Blue Labyrinth (30 page)

I
t was six o’clock that evening by the time Constance Greene returned from police headquarters and let herself in through the front door of the Riverside Drive mansion, walked down the refectory passage, and crossed the marble-lined expanse of the grand reception hall. All was silent within, save for the soft passage of her feet. The mansion felt deserted. Proctor was still recovering in the hospital, Mrs. Trask was somewhere deep in the kitchen, and Dr. Stone was probably upstairs, sitting in Pendergast’s room.

She continued down the tapestried hallway, past the marble niches that interrupted, at regular intervals, the rose-colored wallpaper. Now she mounted a back staircase, easing up the treads to minimize the creaking of the old boards. Once in the long upstairs hallway, she walked down it, past a large and disgusting stuffed polar bear, to reach a door on the left. She placed her hand on the knob. Taking a breath, she turned it, then quietly pushed the door open.

Dr. Stone rose noiselessly from a chair by the door. She felt irritated by his presence, his foppish dress, his yellow ascot and tortoiseshell glasses, and especially his utter inability to do anything beyond palliative care for her guardian. This was unfair, she knew, but Constance was in no mood for fairness.

“I should like a moment alone, Doctor.”

“He is sleeping,” he said while retreating.

Before Pendergast’s condition had grown serious, Constance had rarely set foot inside his private bedroom. Even now, as she paused just within the doorway, she looked around in curiosity. The room was not large. The dim light came from behind recessed molding that ran just below the ceiling, and from a single Tiffany lamp that sat on the bedside table: the room had no windows. The wallpaper was flocked burgundy on red, with a subtle fleur-de-lis pattern. On the walls hung a few works of art: a small Caravaggio study for
Boy with a Basket of Fruit
; a Turner seascape; a Piranesi etching. A bookcase held three rows of old, leather-bound volumes. Scattered around the room were several museum pieces that, instead of being display objects, were put to actual use: a Roman glass urn held mineral water; a Byzantine-era candelabra held six white, unburned tapers. Frankincense smoked in an old Egyptian incense burner made of faience, and the heavy scent of it hung in the room, in a futile attempt to banish the stench that filled Pendergast’s nostrils day and night. A stainless-steel IV stand, hung with a saline drip, was in sharp contrast with the rest of the room’s elegant furnishings.

Pendergast lay motionless in the bed. His pale hair, now darkened with sweat, made a sharp contrast with the crisp white pillows. The skin of his face was as colorless as porcelain and almost as translucent; she could almost make out the musculature and fine skeletal detail beneath, and even the blue veins in his forehead. His eyes were closed.

Constance approached the bed. The morphine drip had been set to one milligram every fifteen minutes. Dr. Stone, she noted, had set the lock-out dose at six milligrams an hour; since Pendergast refused to permit supervision by a nurse, it was important that he not be allowed to overmedicate himself.

“Constance.”

Pendergast’s whisper surprised her; he was awake, after all. Or perhaps her movements, quiet as they were, had roused him.

She came around the bed and took a seat at its head. She recalled sitting in just such a position in Pendergast’s hospital room in Geneva, just three days before. His rapid decline since then was deeply
frightening to her. And yet, despite his weakness, the terrible, constant effort he struggled with remained evident—the fight to keep pain and madness from completely overwhelming him.

She saw his hand move under the covers, then withdraw. It now held a piece of paper. He raised it, shaking.

“What is this?”

She was shocked by the coldness, the anger, in his voice.

She took the paper and recognized it as the list of ingredients she had drawn up. It had been left on the table in the library, which had become a sort of war room for her and Margo. That had obviously been foolish.

“Hezekiah worked out an antidote to try to save his wife. We’re going to make it—for you.”

“We? Who is
we
?”

“Margo and I.”

His eyes narrowed. “I forbid it.”

Constance stared back. “You’ve got no say in the matter.”

