The Forgotten Room: A Novel

by Lincoln Child

  Mykolos remained silent.

  “Take your time. Tell me in your own words.”

  She plucked a fresh tissue from the box. “It came on so gradually I didn’t notice it right away. I guess it was the irritation first—he’d never acted irritated, ever; he was always the kindest person you can imagine. He’d never once raised his voice in the more than two years I worked for him. But he started to snap at people—secretaries, attendants—even me, once. And he began developing odd mannerisms.”

  “Odd in what way?”

  “Waving his hands before his face, as if to push something away. Humming, the way you might if you were a kid, and someone you didn’t like refused to stop talking. And then…then there was the muttering.”

  “I heard he was talking to himself. Did you hear any of what he said?”

  “Until the last day or two it was pretty much under his breath. I don’t think he was aware of it himself. And what I did catch was nonsense, mostly.”

  “Try me.”

  Mykolos thought for a moment. “Things like: ‘Stop it. Stop it, I don’t want it. Go away. I won’t, you can’t make me.’ ”

  “And then?” Logan prodded gently.

  Mykolos licked her lips. “The last couple of days, things got abruptly worse. He closed the door to his office, began yelling, throwing things around. He wouldn’t speak to me. I’d see him walk by, abruptly clapping his hands over his ears. And then, last Thursday…he looked so agitated, so troubled, I came up, put a hand on his shoulder, asked if I could be of help in some way. He turned on me suddenly….” She paused. “Oh, my God, his face—it was so unlike him, purple, enraged, eyes wide and staring…but it wasn’t only rage, it was also despair, maybe helplessness…. He knocked my hand away, grabbed my shoulders, pushed me onto the desk…grabbed my neck, began choking me…. I picked up my keyboard, flung it in his face….”

  She stood up. “He let go then. I ran behind my desk, picked up the phone, dialed the front desk, then Dr. Olafson’s office. A minute later, three lab assistants burst in and hauled Willard away. He was yelling and screaming at the top of his voice, kicking violently…and that was the last I ever saw of him.”

  She turned back now and sat down again at her desk, breathing heavily.

  “Thank you,” Logan said.

  She nodded. A brief silence descended over the room.

  “Please tell me something,” Mykolos said at last. “They say he committed suicide. But I don’t believe it.”

  Logan said nothing.

  “Please tell me. How did he die?”

  Logan hesitated. The information, he knew, was being kept as quiet as possible. But this woman had helped him, to her own discomfort. “It isn’t supposed to be known.”

  “I’m not going to tell anyone.”

  Logan looked at her appraisingly. Then he said, “He used the heavy windows of the visitor’s library to decapitate himself.”

  “He—” Mykolos’s hand flew to her mouth. “How awful.” Then she balled the hand into a fist. “No,” she said. “No, that couldn’t have been Willard.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something was obviously not right with him. He might have been sick—I don’t know. But he would never, ever have killed himself. He had too much to live for. He was the least rash person I’ve ever known. And…dignity was important to him. He would never have killed himself—especially not in that way.”

  This brief speech was remarkably similar to what Olafson had said—and it was delivered with the same passion. “That’s why I’m back here,” Logan told her. “To try to understand what happened.”

  Mykolos nodded a little absently. Then she glanced at him. “What do you mean: back here?”

  “About ten years ago, I spent six months at Lux, doing research of my own.”

  “Really? Six months is an odd length of time. Usually, research terms are measured in years.”

  Logan regarded her again. Something about this young woman convinced him he could trust her—and that, in fact, she might be able to help him in ways he could not yet know. “I was asked to leave,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “You know Lux’s record as the nation’s oldest think tank. The respected position it holds among its peers.”

  “You mean, we’re all a bunch of tight asses.”

  “Something like that. My work was adjudged to be inadequate. Not true science. Not intellectually rigorous enough. It was seen by some as hocus-pocus, smoke and mirrors. A cadre of Fellows, headed by Dr. Carbon, had me forced out.”

