White Fire p-13

by Douglas Preston

  “It would appear Leticia Wilkes allowed her charges to run wild,” Pendergast said with a disapproving sniff.

  The rest of the first floor was the same. Toys, bric-a-brac, discarded jackets, swimming trunks, and slippers — and everywhere that same odious orange carpet, lit a dreadful crimson by Pendergast’s hooded light. No wonder the National Trust had let the place fall to wrack and ruin, Kleefisch thought to himself. He could imagine some poor functionary, poking his head into the place for a minute, taking an exploratory glance around, and then closing the door again, despairing of renovation. He stared at the paisley-papered walls, at the worn and stained furniture, looking for some ghostly evidence of the enchanted cottage in which, once upon a time, Conan Doyle had worked and entertained. He was unable to find any.

  The basement yielded nothing more than empty storage rooms, a cold furnace, and dead beetles. Pendergast led the way up the dangerously creaking stairs to the second floor. Six doors led off the central hallway. The first was a linen closet, its contents ravaged by time and moths. The second was a common bathroom. The next three doors opened onto bedrooms. One, in somewhat decent order, had apparently been that of Leticia herself. The others had obviously been used by her niece and nephew, as attested to by the Dion and Frankie Valli posters in the first room and the numerous issues of the Sun, all opened to page three, in the other.

  That left just the single, closed door at the far end of the hall. Kleefisch’s heart sank. Only now did he realize how much he’d allowed himself to hope that, at long last, the missing Holmes story might actually be found. But he’d been a fool to believe he would succeed where so many of his fellows had already failed. And especially in this mess, which would take a week to search properly.

  Pendergast grasped the knob, opened the final door — and as quickly as Kleefisch’s heart had sunk, it leapt anew.

  The room that lay beyond was as different from the rest of the house as day was from night. It was like a time capsule from a period that had vanished well over a hundred years before. The room was a study, sparsely but tastefully furnished. After the dreadful clutter of the rest of the house, it was to Kleefisch like a breath of fresh air. He stared, excitement overcoming his apprehension, as Pendergast moved his light around. There was a writing desk and a comfortable chair. Sporting prints and daguerreotypes hung on the walls in simple frames; nearby stood a bookcase, nearly empty. There was a single diamond-pane window, high up. Ornamental hangings, of austere design but nevertheless tasteful, were placed along the walls.

  “I believe we might risk a little more light,” Pendergast murmured. “Your lantern, please.”

  Kleefisch brought the lantern forward, grasped its sliding panel, and slid it open a crack. Immediately, the room leapt into sharper focus. He noticed with admiration the beautiful wood floor, composed of polished parquet, laid out in an old-fashioned design. A small square carpet, of the kind once known as a drugget, lay in the middle of the room. Against a far wall, between the hangings, was a chaise longue that appeared to have also served in the capacity of a daybed.

  “Do you think—?” Kleefisch asked, turning to Pendergast, almost afraid to ask the question.

  As if in answer, Pendergast pointed to one of the daguerreotypes on the wall beside them.

  Kleefisch took a closer look. He realized, with some surprise, that it was not a daguerreotype after all, but a regular photograph, apparently from early in the twentieth century. It showed a young girl amid a pastoral, sylvan scene, chin supported by one hand, gazing out at the camera with a look of bemused seriousness. In the foreground before her, four small creatures with slender limbs and large butterfly wings danced, cavorted, or played tunes on wooden reeds. There was no obvious evidence of trickery or manipulation of the image: the sprites seemed to be an integral part of the photograph.

  “The Cottingley Fairies,” Kleefisch whispered.

  “Indeed,” Pendergast replied. “As you well know, Conan Doyle firmly believed in the existence of fairies and in the veracity of these pictures. He even devoted a book to the subject: The Coming of the Fairies. Two Yorkshire girls, Elsie Wright and her cousin Frances Griffiths, claimed to see fairies and to have photographed them. These are some of their photographs.”