He raised his head, with effort. “You’re being an absolute fool. You have no idea who you’re dealing with. Barbeaux was able to kill Alban. He bested me. He will surely kill you.”

“He won’t have time. I’m going to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden tonight, and Margo is at the Museum right now—gathering the last ingredients.”

The eyes seemed to glitter as they bored into her. “Barbeaux, or his men, will be waiting for you at the garden. And waiting for Margo at the Museum.”

“Impossible,” said Constance. “I just found that list this morning. Margo and I are the only ones who have seen it.”

“It was lying in the library, in plain sight.”

“Barbeaux can’t possibly have gotten into the house.”

Pendergast raised himself fully, even as his head seemed unsteady. “Constance, this man is the very devil incarnate. Don’t go to the Botanic Garden.”

“I’m sorry, Aloysius. I told you—I’m going to fight this thing to the end.”

Pendergast blinked. “Then why are you even here?”

“To say good-bye. In case…” Constance began to falter.

At this, Pendergast made an effort to rally himself. With a supreme act of will, he rose onto one elbow. His eyes cleared a little, and he held Constance with his gaze. The hand snaked back under the covers and reappeared, this time grasping his .45. He pushed it toward her. “If you refuse to listen to reason, at least take this. It’s fully loaded.”

Constance took a step back. “No. Recall what happened the last time I tried to fire a gun.”

“Then bring me the phone.”

“Who are you calling?”

“D’Agosta.”

“No. Please don’t. He’ll interfere.”

“Constance,
for the love of God
—!” His voice choked off. Slowly, he sank back onto the white sheets. The effort had exhausted him to a fearsome degree.

Constance hesitated. She was shocked, and deeply moved, that he felt so strongly. She hadn’t been handling this correctly. Her stubbornness was making him agitated to the point of danger. She took a deep breath and decided to lie. “You made your point. I won’t go to the garden. And I’ll call off Margo.”

“I hope to God you’re not deceiving me.” He stared at her, his voice low.

“No.”

He leaned forward and whispered, with the last of his strength: “
Do not go to the Botanic Garden
.”

Constance left him with the phone and stumbled out into the hall, breathing hard. There she paused, thinking.

She had not considered that Barbeaux might be waiting for her at the Botanic Garden. This was a surprising idea—but not an altogether displeasing one.

She would need a weapon. Not a gun, of course, but something more suited to her… style.

Moving quickly now down the hallway, she descended the steps
to the reception hall, turned and entered the library, moved the secret book, and slipped into the elevator to the basement. Then she almost ran down the corridor to the rough-hewn basement stairs that spiraled down to even deeper spaces, disappearing into the shadow-haunted, dust-fragrant chambers that lay beyond.

Dr. Stone heard Constance’s retreating footsteps from his waiting room next door. He came out and reentered Pendergast’s bedroom, with a little shiver at the thought of her. While Constance was certainly a young woman of taste, elegance, and exotic beauty, she was also as cold as dry ice—and there was, on top of that, something not right about her, a certain quality that gave him the absolute creeps.

He found his patient once again asleep. A phone had slipped out of his hands and was lying next to his open hand on the sheets. He picked it up and checked it, wondering whom he had been trying to call, saw that no call had been made, then gently turned it off and placed it back on the bureau. And then he took up once again his position in the chair at the door, waiting for what he was sure would be a long night… before the end.

M
argo realized that getting into the Museum after hours was going to be a major problem. She felt sure Frisby would have put her name on a watch list at the first-floor security entrance—the only way in and out of the Museum after closing time. So she decided to simply hide in the Museum until it closed. She’d get what she came for, then exit the after-hours security station as nonchalantly as possible, with a story about having fallen asleep in a lab.

As closing time neared, Margo, posing as a museumgoer, made her way into the remotest, least-visited halls. Her chest felt tight, her breathing constricted. As the guards were beginning their sweeps, ushering visitors out, she hid in a bathroom and climbed onto a toilet seat to wait, mentally willing herself to relax. Finally, around six o’clock, all was quiet. She crept back out.

