Basilisk (7 page)

The room was exactly as it had been the day before yesterday, except that Doris Bellman had gone. Her bed was still unmade, and her gray loose-weave shawl was lying on the floor beside it. A tumbler of water stood on the nightstand, with bubbles in it. Her little leather-covered travel clock had stopped at twelve after twelve.

The first thing that Grace noticed was that the two ivy plants on either side of the window were shriveled up, as if they hadn’t been watered for months. She went across and felt their leaves. They were totally dry, and they crumbled between her fingers. Yet only yesterday they had been flourishing.

She stood by the window for a while, watching the raindrops dribbling down the glass. Then she suddenly realized that, apart from the sound of the rain, and the distant drone of vacuum-cleaning, Doris Bellman’s room was silent.

She turned around. A frayed beige pashmina was draped over Harpo the cockatoo’s cage, but Harpo was making no noise at all: no squawking or scratching or pecking at his bars. Grace went over and lifted the pashmina off. Harpo was lying on the bottom of his cage, one claw raised, his puffy blue eyelids closed.

Grace stood in the middle of the room. She had come here to feel the last echoes of Doris Bellman’s life, but instead she felt another kind of resonance, like the dying chord of a full-size church organ. She couldn’t exactly understand how, but she felt a strong sense of
panic
. Even the photographs of Doris Bellman’s family seemed to be staring at her in desperation, as if they had witnessed something terrible, but had been powerless to stop it.

She looked at her own face, in the mirror with the frame made of seashells. ‘What happened, Doris?’ she whispered. ‘Give me some clue, will you?’

She turned around and gasped. The squat and ugly nurse had appeared in the doorway, and was standing there grinning at her.

‘Excuse me, yes please, I have to service this room now.’

‘Have you informed Mrs Bellman’s relatives?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Her relatives.’ Grace repeated, and pointed to the photographs. ‘Has anybody told them that Mrs Bellman has passed?’

The carer shrugged but didn’t stop grinning. ‘I do not know about this. Ask Sister Bennett.’

‘All right,’ said Grace. ‘But you shouldn’t touch or move any of Mrs Bellman’s things until her next of kin gets here.’

‘Yes,’ said the carer, although Grace didn’t think that she had the faintest idea what she was talking about.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked her.

‘Phuong,’ said the carer.

‘Well, Phuong, do you have any idea of what happened in this room last night?’

‘Yes. Mrs Bellman die.’

‘I know that. But – look – her pet cockatoo is dead, too, and so are her plants.’

The carer nodded. Grace thought:
I really don’t know if I’m getting through here
.

‘Phuong – everything that was living in this room yesterday is now dead.
Everything
.’

The carer blinked at her, but obviously couldn’t understand what she was trying to say. Grace turned to the window to show her the curled-up ivy, and it was then that she saw four or five bottle-green blowflies lying on their backs, behind the drapes.

‘Did you see anything last night? Did you see a man, all dressed up in black, with maybe some kind of spiky hat on?’

‘No man, no.’

‘He would have been very big, and hunched over. Like Quasimodo, you know? Or, obviously, you
wouldn’t
know. Or maybe you heard a noise, like somebody dragging a heavy sack.’

The carer shook her head and continued to shake it.

Grace hesitated for a moment, and then she said, ‘Did you hear Mrs Bellman scream?’

It was then, though, that the door was pushed open wider and Sister Bennett appeared. ‘Doctor Underhill? I’m sorry, but we really have to get on and service this room. We have a wait list, you know, and a new resident will be arriving here tomorrow morning.’

‘What about Mrs Bellman’s things?’

‘I gather that her son is flying in from Houston tomorrow. All Mrs Bellman’s possessions will be cataloged and locked away in our property store. They’ll be perfectly secure.’

‘I’m sure they will. But before you do that, don’t you think the police ought to take a look at this room, just the way it is?’

Sister Bennett stared at her as if she had said something in a foreign language. ‘The
police
? What on earth for?’

‘Well . . . Mrs Bellman called me at home and said that somebody was trying to break into her room. And the last time I saw her, she was sure that somebody was walking up and down the corridors at night, like a prowler. And one of your residents told me that he saw some kind of intruder, right outside his room.’

