The Forgotten Room: A Novel

by Lincoln Child

  “And taking their money elsewhere.”

  A pained look crossed Maynard’s face, but he nodded, conceding the point. “In any case, Strachey was fully vested at Lux. He was a senior Fellow. He’d had his successes, done us all proud. Even though he could have retired with a full pension, we were delighted to see him continue his relational database work. But a decision was made that such work should be more of a…sideline.”

  “A hobby, in other words—rather that something he’d be paid for.”

  “Oh, he’d still be paid for it. But several months ago, we did with Willard what we do with many of our Fellows who are transitioning away from their primary research. We gave him administrative duties, as well—duties that could directly benefit Lux.”

  “Like a tenured professor transitioning to an associate dean. Making sure he was still of commercial use to Lux.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Could you tell me about these administrative duties?” Logan asked.

  “It was Roger Carbon’s idea, actually. Willard was given overall responsibility for the restoration of the West Wing, which as you probably know hasn’t been updated in ages. In fact, it’s been off-limits for the last several years. It’s not unsafe, of course, but it’s old and needs a complete retrofit to bring it into the twenty-first century. I don’t have to tell you that the loss of all that square footage has put a crimp in our operations, even with the expansion of our outbuildings. So its restoration was viewed by Lux as a very important task.”

  “Did Willard Strachey view it as important, as well?”

  At this, Maynard looked searchingly at Logan. “If you’re harboring any thoughts that Will might have been unhappy with the assignment, or felt it demeaning, you’re completely off base. He knew the way Lux works. And he was passionate about architecture. Here was a chance to take a beautiful example of late-nineteenth-century design and repurpose it into a modern, utilitarian space. He wasn’t getting his hands dirty, wasn’t wielding a nail gun: he was designing the functionality, balancing the practical with the aesthetic. It’s like a homeowner telling his general contractor just what he wants done—only on a different order of magnitude. We had an architect working with him, of course, to vet the designs and verify the underlying engineering, but the ideas began with him. And by all accounts he was delighted with the task. Of course, I didn’t see much of him on a day-to-day basis. You’d need to talk to Ms. Mykolos about that.”

  “Who?”

  “Kim Mykolos. His research assistant.”

  “The one he assaulted?”

  A brief pause. “Yes.”

  “Did you know much about Strachey’s behavior over the last few weeks?”

  “I’d heard reports from various people, yes. In fact, I’d been intending to have a talk with him.” Maynard’s shoulders drooped, and he looked down at his desk. “Now it’s too late. I’ll never know if there’s something I could have done, some way I could have helped.”

  “You mentioned he was working with an architect,” Logan said.

  “As it turns out, the great-granddaughter of the architect who originally built Dark Gables. Pamela Flood. She’s carried on the family’s architectural firm. We were lucky to get her.”

  Logan made a note of this as Maynard glanced at his watch. “I’m very sorry, Jeremy. There’s a meeting I need to attend. I’ll be happy to answer any other questions you have at some later point.” And he rose from his desk.

  “Just one more, if you don’t mind.”

  Maynard stopped. “Of course.”

  “Last night at dinner, Dr. Carbon suggested I ask about ‘the others.’ ”

  Maynard frowned. “He did?”

  “Yes. He mentioned you specifically as the one I should speak to.”

  Maynard shook his head slowly. “I’ve never understood Roger’s sense of humor. He may have been pulling your leg—you know he never took your line of study seriously.”

  “I know. But what did he mean—‘the others’?”

  Maynard glanced at his watch again. “I’m sorry, Jeremy, I really can’t be late for this meeting. Please keep me and Gregory apprised of your progress. And whatever you do, be discreet in your inquiries. An old, upstanding institution like Lux blemishes awfully easily.” And with a smile, he waved for Logan to precede him out of the office.

