Blue Labyrinth (16 page)

There was a pause before Pendergast replied. When he did, it was in a low tone indeed. “Because, my dear Vincent, our prisoner is not the only one who has begun smelling flowers of late.”

P
endergast slipped into the music room of the Riverside Drive mansion so abruptly that Constance, startled, stopped playing the harpsichord. She stopped to watch as he made his way to the sideboard, put down a large sheaf of papers, removed a bulbous glass, poured himself a large measure of absinthe, fitted a slotted spoon over the glass, placed a cube of sugar within, dribbled ice water over it from a carafe, and then picked up the papers and went straight to one of the leather armchairs.

“Don’t stop playing on my account,” he said.

Constance, taken aback by his terse tone, resumed playing the Scarlatti sonata. Even though she could only see him out of the corner of her eye, she sensed something was amiss. He took a hasty gulp of the absinthe and placed the glass down with a rattle, then took another, downing a good portion of the drink. One foot tapped against the Persian carpet, unevenly, out of time with the music. He leafed through the papers—which appeared to be an extensive assortment of old scientific treatises, medical journals, and news clippings—before putting them aside. On his third gulp of the drink, Constance stopped playing—it was a fiendishly difficult piece, and demanded absolute concentration—and turned to face him.

“I assume the trip to Indio was a disappointment,” she said.

Pendergast, who was staring now at one of the framed holographs, nodded without looking at her.

“The man remained silent?”

“On the contrary, he was most prolix.”

Constance smoothed down her skirt front. “And?”

“It was all gibberish.”

“What did he say, exactly?”

“As I said, gibberish.”

Constance folded her arms. “I would like to know exactly what he said.”

Pendergast turned to her, his pale eyes narrowing. “You’re rather insistent this evening.”

Constance waited.

“The man spoke of flowers.”

“Lilies, by any chance?”

A hesitation. “Yes. As I have repeatedly said, it was meaningless rubbish.”

Again, Constance fell silent. Neither spoke for several minutes. Pendergast continued to play with his glass, finished it off, rose, and returned to the side table. He reached for the absinthe bottle again.

“Aloysius,” she began. “The man may have spoken rubbish—but it was not meaningless rubbish.”

Ignoring her, Pendergast began preparations for a second drink.

“There’s something I need to talk to you about—a matter of some delicacy.”

“Well, pray be about it, then,” Pendergast said, pouring the absinthe into the reservoir at the bottom of the glass and placing the slotted spoon on top.

“Where’s the bloody sugar?” he muttered to himself.

“I’ve been researching your family history. During our meeting in the gun room yesterday the name of a Dr. Evans Padgett came up. Are you familiar with that name?”

Pendergast placed the cube and began dribbling the ice water. “I’m not fond of drama. Out with it.”

“Dr. Padgett’s wife was poisoned by your great-great-grandfather’s
elixir. The man in the Indio jail is suffering from the same symptoms as Padgett’s wife—and as everyone else who took Hezekiah’s patent medicine.”

Pendergast gripped the absinthe glass and took a long drink.

“The person who apparently murdered the Osteological technician at the Museum—and who attacked you—stole a long bone from Padgett’s wife. Why? Perhaps because he was working for someone who was trying to reconstruct the elixir. Clearly, there must have been residues in the bone.”

“What rot,” said Pendergast.

“I fear not. My research into the elixir has been thorough. All the victims spoke of smelling lilies at first—that was part of the elixir’s sales pitch. When they first began taking the elixir, the smell was fleeting, accompanied by a feeling of well-being and mental alertness. With time, the scent became constant. Heavier. With additional doses of elixir, the smell of lilies began to go off, as if they were rotting. The victim became irritable, restless, unable to sleep. The feeling of well-being was replaced by anxiety and manic behavior, with periods of sudden listlessness. At this point, additional doses of the elixir were useless—in fact, they only served to accelerate the victim’s suffering. Ungovernable rages became common, interspersed with periods of extreme lethargy. And then the pain set in: headaches and joint pain, until it became almost impossible to move without excruciating suffering. In—” Constance hesitated. “In the end, death was a release.”

As she was speaking, Pendergast put down the glass and stood up. He began pacing about the room. “I’m well aware of my ancestor’s wrongdoing.”

“There’s another thing: the elixir was administered in vapor form. You didn’t take it as pills or drops. It had to be inhaled.”