  Mykolos made a face. “Carbon. That prick.”

  “Well, I’m back here now. This time, as an investigator instead of a Fellow.”

  “Dr. Logan, I want—I need—to know what happened. If I can help in any way, let me know.”

  “Thanks. You can start by letting me putter around in Dr. Strachey’s office, if you don’t mind.” And Logan indicated the far office.

  “Of course. It’s a bit of a mess, though. Let me go in ahead of you and clear things up a bit. I wouldn’t want you to do an Alkan on me.”

  “A what?”

  “Charles-Valentin Alkan. French composer. Wrote some of the strangest music you’ll ever want to hear. Supposedly died when a bookcase fell on top of him.”

  “Never heard of him. You’re quite the Renaissance woman.”

  “I guess the Lux talent spotter thought the same way.” And Mykolos rose from her desk with a wan smile. “Come on—follow me.”

  9

  Willard Strachey’s private apartment—his “rooms,” in Lux parlance—was on the third floor of the mansion, just a dozen or so doors down the Lady’s Walk from where his office was located. Logan let himself in with a key provided by Dr. Olafson, closed the door behind him, let his bag drop to the floor, and stood still a moment, taking in the feel of the space beyond. It was just past nine p.m., and the chamber was dark, its furnishings mere dull shapes. After about a minute, Logan turned on the lights.

  He hadn’t known what to expect, and the room he was standing in—apparently a combination library and parlor—was a pleasant surprise. The furniture was upholstered in mahogany-colored leather, well lived in and equally well cared for. One wall contained recessed bookcases which—Logan noted—were devoted to a wide variety of subjects: nineteenth-century English novels; Latin classics in translation; a few recent whodunits; biographies; and numerous books on sailing, architecture and design, and the history of computing. The books were not just for display: Logan pulled a few from the shelves and found them to be lovingly read. Several displayed marginal glosses in Strachey’s small, meticulous hand. The Edwardian trappings of the mansion had been tastefully accentuated in this room by a hundred additional touches—vintage sconces, Astrakhan carpets, oil paintings of the English romantic school. There was an old mechanical doll; a vintage wooden radio; a worn sextant—apparently, Strachey was a collector of antique technology. A rolltop desk sat in one corner, with several old fountain pens lined up at one side. Another corner was monopolized by a Steinway Model B, its glossy black finish shining in the mellow light. The room exuded the warm, welcoming feeling of a London gentleman’s club from the turn of the last century. It had taken money to create this atmosphere—Olafson said money wasn’t a problem for Strachey. But it had taken more than that: it had taken time, and patience, and loving care. It was subtle; it was refined; it was delightful. Logan could imagine himself living in a place such as this.

  He moved through the rest of the apartment. It was not especially large—a dining room, a compact but expensively supplied kitchen, a bathroom, a bedroom—but each space displayed the same care and consideration as the library had. Nowhere did Logan find any evidence of Strachey’s work: that was left in his office, down the hall. Rather, these rooms were devoted to private relaxation with the man’s many avocations: sailing, art, industrial design.

  Logan had spent almost the entire afternoon in Strachey’s office, going through his
papers, notes, manuscripts, sometimes on his own and sometimes with the assistance of Kim Mykolos. It had been as expected: there were clear signs that the pace of Strachey’s research had been slowing. But as Mykolos had told him, the man had been in essence sealing the cap on a lifetime career, and greatly enjoying the process. Nowhere among the man’s various notes and writings was there any indication of disappointment: just quiet satisfaction at having made significant accomplishments in his field. Logan now felt certain that, whatever might have prompted Strachey’s suicide, it had nothing to do with the twilight of his career.

  There had also been several large folders in the office relating to the West Wing renovation, and—feeling overwhelmed—Logan had packed these up and sent them back to his own rooms for later examination. He had then gone to speak with Lux’s doctor in residence. The two spent twenty minutes going over Strachey’s physical and psychological history. As Olafson had indicated, all tests and examinations showed Strachey to have been in excellent health for a man of his age, emotionally stable, with no indications of either preexisting conditions or future complications.

