Empty Mansions

of them in Manhattan, where it is not uncommon for experienced lawyers to bill at $1,000 an hour. Court dates and settlement conferences were attended by ten to twelve lawyers at a time, together running the meter in excess of $10,000 an hour.
    Additional costs came from travel to take testimony from fifty witnesses, including an all-expenses-paid trip in 2012 for three attorneys to see half-grandnephew André Baeyens in Vienna. At age eighty-two, theelegant former diplomat was afflicted with aphasia, a brain disease akin to dementia. Despite the family’s objection, André was subjected to two days of questioning in which he was unable to give even his home address. At least the attorneys were able to see the fountains of the Schönbrunn Palace at night.
THE PINK DIAMOND

 
    T O RAISE CASH for the estate, the public administrator began selling some of Huguette’s property, even before the legal battle was concluded. He was able to sell only the items that were not specifically bequeathed to anyone.
    Her mother’s jewelry was already long gone, sold off by Citibank, and the pieces in her safe at home had been given to Hadassah and Chris, but she had another stash of jewelry, still in their original 1920s boxes from Cartier and Tiffany—in a safe-deposit box. They had apparently not been worn since the 1930s.
    After Huguette’s jewels were displayed for a public viewing, the auctioneer at Christie’s sold her nine-carat pink diamond ring for $14 million, as well as her twenty-carat rectangular diamond ring for $2.7 million; her Art Deco diamond and emerald bracelets that she wore on her honeymoon, for $90,000 and $480,000; her ruby, sapphire, and emerald gold bracelet for $220,000; and her charm bracelet, depicting themes of love—a girl watering a heart in a garden, a blindfolded lover choosing between two hearts—for $75,000. In all, the pieces brought $18 million, or so it first appeared. The purchaser of the pink diamond ring put out a press release announcing his purchase, then failed to come up with the money, so it was sold quietly for less.
    • • •
    The apartments at 907 Fifth Avenue also went on the market for a total of $55 million.
    Apartment 12W sold for $25.5 million tohedge fund manager Boaz Weinstein. The apartment had proved to be a good investment for Huguette. Even accounting for inflation, her investment of $63,000 in 1955 had increased forty-seven-fold.
    An oil sheik, the prime minister of the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, bid $31.5 million for Apartments 8W and 8E, but the co-op board turned down his application. Too much traffic and security, the members said.Eventually, 8W and a sliver of 8E were sold for $22.5 million to a quieter owner, private equity manager Frederick Iseman. The rest of 8E was still on the market in mid-2013.
    In Connecticut, Le Beau Château had fetched an offer of $25 million while Huguette lived, but she wouldn’t take it, because the appraisal had been a bit higher at $26 million. An accepted offer at $21 million required getting town approval to divide the fifty-two acres into ten lots, but then the market crashed anyway. The price fell from its height of $35 million to $24 million, fell after her death again to $17 million, then to $15.9 million. In the summer of 2013, it remained on the market, with neighbor Harry Connick, Jr., among the lookers.
    The rest of Huguette’s possessions—her paintings and books, her dolls and dollhouses and miniature castles—were in storage, awaiting a trial or settlement.
    • • •
    The case was assigned in 2013 to a judge, Surrogate Nora S. Anderson, who the previous year had been censured for failing to report $250,000 in campaign contributions. She was acquitted by a criminal jury of two felony charges of filing false campaign reports, then was censured by the state judicial conduct commission. So the trial of the estate of Huguette Clark, whose father quit the U.S. Senate because of campaign finance irregularities, was being heard by a judge with campaign finance issues.
    As of this writing in July 2013, the parties had not agreed to a settlement. Absent a deal,a jury trial was scheduled for September 2013 to divide the Clark copper fortune.
    Two blocks away at the district attorney’s office, the criminal investigation officially was “inactive.” In nearly three years of digging, the district attorney didn’t find justification to bring a criminal charge against anyone. Bock and Kamsler may have been