More pacing.

“Surely you can see where this is headed,” said Constance.

Pendergast brushed this away with a dismissive gesture.

“Aloysius, for God’s sake, you’ve been poisoned with the elixir. Not only that—but by what was evidently a very concentrated dose!”

“You are growing shrill, Constance.”

“Have you begun to smell lilies?”

“It is a common enough flower.”

“After our conference yesterday, I asked Margo to do a follow-up investigation. She discovered that somebody—no doubt using a false name—did research into Hezekiah’s elixir at both the New York Public Library and the New-York Historical Society.”

Pendergast halted. He sat back down in the armchair and picked up his glass. Leaning back in the chair, he took a quick swig before setting it down.

“Forgive my being blunt. But somebody has taken revenge on you for your ancestor’s sins.”

Pendergast did not seem to hear. He tossed the last of the absinthe down and began to prepare another one.

“You’ve got to get help now, or you’ll end up like that man in California.”

“There is no
help
for me,” said Pendergast with sudden savagery, “save what I can do for myself. And I will thank you not to interfere with my investigations.”

Constance rose from the piano bench and took a step toward him. “Dear Aloysius. Not so long ago, in this very room, you called me your oracle. Allow me to play that part. You’re growing ill. I can see it. We can help you—all of us. Self-delusion will be fatal—”

“Self-delusion?” Pendergast issued a peal of harsh laughter. “There’s no self-delusion here! I’m acutely aware of my condition. Don’t you think I’ve tried my utmost to find a way to remedy the situation?” He snatched up the pile of papers and dashed them into a corner of the room. “If my ancestor Hezekiah, whose own wife was dying as a result of his elixir, could not find a cure… then how can I? What I cannot abide is your meddling. It’s true, I did call you my oracle. But now you’re becoming my albatross. You’re a woman with an idée fixe, as you demonstrated so dramatically when you precipitated your late paramour into the Stromboli volcano.”

A change came over Constance. Her body went rigid. Her fingers
flexed—once only. Sparks flashed in her violet eyes. The very air darkened around her. The change was so abrupt, and with such an undercurrent of menace, that Pendergast, in raising his glass for another sip, was startled and inadvertently jostled his arm, slopping the drink onto his hand.

“If any other man were to have said that to me,” she told him in a low voice, “he would not live out this night.” Then she pivoted on her heel and left the room.

T
here’s someone to see you, Lieutenant.”

Peter Angler, looking up from the pile of printouts that sat on his desk, raised an inquiring eyebrow at his assistant, Sergeant Slade, who stood in the doorway.

“Who is it?”

“The prodigal son,” Slade said with a thin smile as he stepped aside. A moment later, the lean, ascetic form of Special Agent Pendergast appeared in the doorway.

Angler did a good job of concealing his surprise. Wordlessly, he motioned Pendergast to a chair. There was a different look to the man today, Angler sensed; he wasn’t quite sure what it was, but he thought it had to do with the cast of the man’s eyes, which seemed unusually bright in what was otherwise a pallid face.

He leaned back in his chair, away from the printouts. He’d done enough wooing of this man; he would let the FBI agent speak first.

“I wanted to congratulate you, Lieutenant, on your inspired discovery,” Pendergast began. “It would never have occurred to me to search for an anagram of my son’s name in the passenger manifests from Brazil. It was just like Alban to make a game of it.”

Of course it wouldn’t
, Angler thought; that was not the way Pendergast’s mind worked. He wondered, idly, if Alban Pendergast had perhaps been more intelligent than his father.

“I find myself curious,” Pendergast went on. “What day did Alban fly into New York, exactly?”

“It was June fourth,” Angler replied. “On an Air Brazil flight from Rio.”

“June fourth,” Pendergast repeated, almost to himself. “A week before he was murdered.” He glanced back at Angler. “Naturally, once you had found the anagram, you went back and checked earlier manifests?”

“Naturally.”

“And did you find anything else?”

For a moment, Angler considered being evasive and giving Pendergast a taste of his own medicine. But he wasn’t that kind of a cop. “Not yet. That investigation is still ongoing. There are a huge number of manifests to check, and not all of them—especially the foreign airlines—are as in order as one might wish.”

“I see.” Pendergast seemed to ponder something for a moment. “Lieutenant, I wish to apologize for, ah, being less forthcoming on past occasions than perhaps I should have been. At the time, I felt that I might make more progress on my son’s murder if I pursued the case on my own.”