  Now he returned to the parlor. He’d held out mild hope that Strachey had kept a diary or private journal, but there was no sign of any. So instead he reached into his duffel, removed the video camera, and made another tour of the apartment, filming each room. Replacing the camera, he took out a small notebook and a rectangular device about the size of a police radio, with a control knob centered at the bottom and a large analog gauge monopolizing the top: a trifield natural EM meter. He made yet another tour of the apartment, carefully watching the needle of the meter and making occasional jottings in his notebook. Finally, he pulled another handheld device from the duffel, studded with knobs, toggle switches, and a digital readout: an air-ion counter. He took several readings, but found the air ionization to be no different from that of the other areas of the mansion he’d sampled already.

  His eye drifted around the room, stopping at the antique radio. It was a cathedral-style tabletop model of rose-colored wood. Absently, he turned the power knob to the on position. Nothing happened. Curious, he picked up the radio, turned it over in his hands, opened the back. There was a jumble of old brown and yellow wires and machinery, but the vacuum tubes had been replaced with what at a brief glance appeared to be more modern equipment. He shrugged, replaced it on its shelf, and turned away.

  Placing the tools and the notebook back in the duffel, he glanced around again, selected the most comfortable-looking armchair—judging from the nearby book stand and the well-used footrest, Strachey’s favorite chair as well—settled into it, closed his eyes, and waited.

  At quite a young age, Logan had discovered he was an empath—someone with a unique, almost preternatural ability to sense the feelings and emotions of others. At times—if those feelings were strong enough, or if the person had resided in one place for a sufficient length of time—Logan could still sense them even after the occupant had departed.

  He sat in the chair, in the dim amber light, emptying himself of his own feelings and preoccupations and waiting for the room to speak to him. At first, there was nothing save a vague, dissociated sense of security and comfort. This was not surprising: there were clearly no smoking guns, no hidden skeletons, no emotional issues, that would have prompted Strachey to…

  And then something odd happened. As Logan sat there, eyes closed, relaxed, he began to hear music. At first it was soft—so soft it was barely audible. But as he waited, growing attentive, it began to grow clearer: lush, deeply romantic.

  This had never happened before. As a sensitive, Logan was used to receiving emotional impressions, strong feelings, occasionally bits and pieces of memories. But never any sensory stimuli such as music. He sat up in the chair and opened his eyes, looking around, to see if perhaps the music was coming from an adjoining set of rooms.

  Immediately, the music stopped.

  Logan got up, shut off the lights, then returned to the chair. Once again, there was nothing at first. The sense of comfort was gone; so was the music. Gradually he began to be aware that, instead of the well-being he’d felt earlier, he now felt a faint—very faint—sense of uncertainty, perplexity, unease.

  And then the piano music returned: once again, softly at first, then louder. The lush, romantic melody was still there—but as Logan listened, it slowly changed. It grew strange, haunting, maddeningly complicated: long rushes of rising arpeggios in a minor key, played faster and faster. There was something disturbing and ineffable in the music—something interwoven into the complex passages, almost below the threshold of comprehension, that seemed to Logan, as he listened, to be almost diabolical.

  And then, along with the music, he began to smell something—a smell that was somehow part and parcel of the music itself—an increasingly strong and nauseating reek of burning flesh. A memory came to him suddenly, or perhaps it was precognition: an old house, flames billowing ferociously from its windows…

  Suddenly, he jumped up from the chair. His mouth had gone dry, and his heart was hammering in his chest. He staggered through the darkness to the light switch, snapped it on, then leaned against the wall, gasping in breaths, shaking his head to clear away the terrifying music.