The halls were more or less empty, and she could hear the guards’ shoes echoing distantly on the marble floors as they made their rounds. It was like an early warning signal, allowing her to evade them as she made her way to the one place she knew the guards would never check—the Gastropod Alcove.

Was she really going to do this?
Could
she follow through? She steadied herself by recalling Constance’s words:
Those plants are vital if we’re to have any hope of saving Pendergast
.

She ducked into the alcove and hid in the back, in a deeply shadowed corner. It gave her a shiver to realize this was probably where Marsala’s murderer had also hidden. The guards, as she expected, walked past the alcove roughly every half hour, not even bothering to shine their lights inside. No crime would play out twice in the same spot—they had returned to the
status quo ante delicti
. From time to time a staff member would also walk past on his or her way out, but as nine o’clock neared the Museum began to feel completely empty. There were, no doubt, some curators still toiling in their labs and offices, but the chance of running into them was small.

The thought of what she was about to do—
where
she was going to go—made Margo’s heart hammer in her chest. She was about to descend into the one place that frightened her more than anything; that woke her in the middle of the night, bathed in a cold sweat; that prompted her never to enter the Museum without a bottle of Xanax in her bag. She thought of popping a Xanax then and there, but decided against it; she needed to stay sharp. She took slow, deep breaths, forcing her mind to focus on the small, immediate steps—not on the overall task. She would take it one move at a time.

Another set of long, deep breaths. Time to go.

Sneaking out of the alcove just after a guard passed by on his rounds, she crept down the halls to the nearest freight elevator, inserting her passkey into the slot. Even though it was a low-level-access key, Frisby had already sent her an email asking her to return it; but she had only gotten the memo that afternoon and figured she had at least a day’s grace period before the pompous ass made an issue of it.

The elevator groaned and creaked its way down to what was technically known as Building Six basement storage—an anachronism, considering all the buildings comprising the Museum were now interconnected into a single, maze-like unit. The doors opened. The familiar smell of mothballs, mold, and old dead things lingered in the air. The scent hit her unexpectedly, spiking her anxiety and reminding her of the time she had been stalked through these same corridors.

But that was a long time ago, and these fears of hers should properly be classified as phobias. There was nothing down here to threaten her now, except perhaps a stray Museum employee demanding to see her ID.

Taking a few more steadying breaths, she stepped out of the elevator. Opening the door into the Building Six basement, she walked quietly through the long, dim passageways hung with caged lightbulbs, making her way toward the Botany collection.

So far, so good. She inserted her key into the dented metal door of the main botanical collection and found it still worked. The door opened on smooth hinges. The room beyond was dark and she took out a powerful LED headlamp she’d stashed in her bag, put it on her head, and stepped inside. The dark cabinets stretched out in front of her, vanishing into the darkness, and the stale air smelled of mothballs.

She paused, her heart thudding so hard in her chest she almost couldn’t breathe, fighting down the surge of irrational fear. Despite everything she’d told herself, the smell, the claustrophobic darkness, and the strange noises once again triggered panic and gulping terror. She stopped to take more calming breaths, overcoming the terror with a strong application of reason.

One move at a time
. Bracing herself, she took a step forward into the darkness, and then another. Now she had to shut the door behind her; it would be unwise to leave it open. She turned and eased it closed, blocking out what little light came in from the hall.

She relocked the door and peered ahead. The Herbarium Vault lay at the far end of the room. Shelves containing preserved plants in liquid rose up into darkness all around her—the so-called wet collections—as narrow aisles led off in two directions, everything vanishing into murk.

Get going
, she told herself. She started down the left-hand aisle. At least these specimens didn’t leer at her out of the darkness like the dinosaur skeletons or stuffed animals did in some of the other storage rooms. Botanical specimens weren’t scary.