In other words, you figured me for the bumbling idiot you presume most of the force to be
, Angler thought.

“In that I may have been mistaken. And so in order to rectify the situation, I wanted to place before you the facts to date—as far as I know them.”

Angler made a slight gesture with his hand, turning his palm up, asking Pendergast to proceed. In the shadows at the rear of the office, Sergeant Slade remained standing—perfectly silent, as was his wont—taking everything in.

Pendergast briefly and succinctly recited to Angler the story of the turquoise mine, the ambush, and its link to the murder of the technician at the Museum of Natural History. Angler listened with growing surprise and irritation, even anger, at all that Pendergast had withheld. At the same time, the information might be very useful. It would open the case up to fresh lines of investigation—that is, if it
could be relied upon. Angler listened impassively, taking care not to betray any reaction.

Pendergast finished his story and fell silent, looking at Angler, as if expecting a reply. Angler gave him none.

After a long moment, Pendergast rose. “In any case, Lieutenant, that is the progress of the case, or cases, to date. I offer this to you in the spirit of cooperation. If I can help in any other way, I hope you’ll let me know.”

Now at last Angler shifted in his chair. “Thank you, Agent Pendergast. We will.”

Pendergast nodded courteously and left the office.

Angler sat in his chair, leaning away from the desk, for a moment. Then he turned to Slade and gestured for him to come forward. Sergeant Slade shut the door and took the chair vacated by Pendergast.

Angler regarded Slade for a moment. He was short, dark, and saturnine, and an exceptionally shrewd judge of human nature. He was also the most cynical man Angler had ever known—all of which made him an exceptional counselor.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I can’t believe the son of a bitch held out on us like that.”

“Yes. So why this, now? Why, after doing his best to give me only the merest scraps of information—why come here on his own volition and spill all his secrets?”

“Two possibilities,” Slade said. “A, he wants something.”

“And B?”

“He isn’t.”

“Isn’t what?”

“Isn’t spilling all his secrets.”

Angler chuckled. “Sergeant, I like the way your mind works.” He paused. “It’s too pat. This sudden volte-face, this open and apparently friendly offer of cooperation—and this story about a turquoise mine, a trap, and a mysterious assailant.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Slade, popping a piece of licorice toffee into his mouth—he was never without a pocketful—and tossing
the crumpled wrapper into the garbage can. “I believe his story, as cockamamie as it sounds. It’s just there’s more that he isn’t saying.”

Angler looked down at his desk and thought for a moment. Then he glanced back up. “So what does he want?”

“He’s fishing. Wants to know what we’ve uncovered about his son’s movements.”

“Which means he doesn’t already know everything about his son’s movements.”

“Or maybe he does. And by pretending to show an interest, he wants to point us in the wrong direction.” Slade smiled crookedly as he chewed.

Angler sat forward, pulled a sheet of paper toward him, scribbled a few notations in shorthand. He liked shorthand not only because it was quick, but because it had fallen into such disuse that it made his notes almost as secure as if they had been encrypted. Then he pushed the sheet away again.

“I’ll send a team to California to check out this mine and interview the man in the Indio jail. I’ll also call D’Agosta and get all the case files on his Museum investigation. In the meantime, I want you to quietly—
quietly
—dig up everything on Pendergast you can find. History, his record of arrests and convictions, commendations, censures—whatever. You’ve got some FBI buddies. Take them out for drinks. Don’t ignore the rumors. I want to know this man inside and out.”

Slade gave a slow smile. This was the kind of job he liked. Without another word, he stood up and slipped out the door.

Angler sat back in his chair again, put his hands behind his head, and gazed up at the ceiling. He mentally reviewed all his previous dealings with Pendergast: the initial meeting in this very office, where Pendergast had been so remarkable in his lack of cooperation; the autopsy; the later encounter in the evidence room, where Pendergast had, perversely, seemed to show little or no interest in the hunt for his son’s murderer; and now once again in this office, where Pendergast had abruptly become the soul of forthrightness. This
sudden reversal smacked to Angler of a common theme in many of the Greek myths he knew so well: betrayal. Atreus and Thyestes. Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. And now, as he stared at the ceiling, he realized that—while over the past weeks he had felt irritation and doubt toward Pendergast—all that time, another emotion had been slowly developing within him:

Dark suspicion.