  8

  An hour later, Logan made his way down the central corridor of Lux’s third floor, canvas satchel slung over one shoulder. This hallway, familiarly known as the Lady’s Walk, retained almost entirely the look it had sported when the mansion was a private residence. It was fantastically ornate, with wide, polished oaken floorboards; elaborate wainscoting; coffered ceiling; gilded sconces; and huge oil portraits in golden frames. It was also the longest unbroken hall in the mansion: running the entire length of the main building, it stretched nearly three city blocks’ worth from the East Wing to the West Wing. And yet despite its magnificence, it was almost never seen by visitors. This was, in part, because the third floor was given over to the private offices and apartments of the think tank’s Fellows. Another reason, Logan thought, could be the hallway’s nickname itself. Awkward questions might arise.

  The lady in question was Ernestine Delaveaux, wife of the original owner of Dark Gables. By all accounts, she had been a beautiful and accomplished woman, the product of one of Boston’s finest families and Europe’s best finishing schools. But she was also possessed of a nervous temperament and weak constitution. When the couple’s only son died of smallpox, the shock proved too much for Mrs. Delaveaux. Uncontrolled weeping, lack of appetite, and insomnia followed. The doctors brought in by her husband, Edward—himself of an eccentric cast—could do nothing, save prescribe nostrums for what they pronounced to be neurasthenia. Then, one night in 1898, Ernestine Delaveaux saw, or thought she saw, her dead son, standing in this same hallway, hands outstretched toward her. After that, she wandered the hallway every night, tirelessly calling her son’s name. She never saw him again. Finally, on a stormy December evening two years later, Mrs. Delaveaux left the mansion, walked down to the sea, and threw herself into the Atlantic.

  Edward Delaveaux never recovered from the double loss of his son and his wife. He spent the rest of his life and fortune in seclusion, trying one scheme after the other to contact his family on the other side. He finally died himself, nearly destitute, in 1912. Dark Gables remained shuttered and unoccupied until Lux relocated from Boston to Newport and purchased it. Ever since Lux took possession of the mansion, however, rumors had circulated that, on certain stormy nights, the ghost of Ernestine Delaveaux could be seen roaming this long, extravagantly appointed corridor, holding a linen handkerchief and calling her son’s name.

  Logan had never seen her. Nor had he spoken to anyone who had. But the legend persisted nevertheless.

  Now he stopped before a large wooden door, windowless and gleaming, set into the wall to his left. It bore a brief legend:

  382

  W. STRACHEY

  K. MYKOLOS

  Logan paused a moment, then knocked. A female voice from beyond immediately called out, “Come in.”

  Logan entered. The room he found himself in was fairly small, evidently an outer office, judging by the open door in the far wall leading to a much larger room. Nevertheless, the bookshelves here were stuffed full of technical journals, textbooks, boxed and labeled manuscripts; the lone desk was covered with notated papers and monographs. And yet the crowded space managed to look orderly rather than messy. The room had no windows, and there were no pictures or photos on the walls, but there were half a dozen glass frames full of butterflies: large and small, some monochromatic, others as iridescent as a peacock.

  A woman in her midtwenties sat at the desk, fingers resting on a workstation keyboard. She had short jet-black hair, an upturned nose, and—although she was slender—was possessed of a rounded, dimpled chin that reminded Logan of Betty Boop. He recalled seeing her in passing at dinner the night
before, talking animatedly at a table with other young people. She was looking up at him now with an expression of expectation.

  “You’re Kimberly Mykolos?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied. “But that’s quite a mouthful, isn’t it? Please call me Kim.”

  “Kim it shall be.”

  She smiled. “And I’m terribly afraid I know who you are.”

  Logan gave a melodramatic sigh. “In that case, would you mind if I sat down?”

  “I would insist.”

  Logan began to sit down when he caught sight of a brief Latin quotation, framed simply in black and set upon the wall beside the desk: Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. He froze.

  “What’s wrong?” the woman asked. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “An occupational hazard in my line of work,” Logan replied. “But it isn’t that.” He sat down and pointed at the framed quotation. “Virgil, Aeneid. Book One, line 203.”