Even so, the monotony of the place, the narrow aisles looking all
the same, the gleaming bottles that sometimes looked like so many eyes peering at her from the dark, did little to allay her anxiety.

She walked swiftly down the aisle, took a hard right, walked some more, took a left and then another right, working her way diagonally to the far corner. Why did they design these storage rooms to be so confusing? But after another moment she halted. She had heard something. The echoing sounds of her footfalls had initially obscured it, but she was sure she’d heard something nonetheless.

She waited, listening, trying not to breathe. But the only sounds were the faint creaking and clicking noises that never seemed to go away, probably caused by the building settling or the forced air system.

Her anxiety increased. Which way? The scare had caused her to forget which turn was next in the grid of shelving. If she got disoriented, lost in this labyrinth… Making a quick decision, she went down one aisle until she hit the storage room wall, realized she was indeed going in the right direction, and then followed it to the far corner.

There it was: the vault. It looked like—and probably was—an old bank vault, converted to a different use. It was painted dark green, with a large wheel and a retrofitted keypad, currently blinking red. With a gasp of relief she hustled over and punched in the number sequence she’d memorized from Jörgensen’s office.

The keypad light went from red to green.
Thank God
. She turned the wheel and pulled open the heavy door. Leaning in, she flashed her headlamp around. It was a small space, perhaps eight by ten, with steel shelves covering all three walls. She glanced at the heavy door. No way was she going to shut it and risk being locked in. But she would, at least, partially close it. Just in case someone should come into the storage room—which seemed extremely unlikely.

She squeezed inside and eased the door shut to the point where it was open only a few inches.

Forcing down the feeling of panic, remembering to take things one step at a time, Margo turned her attention to the handwritten labels on the drawers, scanning them with her headlamp. They were
in various stages of order, some quite ancient, handwritten in faded brown ink, others much newer and laser-printed. In a far corner of the vault, beyond the shelving, she saw a couple of ancient blowpipes—of either Amazonian or Guiana Indian origins, judging by the carved decoration—stacked against the back wall. A small quiver of braided bamboo, containing several darts, hung from one. She wondered what these were doing in here; the payload of most darts came from frogs, not botanicals. She assumed they’d been locked up because of their poisonous nature.

She returned to scanning the labels, quickly found the drawer marked
MYCOHETEROTROPHS
, and slid it quietly open. It contained racks of specimens, arranged not unlike a traditional hanging file cabinet. The old dried plant specimens, prepared many years before, were affixed to yellowing paper leaves with spidery script indicating what they were. These, in turn, had been sealed between high-tech glass plates. There weren’t many, and in less than a minute she had found the
Thismia americana
specimens.

This was going unbelievably well. If she could keep her fear under control, she’d be out of the building in ten minutes. She realized she was covered with a clammy sweat, and she couldn’t stop her heart from pounding, but her one-step-at-a-time strategy was, at least, keeping her wits about her.

There were three
Thismia
plates, one containing several underground rhizomes, another with samples of the aboveground plant, and a final one of the blossoms and seeds.

Margo recalled Jörgensen’s words.
I would never allow the destruction of an extinct plant specimen, the last of its kind, for a one-off medicinal treatment. What is the value of an ordinary human life in the face of the last specimen of an extinct plant in existence?
She stared at the plant, with its tiny white flower. She couldn’t agree less with such a misanthropic worldview. Maybe they wouldn’t need all three specimens—but she was taking all of them regardless.

She slipped them carefully into her bag, zipped it up, and slung it over her shoulder. With an excess of caution, she turned off the headlamp and pushed open the door of the vault. She stepped into
the darkness, listening intently. When all seemed silent, she stepped out and, feeling with her hands, shut the vault door, then turned the wheel. It locked automatically, and the green light switched back to red.

Done!
She turned back around and, reaching up, turned on her headlamp.

The shadowy outline of a man stood there. And then a bright light suddenly flicked on, blinding her.