Two Graves p-12

by Douglas Preston

  Keeping the flashlight beam on, he let it drift to the next shelf, then the next, and then trailed it laterally across the titles. Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray. P. G. Wodehouse’s My Man Jeeves. Both, apparently, first editions. And between them, three fat portfolios of black leather, plain and scuffed, with no title or markings.

  Felder’s heart began beating rather quickly.

  Holding the Maglite between his teeth, he opened the glass case and eased the first portfolio from its shelf. It was covered in dust, and looked as if it hadn’t been touched in a hundred years. He opened it carefully, almost afraid to breathe. Inside were dozens of what appeared to be rough sketches and preliminary studies for intended paintings. They were foxed, and faded, and quite similar in style to the ones he had seen in the historical society.

  Felder’s heart beat quicker.

  He began leafing through the studies, fingers trembling. The first few were unsigned, but the third bore a signature in the lower right corner: WINTOUR, 1881.

  He flipped to the back of the portfolio. There—attached to the inside rear edge with a narrow line of paste—was an envelope, brittle and yellowed. Taking the scalpel from his pocket, he cut the envelope free. His fingers felt numb and stupid, and it took him two attempts to open it.

  There, nestled inside, was a small lock of dark hair.

  For a moment, he just stared, with a strange mixture of emotion: triumph, relief, a little disbelief. So it was true, then—it was all true.

  But wait—was it the right hair? There were two other portfolios. Might Wintour have collected hair from other girls? It seemed unlikely—but he had to check.

  Sliding the envelope in his pocket, he put the portfolio back on the shelf and pulled down the next one, going through it rapidly. More sketches and watercolors. He felt his breath coming faster in his anxiety to get this done. There was no lock of hair in there. He pushed that back on the shelf and took down the third, flipping through it, in his haste tearing several pages. Again, nothing. He shut the portfolio and shoved it back on the shelf, but in his hurry he wasn’t as careful as before and it made a dull thump as he over-pushed it into the back of the shelf.

  He froze, his heart pounding. In the great cold silence of the house that small sound was like the crash of thunder.

  Felder waited.

  But there wasn’t even the breath of sound in that frozen house. Slowly, he felt his muscles relax, his breathing slow. Nobody had heard a thing. He was just being paranoid.

  He felt the envelope in his pocket; it gave out a dry crackling sound. Only then, as his fright subsided, did the full implications of his discovery sink in. All doubt was gone: Constance really was a hundred and forty years old. She wasn’t crazy. She’d been telling the truth all along.

  Strangely enough, this realization didn’t shock him as much as he thought it would. Somehow, he already knew it was true: from the calm, matter-of-fact manner in which she’d always maintained her story; from the way she had been able to describe, in great detail, the contemporary appearance of 1880s Water Street; and from the essential honesty of her character. The fact was, this was what he wanted to believe, because—

  With a crash of sound, the pocket doors of the library sprang open, revealing Dukchuk—dressed in his shapeless batik robe, holding the same cruel weapon Felder had seen before, staring at him with beady black eyes.

  With a cry of fright Felder dashed for the window but Dukchuk was faster, leaping across the room and slamming the window shut, moving with a silence that was almost more terrible than a yell, displaying his teeth in a feral grin—and, for the first time, Felder noted they had been sharpened into points. With a scream Felder tried to defend himself but Dukchuk was on him, a tattooed arm whipping around his neck and contracting like a garrote, choking off Felder’s cry.

  Struggling madly, he felt a sudden, white-hot explosion of pain as the club violently impacted the side of his head. His knees gave way and Dukchuk flung him down, striking his chest, the terrible blow knocking him to the ground, where he struggled, unable to breathe.

  A red mist rose before his eyes and he fought to remain conscious, clutching his chest, until at last he was able to suck in air with a huge gasp. As the mist slowly dissipated and his vision cleared, Felder saw Dukchuk standing over him in the faint light of the hallway, massive tattooed forearms folded, his unnaturally small eyes like coals. Behind him stood the diminutive form of Miss Wintour.

  “So!” Miss Wintour said. “You were right, Dukchuk. This man is nothing more than a common thief, here under the pretense of being a lodger!” She glared at Felder. “And to think of your nerve, drinking my tea under my own roof, enjoying my kind hospitality, while plotting to rob a weak, helpless old lady like myself of my meager possessions. Hateful man!”

  “Please,” Felder began. He tried to rise to his knees. His head throbbed, his ribs were undoubtedly broken, and he tasted the metallic combination of blood and fear in his mouth. “Please. I haven’t taken anything. I was just curious, I wanted to have a look around, I’d heard so much…”

  He fell silent as Dukchuk raised the club again menacingly. She would call the police; he’d be arrested; he’d go to jail. It was the end of his career. What on earth had he been thinking?

  The manservant looked over his shoulder at Miss Wintour, with a querying glance that carried the unmistakable question: What should I do with him?

  Felder swallowed painfully. This was it: the call would go to the police, and all the ugliness would begin. He might as well accept it. And start coming up with a good story.

  Miss Wintour glared at him a moment longer. Then she turned to Dukchuk.

  “Kill him,” she said. “And then you may bury his remains under the floor of the root cellar. With the others.” She turned away and left the library without a backward glance.

  62

  DR. JOHN FELDER WALKED ACROSS THE MUSTY, FADED carpeting of the old mansion, his movements slow, almost robotic. His head pounded; blood oozed from a cut on his temple, trickling down his neck; and his broken ribs grated on each other with each step. Dukchuk followed behind, occasionally prodding Felder in the small of his back with the club. The only sounds the manservant made were the swish of his tunic and the padding of his big bare feet on the carpet. The old lady had disappeared into the upper regions of the house.