  “That’s a remarkable bit of erudition to have at one’s fingertips.”

  “I’m no savant. It’s just that I have the same quotation hanging over my desk.” And he quoted: “ ‘Perhaps some day it will be pleasant to remember even this.’ ”

  Mykolos raised her eyebrows. “I guess that means we’re going to be the best of friends.”

  “Maybe so. I like butterflies, too.”

  “I don’t just like them. I’m passionate about them. Have been ever since I was a kid. When I’m not working, I’m out collecting. Look at this one.” She pointed to a relatively small butterfly in the nearest frame: brown with black eyelets and orange-colored terminal bands on its wings. “A Mitchell’s satyr. Very rare. I caught this at age thirteen, before it was considered endangered.”

  “Beautiful.” Logan looked from the butterfly back to Mykolos. “You say you know who I am?”

  “I remember seeing you on a PBS documentary. It was about an excavation of the tomb of a very ancient pharaoh—the first pharaoh, if I remember right. You stood out because of your occupation.” She frowned. “They had an unusual word for it. An…an…”

  “Enigmalogist,” Logan completed the sentence for her. He decided that Betty Boop was an unfair comparison. This woman’s chin more closely resembled Claudette Colbert’s.

  “Yes, enigmalogist.”

  “Well, I’m glad you saw the documentary. It saves me a lot of time in introductions.”

  She glanced at him curiously. “Are you here to investigate the Lady’s Walk?”

  “Unfortunately not. I’ve been asked by the board of directors to look into the death of Willard Strachey.”

  Mykolos’s eyes slowly drifted down toward her desk. “I was afraid of that,” she said in a very different tone.

  “Ms. Mykolos, I know this must be difficult for you. I’ll try to keep my questions as brief as possible. But you were as close to Dr. Strachey as anybody. I hope you’ll understand why it’s necessary I speak with you.”

  She nodded wordlessly.

  “First, tell me a little about yourself. How you came to Lux, how you came to work for Strachey.”

  Mykolos paused to take a sip from a cup of tea that sat on the desk. “I don’t know how much you know of the way Lux goes about hiring its staff. They’re quite selective.”

  “That’s probably an understatement.”

  “It’s not unlike the way the Brits recruit potential spies to MI6. Lux has talent spotters at several of the best universities. If they see somebody who shows a certain kind of promise, along with the right temperament and intellectual curiosity—Lux has entire profiles for the spotters to use—then the foundation is contacted. An inquiry is convened and, if the results are positive and there’s a suitable opening, an offer is made. In my case, about four years ago I received my MSE in computer science from MIT. It was my plan to go on directly for my doctorate. Instead, I won the Advanced Computing Society’s Obfuscated Software Award. And then I got a visit from a Lux recruitment officer.” She shrugged. “And here I am.”

  “What was your specialty at MIT?” Logan asked.

  “Strategic software design.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s a rather new field. It deals with how to protect programs from today’s threat-filled digital environment: worms, tunneling programs, reverse engineering, intrusions by hostile corporations or governments. Of course, one learns how to write one’s own reverse engineering algorithms, as well.” And she smiled almost slyly.

  “And were you hired specifically to be Dr. Strachey’s assistant?”

  Mykolos nodded. “His previous assistant had to leave to become a full-time mother.” She paused. “Funny how married women tend to get pregnant from time to time, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve often wondered about that.” Logan sat back in the chair. “But were you a good fit for the job? With Strachey, I mean. His specialty was relational databases, after all.”

  Mykolos hesitated. “I’m not sure how familiar you are with them. They’re much more powerful and versatile than flat file or hierarchical databases. And Strachey’s database management system, Parallax, was a revelation when it appeared. He was a phenomenal coder. Really phenomenal. The language he wrote it in, C, is tight to begin with, but he was able to make each line do triple duty. Still, Parallax was…well, a product of its time. Lux was looking for a way to market it to a larger, less demanding market.”

