D’Agosta fell silent. Hayward took the time for a long breath and another effort at control.
“This,” she said quietly, “is a story straight out of a romance novel. This isn’t the way things happen in real life.”
“What happened with us wasn’t all that different.”
“What happened with us was a mistake I’m trying to forget.”
“Listen, please, Laura—”
“Call me Laura again and I’ll have you escorted out of the building.”
D’Agosta winced. “There’s something else you ought to know. Have you heard of the forensic profiling firm of Effective Engineering Solutions, down on Little West 12th Street, run by an Eli Glinn? I’ve been spending most of my time down there recently, moonlighting.”
“Never heard of it. And I know all the legitimate forensic profilers.”
“Well, they’re more of an engineering firm, and they’re pretty secretive, but they recently did a forensic profile of Diogenes. It backs up everything I’ve told you about him.”
“A forensic profile? At whose request?”
“Agent Pendergast’s.”
“That inspires confidence,” she said sarcastically.
“The profile indicated that Diogenes isn’t through.”
“Isn’t through?”
“All of what he’s done so far—the killings, the kidnapping, the diamond theft—has been leading up to something else. Something bigger, maybe much bigger.”
“Such as?”
“We don’t know.”
Hayward picked up some files and squared them on the desk with a crack. “That’s quite a story.”
D’Agosta began to get angry. “It’s not a story. Look, this is Vinnie you’re talking to, Laura. It’s me.”
“That’s it.” Hayward pressed an intercom button. “Fred? Please come to my office and escort Lieutenant D’Agosta off the premises.”
“Don’t do this, Laura . . .”
She turned to him, finally losing it. “Yes, I will do it. You lied to me. Played me for a fool. I was willing to offer you anything. Everything. And you—”
“And I am so very sorry. God, if only I could turn back the clock, do things differently. I tried my best, tried to balance my loyalty to Pendergast with my . . . loyalty to you. I know I screwed up a wonderful thing—and I believe that what we had is worth saving. I want your forgiveness.”
The door was opened by a police sergeant. “Lieutenant?” he said.
D’Agosta rose, turned, and exited without even a look back. The sergeant shut the door, leaving Hayward behind her heaped-up desk, silent and trembling, looking at the mess but seeing nothing, nothing at all.
29
A dark, chill night had fallen over the restless streets of Upper Manhattan, but even on the brightest noon no sunlight ever penetrated the library of 891 Riverside Drive. Metal shutters were closed and fastened over mullioned windows, and drapes of rich brocade hid the shutters in their turn. The room was lit only by fire: the glow of candelabra, the flicker of embers dying on the wide grate.
Constance sat in a wing chair of burnished leather. She was very erect, as if at attention, or perhaps poised for flight. She was looking tensely at the other occupant of the room: Diogenes Pendergast, who sat on the couch across from her, a book of Russian poetry in his hands. He spoke softly, his voice as liquid as honey, the warm cadence of the Deep South strangely appropriate to the flow of the Russian. “,” he finished, then laid the book down and looked over at Constance. “‘Heart’s memory of sun grows fainter, sallow is the grass.’” He laughed quietly. “Akhmatova. No one else ever wrote about sorrow with the kind of astringent elegance she did.”
There was a short silence.
“I don’t read Russian,” Constance replied at last.
“A beautiful, poetic language, Constance. It’s a shame, because I sense hearing Akhmatova speak of her sorrow in her own tongue would help you bear your own.”
She frowned. “I bear no sorrow.”
Diogenes raised his eyebrows and laid the book aside. “Please, child,” he said quietly. “This is Diogenes. With others, you may put up a brave front. But with me, there’s no reason to hide anything. I know you. We are so very alike.”
“Alike?” Constance laughed bitterly. “You’re a criminal. And me—you know nothing about me.”
“I know a great deal, Constance,” he said, voice still quiet. “You are unique. Like me. We are alone. I know you’ve been blessed and cursed with a strange and terrible burden. How many would wish for such a gift as you were given by my great-uncle Antoine—and yet how few could understand just what it would be like. Not liberation, not at all. So many, many years of childhood . . . and yet, to be deprived of being a child . . .”
He looked at her, the fire illuminating his strange, bicolored eyes. “I have told you. I, too, was denied a childhood—thanks to my brother and his obsessive hatred of me.”
Immediately, a protest rose to Constance’s lips. But this time she suppressed it. She could feel the white mouse shifting in her pocket, contentedly curling himself up for a nap. Unconsciously she moved a hand over the pocket, stroking it with slender fingers.
“But I’ve already spoken to you about those years. About my treatment at his hands.” A glass of pastis sat at his right hand—he had helped himself from the sideboard earlier—and now he took a slow, thoughtful sip.
“Has my brother communicated with you?” he asked.
“How can he? You know where he is: you put him there.”
