hold the pen.
    This was a more complete document than the earlier one, encompassing seven pages. The key paragraph was this: “I intentionally make no provision in this my Last Will [and] Testament for any members of my family, whether on my paternal or maternal side, having had minimal contacts with them over the years. The persons and institutions named herein as beneficiaries of my Estate are the true objects of my bounty.”
    The will directed that a Bellosguardo Foundation be created as a charity “for the primary purpose of fostering and promoting the Arts.” This foundation would receive her estate in Santa Barbara, as her attorneys had suggested for decades and as Santa Barbara’s mayor Sheila Lodge had proposed to her in 1993 and 1997. To the foundation, she also left all but one of her paintings, including her own works and the masterworks she still owned, and her books and musical instruments. As foundation trustees, the document named her executors, again Bock and Kamsler, and a third trustee, her California attorney, Jim Hurley. These men would have the sole authority to pay themselves fees in perpetuity.
    Next came the specific bequests to the people closest to her: $100,000 to her doctor, Henry Singman; $500,000 to her personal assistant, Chris Sattler; two years’ pay to the manager at Bellosguardo, John Douglas; one year’s pay to the caretaker at Le Beau Château, Tony Ruggiero; $25,000 to her handyman at Fifth Avenue, Martin Gonzalez (who would die before her); $500,000 to accountant Kamsler; $500,000 to attorney Bock (he would have to give 80 percent to his law firm under his partnership agreement); and all her dolls and dollhouses to Hadassah Peri, “my nurse, friend and loyal companion.”
    The Corcoran Gallery received a single painting, the Monet from the Water Lilies series, the one Huguette had bought just before her divorce. Though the painting was not one of Monet’s monumental murals, it has been appraised for $25 million.
    Of whatever remained, Huguette left 60 percent to Hadassah, 25 percent to Wanda Styka, and 15 percent to the Bellosguardo Foundation.
    Huguette initialed every page with her felt-tip pen and signed the last page in a cursive immediately recognizable as belonging to the same girl who had signed the address book at her half-brother Will’s Mowitza Lodge in 1916, only a bit shakier.
    To Beth Israel, despite all its efforts and high hopes for tens or hundreds of millions, the will left only $1 million. Within two months, she lost her room with a view and was forced to move to the third floor. Hospital officials have said they had no idea whether Beth Israel was in Huguette’s will and made the switch only because her floor was being renovated.
    Her new neighborhood was called 3 Karpas, a