‘Oh, really? And which particular resident would that be?’

‘I met him in the corridor,’ said Grace. ‘He was wearing a brown bathrobe. He said his name was Michael Dukakis but I don’t suppose for a second that it really is.’

Sister Bennett laughed – an abrupt, humorless scurry of laughter. But her glassy blue eyes remained totally hostile.

‘Mr Stavrianos is suffering from senile dementia,’ she said. ‘He sees gorillas in the woods around the grounds. He sees giant lizards in his bathtub. He thinks he’s some world-famous conductor, and he’s always late for his next big concert.’

‘I see.’

Sister Bennett stooped down and picked up Doris Bellman’s shawl. ‘Don’t let it worry you, doctor. You get used to it, after a while, working in a rest home. All the delusions, all the paranoia. These people’s brains are coming unraveled, and all we can do is try to keep them as calm as possible and protect them from harming themselves.’

‘Yes,’ said Grace. She still thought that the police ought to be notified of Doris Bellman’s death, and the terrors that she had expressed, only hours before she died. But Sister Bennett was probably right. The black, hunched-up sack-dragger was nothing more than an old woman’s nightmare, the same kind of nightmare that frightens little children, and there was a strong possibility that she had told ‘Michael Dukakis’ about it, so that he was convinced that
he
had seen it, too.

Besides, thought Grace, I really need to get going. I can’t afford the time to hang around here for hours, talking to bored and skeptical detectives, while Sister Bennett gives me her death stare in the background.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave it all to you.’

When she emerged from the Murdstone, she found that it had stopped raining. The rainclouds had passed over the Delaware River, toward Camden, trailing their dirty gray skirts behind them, and now the sun was shining.

In the corner of the parking lot there was a large green dumpster. She dropped her broken umbrella into it, and promised to buy herself a new one. As she walked back to her car, she turned around and looked back, although she didn’t know why. The Murdstone’s roof was dazzling, almost as if the building were on fire. But it was the gargoyle on the crest of the porch which caught her attention. It was grinning at her mockingly, as if it knew that she had just conceded defeat to Sister Bennett.

So you chickened out, did you
?
Couldn’t be bothered
?
But what if that sack-dragger is really real, and is going to go shuffling along those corridors night after night, claiming one old person after another
?

She climbed into her car and started the engine. Her eyes looked back at her out of the rear-view mirror, expressionless. For the first time in years, she felt a complete lack of certainty. She had absolutely no idea what she ought to do next.

SEVEN

The Black Book

A
t the same time that Grace was leaving the Murdstone, Nathan was arriving at the research wing at the Philadelphia Zoo. As he drove in through the entrance gates, he saw two TV vans, one from WHYY and one from the public broadcasting system WCAU, as well as a small crowd of TV and newspaper reporters.

Without slowing down, he circled around a huge reflecting pool of rainwater in the middle of the parking lot, and sped back out again. He drove around to the rear of the laboratory block and parked his car next to a battered green truck that stood outside the maintenance department.

One of the maintenance staff immediately waddled out, in green zoo coveralls. He had a bulbous nose and a gingery buzzcut and near-together eyes like a mandrill. ‘Can’t park there, fella.’

‘What’s it to you where I park?’ Nathan demanded. ‘You’re maintenance, not traffic management. Go maintain something.’

He climbed the steps and pushed open the double doors. The maintenance man said, ‘
Hey
!’ but Nathan ignored him. He walked along the corridor to the very end, with the man repeating ‘
Hey
!’ and ‘
Hey, fella
!’ at regular intervals. He didn’t answer to ‘fella’, especially today.

When he turned the corner at the end of the corridor, he found Patti Laquelle standing outside his laboratory, wearing her red squall and a very short skirt and Ugg boots, chatting on her cell.

Patti said, ‘Millie? Have to call you later, babes. Professor Underhill has finally showed up.’

‘So how did
you
get in here?’ asked Nathan, as she followed him into his office. ‘This whole building is supposed to be restricted.’

‘I used my amazing charm, of course. And my identity badge.’