“Others in similar situations find ways to get word to those they care about.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t want to cause me further discomfort.” Her voice fell as she spoke. Her eyes dropped to her fingers, still absently stroking the sleeping mouse, then rose again to look at Diogenes’s calm, handsome face.
“As I was saying,” he went on after a pause, “there is much else we share.”
Constance said nothing, stroking the mouse.
“And much that I can teach you.”
Once again, she summoned a tart retort; once again, it remained unvoiced. “What could you possibly teach me?” she replied instead.
Diogenes broke into a gentle smile. “Your life—not to put too fine a term to it—is dull. Even stultifying. You’re trapped in this dark house, a prisoner. Why? Aren’t you a living woman? Shouldn’t you be allowed to make your own decisions, to come and go as you please? Yet you’ve been forced to live in the past. And now, you live for others who only take care of you through guilt or shame. Wren, Proctor—that busybody policeman D’Agosta. They’re your jailers. They don’t love you.”
“Aloysius does.”
A sad smile creased Diogenes’s face. “You think my brother is capable of love? Tell me: has he ever told you he loved you?”
“He doesn’t have to.”
“What evidence do you have that he loves you?”
Constance wanted to answer, but she felt herself coloring in confusion. Diogenes waved a hand as if to imply his point was made.
“And yet you don’t have to live this way. There’s a huge, exciting world out there. I could show you how to turn your amazing erudition, your formidable talents, toward fulfilling, toward pleasing, yourself.”
Hearing this, Constance felt her heart accelerate despite her best intentions. The hand stroking the mouse paused.
“You must live not only for the mind, but for the senses. You have a body as well as a spirit. Don’t let that odious Wren jail you with his daily babysitting. Don’t crush yourself any longer. Live. Travel. Love. Speak the languages you’ve learned. Experience the world directly, and not through the musty pages of a book. Live in color, not black and white.”
Constance listened intently, feeling her confusion mount. The fact was, she felt she knew so little of the world—nothing, in fact. Her entire life had been a prelude . . . to what?
“Speaking of color, note the ceiling of this room. What color is it?”
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Constance glanced up at the library ceiling. “Wedgwood blue.”
“Was it always that color?”
“No. Aloysius had it repainted during—during the repairs.”
“How long do you suppose it took him to pick that color?”
“Not long, I imagine. Interior decorating is not his forte.”
Diogenes smiled. “Precisely. No doubt he made the decision with all the passion of an accountant selecting an itemization. Such an important decision, made so flippantly. But this is the room you spend most of your time in, isn’t it? Very revealing of his attitude toward you, don’t you think?”
“I don’t understand.”
Diogenes leaned forward. “Perhaps you will understand if I tell you how I choose color. In my house—my real house, the one that is important to me—I have a library like this. At first I thought of draping it in blue. And yet after some consideration and experimentation, I realized blue takes on an almost greenish tint in candlelight—which is the only light in that room after the sun has set. Further examination revealed that a dark blue, such as indigo or cobalt, appears black in such light. If pale blue, it fades to gray; if rich, like turquoise, it becomes heavy and cold. Clearly blue, though my first preference, would not work. The various pearl grays, my second choice, were also unacceptable: they lose their bluish gloss and are transformed into a dead, dusky white. Dark greens react like dark blues and turn almost black. So at length I settled on a light summery green: in shimmering candlelight, it gives the dreamy, languorous effect of being underwater.” He hesitated. “I live near the sea. I can sit in that room, all lights and candles extinguished, listening to the roar of the surf, and I become a pearl diver, within, and as one with, the lime-green waters of the Sargasso Sea. It is the most beautiful library in the world, Constance.”
He fell silent for a moment, as if in contemplation. Then he leaned forward and smiled. “And do you know what?”
“What?” she managed to say.
“You would love that library.”
Constance swallowed, unable to formulate a response.
He glanced at her. “The presents I brought you last time. The books, the other items . . . have you opened them?”
Constance nodded.
“Good. They will show you there are other universes out there—perfumed universes, full of wonder and delight, ready to be enjoyed. Monte Carlo. Venice. Paris. Vienna. Or, if you prefer: Katmandu, Cairo, Machu Picchu.” Diogenes waved his hand around the walls of leather-bound books. “Look at the volumes you’re surrounded by. Bunyan. Milton. Bacon. Virgil. Sobersided moralists all. Can an orchid flower if you water it with quinine?” He stroked the copy of Akhmatova. “That is why I’ve been reading you poetry this evening: to help you see that these shadows you surround yourself with need not be merely monochrome.”
He picked up another slender volume from the pile beside him. “Have you ever read Theodore Roethke?”
Constance shook her head.
“Ah! Then you are about to experience a most delicious, undiscovered pleasure.” He opened the book, selected a page, and began.