  Kleefisch stepped back. He felt his heart accelerate. There could no longer be any doubt: this had been Conan Doyle’s study away from home. And the Wilkes family had preserved it with loving care, even while allowing the rest of the house to go to wrack and ruin.

  If the missing story was anywhere to be found, it would be in this room.

  With sudden energy, Pendergast stepped forward, ignoring the fearful creaking of the floorboards, his flashlight arrowing here and there. He opened the desk and made an exhaustive search of its contents, removing drawers and tapping on the sides and back. Next he moved to the bookshelf, removing the few dusty tomes and looking carefully through each, going so far as to peer down the hinges of each spine. Then he took the pictures from the wall one at a time, looked behind each, and felt gently along the paper backings for anything that might be hidden within the frames. Next, he approached each of the decorative hangings in turn, feeling carefully along their lengths.

  He paused, his silvery eyes roaming the room. Taking a switchblade from one pocket, he stepped over to the chaise longue, made a small, surgical incision where the fabric met the wooden framing, inserted his light into it, and then his fingers, making a painstaking examination of the interior — obviously to no avail. Next, he applied himself to the walls, holding one ear to the plaster while knocking gently with his knuckles. In such a fashion, he circled the room with agonizing thoroughness: once, twice.

  As he watched this careful search, done by an expert, Kleefisch felt the familiar sinking feeling return once again.

  His eyes fell to the floor — and to the small rug that lay at its center. Something was familiar about it: very familiar. And then, quite abruptly, he realized what it was.

  “Pendergast,” he said, his voice little better than a croak.

  The FBI agent turned to look at him.

  Kleefisch pointed at the carpet. “‘It was a small, square drugget in the center of the room,’” he quoted. “‘Surrounded by a broad expanse of wood-flooring in square blocks, highly polished.’”

  “I fear my knowledge of The Canon is not as nuanced as yours. What is that from? ‘The Musgrave Ritual’? ‘The Resident Patient’?”

  Kleefisch shook his head. “‘The Second Stain.’”

  For a moment, Pendergast returned his gaze. Then, suddenly, his eyes glittered in comprehension. “Could it be so simple?”

  “Why not recycle a good thing?”

  In a moment, Pendergast was kneeling upon the floor. Pushing away the carpet, he began applying his fingertips as well as the blade of his knife to the floorboards, pushing here, probing gently there. Within a minute, there was the squeak of a long-disused hinge and one of the parquet squares flipped up, exposing a small, dark cavity beneath.

  Pendergast gently reached into the hole. Kleefisch looked on, hardly daring to draw breath, as the agent withdrew his hand. When he did, it was clutching a rolled series of foolscap sheets, brittle, dusty, and yellowed with age, tied up with a ribbon. Rising to his feet, Pendergast undid the ribbon — which fell apart in his hands — and unrolled the quire, brushing off the topmost sheet with care.

  Both men crowded around as Pendergast held his light up to the words scrawled in longhand across the top of the page:

  The Adventure of Aspern Hall

  Nothing more needed to be said. Quickly and silently, Pendergast closed the little trapdoor and pushed the rug back into place with his foot; then they stepped out of the room and made for the head of the stairs.

  Suddenly there was a dreadful crash. A monumental billow of dust rose up to surround Kleefisch, blotting out his lantern and plunging the hallway into darkness. He waved the dust away, coughing and spluttering. As his vision cleared, he saw Pendergast, his hea
d, shoulders, and outstretched arms down at the level of Kleefisch’s feet. The floor had given way beneath him and he had saved himself from falling through at just the last minute.

  “The manuscript, man!” Pendergast gasped, straining with the effort of holding himself in place. “Take the manuscript!”

  Kleefisch knelt and plucked the manuscript carefully from Pendergast’s hand. Snugging it into a pocket of his ulster, he grabbed Pendergast’s collar and — with a great effort — managed to pull him back up onto the second-floor landing. Pendergast regained his breath, stood up and, with a grimace, dusted himself off. They maneuvered their way around the hole and had begun creeping down the stairs when a slurred voice sounded from outside:

  “Oi! Who’s that, then?”