  Within a few minutes his breathing had returned to normal. Gathering up his duffel and slinging it over a shoulder, he stepped out of the door and into the hall—reaching inside to switch off the lights again—and then, locking the door, pocketed the key and made his way back down the elegant corridor to his own rooms, careful as he did so to keep his mind as blank and as empty as possible.

  10

  The Grounds and Infrastructure Maintenance Center was a hangarlike outbuilding in the eastern shadow of the mansion, sitting amid a minicampus of other, smaller structures. Although its facade was cleverly designed to imitate that of Dark Gables, its huge sliding doors and flat roof betrayed its true nature.

  Jeremy Logan stepped through an employees’ entrance and found himself in a cavernous space. To the far right was a veritable battalion of landscaping and earthmoving equipment: commercial mowers, chippers, Kubota tractors, Ditch Witch trenchers, and half a dozen more esoteric pieces of gear were lined up, gleaming and ready for use. Behind them were two repair bays with a large attached parts section. In the bays, Logan could make out mechanics in jumpsuits performing operations on disassembled machinery. In the middle of the maintenance center were several long, massive industrial shelves, stretching from the concrete floor to the ceiling and containing pallets full of every imaginable item necessary to keep the complex running, from light switches to PVC pipe to circuit boards to plumbing fixtures to office accessories, all carefully labeled. Next came an extensive machine shop. Finally, stretching along the left-hand wall of the maintenance center, was a small cluster of cubicles, staffed with workers typing at workstations or speaking into telephones. Logan walked up to the closest worker and asked directions to the office of Ian Albright. He was pointed toward a set of exposed metal steps set into the nearest wall.

  Albright’s office was small but functional. One wall was entirely of glass and looked out over his maintenance domain. Albright himself was middle-aged and roundish, with a drinker’s red nose and a cheery disposition. “Have a seat, then,” he said with a laugh, perching himself on the edge of a desk covered with work orders, invoices, and memos. “Dr. Olafson said to expect you.” Albright spoke in a working-class London accent that Logan found refreshing after the somewhat stifling academic atmosphere inside the main house.

  “Thanks,” he said as he sat down. “I have to confess, Mr. Albright—”

  “Ian, if you please.”

  “I have to confess, Ian, I’m not exactly sure what your job description is. One person referred to you as the ‘infrastructure supervisor.’ Another as the ‘site manager.’ ”

  Albright threw back his head and laughed. “That’s a lot of rubbish, that. I’m just a glorified super—with a whacking great council house to look
after.” And he indicated the Lux headquarters with a westward wave of his hand and another laugh.

  The man’s laughter was infectious and Logan found himself smiling. He was suddenly reluctant to change the mood. “Actually, I’m here to talk to you about a former resident of that particular council house.”

  “Oh? And who might that be?”

  “Willard Strachey.”

  Immediately, the smile fell away from Albright’s face. “Oh,” he said again, in a distinctly subdued tone of voice. “Terrible bit of business.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “He was a good one. Not like some, mind you, who treat me and my mates like groundskeepers and won’t give us the time of day. He was always polite, Dr. Strachey was. Always had a kind word.”

  “I’ve been asked by the board to look into the circumstances of his death.”

  “Right. Terrible bit of business,” Albright repeated, then leaned forward conspiratorially. “How much do you know?”

  “About?”

  “About his manner of death.”

  Logan hesitated. “Just about everything.”

  Albright nodded. Then he whispered: “It was me as found his…” He fell silent and pointed to his own head. “Trimming the verge at the time, I was, down near the East Wing, banking the soil and adding some plant food.” He grimaced, reliving the moment. “Been told to keep my mouth shut about it.”

  “I think that’s a very good idea. Morale’s low enough as it is.” Logan paused a moment. “Up until recently, how would you characterize Dr. Strachey’s frame of mind?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “What was he like? Withdrawn, contemplative, friendly, moody?”

  Albright considered this a moment. “Do you know the expression ‘Snug as a bug in a rug’?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, that was Dr. Strachey. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a man better fitted for his line of work—or more suited temperamentally, like.”