I think the dead are tender. Shall we kiss?—
Listening, Constance suddenly felt a strange feeling blossom deep within her: something faintly grasped at in fleeting dreams and yet still unknown, something rich and forbidden.
We sing together; we sing mouth to mouth . . .
She rose abruptly from the chair. The mouse in her frock pocket righted itself in surprise.
“It’s later than I realized,” she said in a trembling voice. “I think you had better leave.”
Diogenes glanced at her mildly. Then he closed the book with perfect ease and rose.
“Yes, that would be best,” he said. “The scolding Wren will be in shortly. It would not do for him to find me here—or your other jailers, D’Agosta and Proctor.”
Constance felt herself flush, and immediately hated herself for it.
Diogenes nodded toward the couch. “I’ll leave these other volumes for you, as well,” he said. “Good night, dear Constance.”
Then he stepped forward and—before she could react—inclined his head, took her hand, and raised it to his lips.
The gesture was executed with perfect formality and the best of breeding. Yet there was something in the way his lips lingered just out of contact with her fingers—something in the warm breath on her skin—that made Constance curl inwardly with unease . . .
And then he was gone, suddenly, wordlessly, leaving the library empty and silent, save for the low crackle of the fire.
For a moment, she remained motionless, aware of her own quickened breathing. He had left nothing of himself behind, no trace of his scent, nothing—save for the small stack of books on the couch.
She came forward and picked up the top volume. It was exquisitely bound in silk, with gilt edging and hand-marbled endpapers. She turned it over in her hands, feeling the delicious suppleness of the material.
Then, quite suddenly, she placed it back on the pile, picked up the half-finished glass of pastis, and exited the library. Making her way into the back parts of the house, she entered the service kitchen, where she rinsed and dried the glass. Then she returned to the central stairway.
The old mansion was silent: Proctor was out, as he had been so frequently on recent nights, assisting Eli Glinn in his plans; D’Agosta had looked in earlier, but only to make sure the house was secure, and had left again almost immediately. And “scolding Wren” was, as always at this hour, at the New York Public Library. His tiresome self-imposed babysitting duties were, thankfully, confined to the daylight hours. There was no point in checking to see whether the front door was still locked—she knew it would be.
Now, slowly, she ascended the stairs to her suite of rooms on the third floor. Gently removing the white mouse from her pocket, she placed him in his cage. She slipped out of her frock and undergarments and folded them neatly. Normally, she would have gone through her evening ablutions next, donned a nightgown, and read in the chair beside her bed for an hour or so before retiring—at present, she was working her way through Johnson’s Rambler essays.
But not tonight. Tonight, she drifted into her bathroom and filled the oversize marble bath with hot water. Then she turned to a beautifully papered gift box, resting on a brass server nearby. Inside the box were a dozen small glass bottles from a Parisian manufacturer of bath oils: a gift from Diogenes on his last visit. Selecting one, she poured the contents into the water. The heady scent of lavender and patchouli perfumed the air.
Constance walked over to the full-length mirror and regarded her nude form for a long moment, sliding her hands over her sides, along her smooth belly. Then, turning away, she slipped into the bath.
This had been Diogenes’s fourth visit. Before, he had often spoken of his brother and made several allusions to a particular Event—Diogenes seemed to speak the word with a special emphasis—an Event of such horror that he could not bring himself to talk of it, except to say it had left him blind in one eye. He had also described how his brother had gone out of his way to poison others against him—herself in particular—by telling lies and insinuations, making him out to be evil incarnate. At first she had objected vehemently to that kind of talk. It was a perversion of the truth, she’d protested—teased out now for some twisted end of his own. But he had been so calm in the face of her anger, so reasonable and persuasive in his rebuttals, that despite herself, she had grown confused. It was true that Pendergast was remote and aloof at times, but that was just his way . . . wasn’t it? And wasn’t it true the reason he’d never contacted her from prison was to simply spare her additional anxiety? She loved him, silently, from afar—a love he never seemed to return or acknowledge.
It would have meant so much to have heard from him.
Could there be some truth to Diogenes’s stories? Her head told her he was untrustworthy, a thief, perhaps a sadistic killer . . . but her heart told her differently. He see
med so understanding, so vulnerable. So kind. He had even shown her evidence—documents, old photographs—that seemed to undercut many of the things Aloysius had told her about him. But he hadn’t denied everything; he had also accepted a share of blame, admitted to being a less-than-perfect brother—a deeply flawed human being.
Everything was so confused.
Constance had always trusted her head, her intellect—even though, in many ways, she knew her mind was fragile and capable of betraying her. And yet now it was her heart that spoke the loudest. She wondered if Diogenes was telling the truth when he said he understood her—because, at some deep level she had yet to plumb, she believed him: she felt a connection. Most important, she was beginning to understand him as well.
The Book of the Dead Page 19