Nathan took hold of the plastic card that was safety-pinned to her windbreaker, and peered at it. It was a genuine Philadelphia Zoo Visitor ID, but on close inspection it was obvious that Patti had glued her own photograph on top of the original.

‘OK, I picked it up from your desk,’ she admitted. But then she said, ‘Did you see my article? I thought it came out really, really great.’

‘I haven’t had time yet, Patti. To tell you the truth, I overslept.’

‘It came out really, really great. At least, I thought it did.
My Rotten Break: By Dragon’s Egg Egghead
.’

Nathan sat down at his desk, and switched on his computer.

‘That was the headline? “My Rotten Break: By Dragon’s Egg Egghead”?’

‘You really need to read it,’ Patti insisted. ‘It’s totally
simpatico
. I put in all that stuff you told me about Alzheimer’s and cystic what’s-it’s-name and Parkinson’s disease.’

‘Good. Great. Thank you.’

He checked his emails. Patti stayed where she was, on the opposite side of his desk, smiling.

He looked up. ‘Did you want something else?’ he asked her.

‘Not really. I wanted to tell you that the story came out good, that’s all. And maybe I could do a follow-up.’

‘A follow-up?’

‘Absolutely. You are going to try again, aren’t you? You are going to grow another gryphon’s egg? I’d like to cover it right from the moment of
concepción
.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what went wrong with this one yet. And it all depends on my funding. The Zoo isn’t going to give me a blank check to go on breeding mythical creatures if none of them survive.’

‘But they
must
. Like – this research that you’re doing, it’s much too important for them to pull the plug on you.’

‘Well, I agree with you, Patti. But tell that to the funding department.’

Richard knocked at the door. He had fastened his lab coat with the wrong buttons, which made him look even more lopsided than usual, and the parting in his hair was a zig-zag. ‘Morning,’ he said, looking suspiciously at Patti. ‘Traffic bad, was it?’

‘Like I was telling Ms Laquelle here, I slept late. Did you make a start on the necropsy yet?’

‘You’ve had about a zillion phone calls, but I didn’t pick up. I guessed it was probably the media, you know.’

‘I’ll deal with the media later. What have you done so far?’

‘OK . . .’ Richard took a crumpled Kleenex out of his sleeve and fastidiously wiped his nose. ‘I’ve taken DNA samples. I’ve taken soft-tissue specimens from the muscles and internal organs, including the liver and the spleen. I’ve also taken bone-marrow samples from the skeleton, and keratin from the feathers and the beak. I’ve started growing seven different bacterial cultures from the various body fluids.’

‘Good work,’ said Nathan. He was impressed.

‘It’s kind of early to tell what the primary COD was,’ Richard told him. ‘But so far I think that you’re probably right. Or
mostly
right. We
are
dealing with a Group A Streptococcus. But maybe something else, too.’

‘Did
you
read my article, Richard?’ Patti interrupted him. She was sitting on the corner of Nathan’s desk and her skirt was hiked up so high that he could see her pink polka-dot panties, so he immediately looked away.

Richard wiped his nose again, and sniffed. ‘On the
Web
? Sure. I read it.’

‘And what did you think? Didn’t you think it was great?’

Richard thought for a moment, but then he said, ‘I have to admit it, yes, it was reasonably accurate. Apart from the headline, that is. We’ve never actually tried to breed dragons as such.’

‘Well – dragons, gargoyles, gryphons,’ said Patti. ‘They’re all the same kind of thing, aren’t they? It’s just that your average
Web
reader wouldn’t have a clue what a gryphon is.’

Nathan’s phone rang. He picked it up and said, ‘Cee-Zee Lab.’

‘Oh, hi! This is Kevin McNamara, senior science editor on
The Philadelphia Inquirer
. Can I speak to Professor Nathan Underhill, please?

‘I’m sorry, Mr McNamara. Professor Underhill isn’t here today.’

‘Oh. Pity. I just wanted to ask him a couple of questions about his work on mythical creatures. In particular, the gryphon that just hatched.’

‘The gryphon was stillborn. You can read all about it on the
Web
.’

‘Yes, I know that. But I wanted to ask Professor Underhill if he intends to continue his research, of if he’s ready to admit that it’s never going to come to anything, and throw in the towel.’