  The two froze.

  “The groundskeeper,” Kleefisch whispered.

  Pendergast gestured for Kleefisch to shutter his lantern. Then, raising his hooded light to reveal his face, he put a finger to his lips and pointed to the front door.

  They moved forward at a snail’s pace.

  “Who’s there!” came the voice again.

  Silently, Pendergast drew a large handgun out of his jacket, turned it butt-first.

  “What are you doing?” Kleefisch said in alarm as he grasped Pendergast’s hand.

  “The man’s intoxicated,” came the whispered reply. “I should be able to, ah, render him harmless with little effort.”

  “Violence?” Kleefisch said. “Good Lord, not upon one of Her Majesty’s own!”

  “Do you have a better suggestion?”

  “Make a dash for it.”

  “A dash?”

  “You said it yourself — the man’s drunk. We’ll rush out of the gate and run south into the wood.”

  Pendergast looked dubious but put away the weapon nevertheless. He led the way across the carpeting to the front door, opened it a crack, and peered out. Hearing nothing further, he motioned Kleefisch to follow him down the narrow walkway to the hurricane fence. Just as he opened the gate, the moon emerged from behind the clouds and a shout of triumph came from a nearby stand of hemlock:

  “You, there! Don’t go no further!”

  Pendergast burst through the gate and took off at high speed, Kleefisch at his heels. There was the shattering blast of a shotgun, but neither paused in their headlong run.

  “You’ve been hit!” Kleefisch gasped as he struggled to keep up. He could see droplets of blackish red liquid fly up from Pendergast’s shoulder with every stride the man took.

  “A few superficial pellet strikes, I suspect; nothing more. I’ll remove them with a tweezers back at the Connaught. What of the manuscript? Is it undamaged?”

  “Yes, yes. It’s fine!”

  Kleefisch had not run like this since his Oxford days. Nevertheless, the thought of the drunken groundskeeper and his weapon brought vigor to his limbs, and he continued to follow Pendergast, past Springett’s Wood to the Vale of Health, and from there—Deo Gratias! — to East Heath Road, a taxi, and freedom.

  45

  It was still snowing when Corrie awoke in her room at the Hotel Sebastian, after a night full of restless, fragmentary nightmares. She got up and looked out the window. The town lay under a blanket of white and the snowplows were working overtime, rumbling and scraping along the downtown streets, along with front-end loaders and dump trucks removing the piles of snow and trucking them out of town.

  She glanced at her watch: eight o’clock.

  Last night had been awful. The police had come up immediately, to their credit, with the chief himself leading the way. They took away Jack’s corpse and the note, asked questions, collected evidence, and promised to investigate. The problem was, they were clearly overwhelmed by the serial arsonist. The chief looked like he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and his men were so sleep-deprived they could have been extras in a zombie flick. There was no way they were going to be able to conduct a thorough investigation on this, any more than they were on the shooting at her car — the target of which she was no longer in any doubt.

  And so Corrie had driven back into town and booked a room at the Hotel Sebastian. Including the stint in the jail, she’d been in Roaring Fork for three weeks now, and she’d been burning through her four thousand dollars with depressing speed. Lodgings at the Sebastian would take up a good portion of the money she had left, but she was so frightened by the murder of her dog that there was no way she could spend the night in that mansion — or any night, ever again.

  She had called Stacy, telling her what had happened and warning her it was too dangerous to return to the Fine house. Stacy said she would make arrangements to spend the night in town — Corrie had a horrible feeling it might have been at Ted’s place — and they’d agreed to meet that morning at nine in the hotel’s breakfast room. In one hour. It was a conversation she was not looking forward to.

  Adding to her woes, the police had contacted the owner of the mansion, and he had then called Corrie on her cell, waking her up at six, screeching and hollering, saying it was all her fault, that she had broken every house rule, turning up the heat and letting in squatters. As he got more and more worked up, he called her a criminal, speculated that she might be a drug addict, and threatened to sue her and her dyke friend if they went back into the house.