  “And that meant bringing in fresh blood.”

  “These days, programs that large corporations once paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for in site licenses don’t necessarily need to be shelved as they age. They can be repurposed for the use of smaller companies that will pay a lot less per seat, but whose needs are more limited. But that also means, in effect, releasing the program into the wild—and so it needs to be protected by antitampering technology. That’s where I came in.”

  “And the result?”

  She glanced at him. “Sorry?”

  “Well, a person like Strachey, nearing the end of his career, might become resentful…if he felt his life’s work was being ‘repurposed’ by someone young, lean, and hungry.”

  There was a pause during which a change slowly came over Mykolos. From a friendly, open, even playful young woman, she became visibly distraught. She pushed herself back from the desk. Logan felt her pushing back from him, as well.

  “May I take hold of your hand for a moment?” he asked.

  She frowned in surprise.

  “If you don’t mind. It helps me get a better sense of the person I’m talking with. Sometimes I can understand things on a deeper level than with language alone.”

  After a moment, she extended her hand. He took it gently in his.

  “I know,” he said after a moment. “I know you’re trying to deal with a terrible thing in the best way you can. One way to do that is to pretend: act and speak lightly, avoid the issue. It’s a valid defense mechanism—for a time, anyway.”

  Mykolos’s eyes filled with tears. Logan withdrew his hand. She turned away, reached into a tissue box, dabbed at her eyes. Perhaps a minute passed. Then she took a deep, shuddering breath and turned around to face him again.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You’ve been through something awful.”

  “It’s just that…” She paused again, and for a moment Logan thought she might begin to weep. But she pulled herself together. “It’s just that Willard was such a kind man, such a gentle man. He loved his work. He loved Lux. And he loved me, too, I think—in a way.”

  “So he wasn’t resentful—didn’t see you as someone who wanted his job.”

  “No, no, nothing like that. I was a little afraid he might be, at first—it would be a natural enough reaction.” Mykolos sniffed, dabbed at her nose with a fresh tissue. “But he was genuinely interested in retasking Parallax for a broader market. And I think he felt that…well, that he’d done enough. He’d made several breakthroughs in relational d
atabase theory, created a very successful RDBMS of his own—that’s more than enough for any career. So while he remained interested in the work, remained dedicated to keeping Parallax the best it could be, he became less actively involved.”

  “And what did the work consist of, exactly?”

  Mykolos paused again. “It gets technical. Obfuscation, for example.”

  “You mentioned that term before. What is it?”

  “It’s a subset of reverse engineering. Making software difficult for competitors to decompile and figure out. Lux likes to get paid for Parallax—they don’t want to give it away. But really, much of what I ended up doing was code review. That, and helping him document his theories as they had developed and matured.”

  “In other words, playing Boswell to his Johnson.”

  Mykolos laughed softly despite the red eyes. “We were both playing his Boswell. Willard was proud of the work he’d done—really proud. So he wanted to chronicle it, not only for himself but for posterity. Or at least what passes for posterity here at Lux.”

  “I see.” Logan thought for a moment. “So what about this other work he began a few months back? Overseeing the reconstruction and redesign of the West Wing?”

  For a moment, a cloud passed over Mykolos’s face. “He didn’t say anything about it at first. Nothing negative, anyway. But then, that’s not his way—he’d never bad-mouth anyone or anything. But I could tell he wasn’t especially pleased. By that point, all he wanted was to complete his work, maybe reduce the number of weekly hours a bit so he could get in some sailing. But as time went by, he grew more and more interested. It involved a lot of architectural planning and design—he really enjoyed that.”

  “I understand he was working closely with the firm that originally built this structure.”

  “Yes. Flood Associates.”

  Logan took a deep breath. Now came the hard part. “Just one more question. Can you please tell me about the events leading up to Dr. Strachey’s attack on you?”