  Corrie had let the man vent, and then given the bastard a royal licking of her own, telling him what a despicable human being he was, that she hoped his wife took every penny he had, and concluding with a speculation on the relationship between the failure of his marriage and the inadequate size of his dick. The man had become inarticulate with rage, which gave Corrie a certain satisfaction as she hung up at the start of yet another foulmouthed rant. The satisfaction was short-lived once she considered the problem of where she was going to stay. She couldn’t even go back to Basalt, because of the closed road, and one more night in the Hotel Sebastian — or any hotel in town, for that matter — would bankrupt her. What was she going to do?

  The one thing she did know was that she was not leaving Roaring Fork. Was she afraid of the bastards who’d shot at her, who’d killed her dog? Of course she was. But nobody was going to drive her out of town. How could she live with herself if she allowed that to happen? And what kind of law enforcement officer would she be if she backed down in the face of these threats? No: one way or another, she was going to stay right here and help catch the people responsible.

  * * *

  Stacy Bowdree was already seated with a big mug of coffee in front of her when Corrie entered the breakfast room. Stacy looked awful, with dark circles under her eyes, her auburn hair unkempt. Corrie took a seat and picked up the menu. Three dollars for an orange juice, ten for bacon and eggs, eighteen for eggs Benedict. She put the menu down: she couldn’t even afford a cup of coffee. When the waitress came over she ordered a glass of tap water. Stacy, on the other hand, ordered the Belgian waffles with a double side of bacon and a fried egg. And then pushed her coffee mug forward. “Go ahead,” she said.

  With a grunt of thanks, Corrie took a sip, then a big drink. God, she needed caffeine. She drained the mug, pushed it back. She didn’t quite know where to start.

  Luckily, Stacy started it for her. “We need to talk, Corrie. About this scumbag threatening your life.”

  Okay. If you want to start there, fine. “It makes me sick what they did to Jack.”

  Stacy laid a hand on hers. “Which is why this is no joke. The people who did this are bad, bad people, and they aren’t fooling around. They see you as a huge threat. Do you have any idea why?”

  “I can only assume I dug up a hornet’s nest somewhere in my research. Came close to something somebody wants to keep hushed up. I wish I knew what.”

  “Maybe it’s the Heights Association and that bitch Kermode,” said Stacy. “She looks like she’s capable of anything.”

  “I don’t think so. All that’s been resolved, the new location of the cemetery has been approved, they’re busy tracking d
own various descendants and getting permission — and most important, you’re not insisting any more on having your ancestor reburied in the original Boot Hill.”

  “Well then, do you think it might be the arsonist?”

  “Not the same M.O. at all. The key is for me to figure out what information I have, or almost got, that spooked them so badly. Once I know that, maybe I’ll be able to identify them. But I don’t really think they’re going to kill me — or they would’ve done it already.”

  “Corrie, don’t be naive. Anyone who would decapitate a dog is totally capable of killing a person. Which is why, from now on, I’m not leaving your side. Not me or…” Stacy patted the place where she carried her .45.

  Corrie looked away.

  “What’s wrong?” Stacy said, looking at her anxiously.

  Now Corrie saw no reason to hold back. “I saw you with Ted last night. The least you could do was tell me you were going to date him. Friends don’t do that to friends.” She sat back.

  Stacy sat back herself. An unreadable expression crossed her face. “Date him?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Date him? Jesus Christ, how the hell could you even think such a thing?” Stacy had raised her voice.

  “Well, what was I supposed to think, seeing you two go into that restaurant—”

  “You know why we went into that restaurant? Because Ted asked me to dinner to talk about you.”

  Corrie looked at her, astonished. “Me?”

  “Yes, you! He’s totally smitten with you, says he might be in love with you, and he’s worried he’s doing something wrong, thinking that he rubbed you the wrong way. He wanted to ask me about it — we spent the whole damn evening talking about you and nothing else. Do you think I enjoyed getting out of bed and driving into town, with a pounding head, to listen to some man spend the night talking about another woman?”