  Felder continued down the hallway without really seeing anything. This wasn’t real, this couldn’t be happening. Any minute now and he’d wake up on his uncomfortable little pallet in the carriage house. Or maybe—just maybe—he’d wake up in his own apartment back in New York, and this whole crazy trip to Southport would prove to have been nothing but a wild nightmare…

  And then Dukchuk prodded him again with the rounded end of his club, and Felder knew—all too clearly—that although this was a nightmare, it was no dream.

  Still he could hardly believe it. Had old lady Wintour really given Dukchuk instructions to kill him? Was she serious or was it just an effort to scare him? This business of burying him in the root cellar with the others—what on earth could that mean?

  He stopped. Ahead—in the faint, sickly electric light—he could make out a dining room, and beyond it what looked like a kitchen, with a door in its far wall leading out into the night—to freedom. But Dukchuk prodded him again, indicating with his club that Felder was to turn down another hallway to his left.

  Now, as he resumed walking, Felder began to look around a little. Ancient, flyspecked lithographs lined the walls. Little china statuary sat on side tables here and there. But there was nothing, nothing that could conceivably be used as a weapon. He let his hands brush against his pockets as he walked. He could feel their contents: the screwdriver, the scalpel, the envelope with the lock of hair. The Maglite lay on the floor of the library, where he’d sprawled initially. The huge, nimble, muscular Dukchuk would just laugh at the scalpel and its one-inch blade. The screwdriver was a better bet: could he perhaps jam it into the man’s ches
t? But the freak was so strong, so muscular—so quick—that he would never succeed. It would just make him mad.

  It was hopeless. Worse than hopeless.

  Dukchuk rapped on a closed door with his club, then gestured for Felder to open it. Felder turned the handle, his clammy hand sliding wetly over the white marble, pulled the door open. Beyond lay darkness. Dukchuk turned an old-fashioned knob on the wall and an overhead light came on, dangling from a wire. Ahead lay a rude set of stairs, leading down to the basement.

  Felder felt his legs go wobbly with fear—fear that had been buried under disorientation, pain, disbelief. This was for real. “No,” he said, cringing back from the stairway. “No. Please. You can’t do this.”

  Dukchuk poked him in the back with his club.

  “I’ll give you money,” Felder babbled. “I’ve got a hundred and fifty, back in the carriage house. Maybe two hundred. We can go to the cash machine. It’ll be our secret, she won’t even have to know—”

  Dukchuk jammed him in the back again, much harder. Felder teetered, catching the railing to keep his balance. Any harder and he’d be sent hurtling headfirst down the stairs.

  “You can’t kill someone like this. They know I’m renting the carriage house. The police will come looking, they’ll tear the house apart.” But even as he pleaded, he realized the police would do nothing of the sort. Who would believe a little old lady capable of cold-blooded murder? He’d rented the place under an assumed name, he’d told nobody he was staying here. Even if the cops came, they’d just knock on the door, ask a few polite questions, and go away.

  Another hard jab.

  He tried to swallow, felt himself gagging with fear instead. He took a step forward, then another, moving painfully down the steps like an old man. Dukchuk followed, keeping back several steps.

  Time seemed to slow. Every step down into that basement was like a small agony. Kill him. And then you may bury his remains under the floor of the root cellar. Oh, God—oh, God, he really was about to die. Or was it still a sick, macabre joke, an effort to terrorize him? Somehow, he didn’t think so.

  He reached the bottom of the steps and stopped. It was chill and clammy, lit only by the bare bulb at the top of the stairs and a flickering, lambent light that came from a chamber to the left. A narrow hallway led ahead, with other, closed doors leading off from it.

  This was it. He waited, bracing himself for the vicious blow to the head; for the blinding pain to explode in his brainpan; for the white light that would quickly fade to black. But instead Dukchuk prodded him ahead with his club.

  They passed the open door on the left. Out of the corner of his eye, Felder saw tall, flickering candles; strangely painted linen hangings; small stone figurines arranged on plinths in a semicircle. Dukchuk’s lair.

  They were heading directly toward a closed door at the end of the hallway. As he stared at it, Felder’s breathing began to quicken and he heard himself sobbing audibly. “Please,” he murmured. “Please, please, please…”

  They stopped at the end of the passage. Dukchuk motioned for him to open the last door. Felder reached for it, his hand trembling, his legs almost unable to hold him up. It took him three tries before he could grasp the handle with sufficient strength to turn it.

  The door opened into darkness, the indirect candlelight revealing only faint shapes: apple barrels; boxes half full of rotting turnips and carrots; wooden shelving holding swing-top bale jars, many exploded, their dark and putrid contents sprayed across the undersides of the shelves above and dribbling down in congealed ropes.

  The root cellar.

  Felder heard his sobbing grow louder. It almost seemed like someone else was crying. Again, Dukchuk prodded him forward. But this time, Felder couldn’t—or wouldn’t—move. Instead, his hand slipped into his pocket, closed instinctively over the small envelope.

  “Constance,” he murmured. In this moment of supreme crisis, he realized all of a sudden—although he probably should have known it long before—that he was hopelessly in love with her. Maybe he had known it before—maybe he just hadn’t consciously admitted it to himself. That’s what this was all about. And now it was over. She would never know he’d found her lock of hair—nor would she ever know the price he’d had to pay for it.

  Dukchuk prodded him again. And again, Felder remained where he stood, unable to move, on the threshold of the root cellar.

  A vicious blow landed on his right shoulder, and Felder cried out, staggering forward. Another blow from the club caught him on the inside of the knee, and he crumpled to the ground, his head colliding with the earthen floor.

  This was it.

  Suddenly—it had something to do, he was sure, with the revelation of his feelings for Constance—he felt the fear recede. The feeling that replaced it was something like surprise—and anger. Surprise that this was the way he’d go out; that the last earthly sight he would ever see was the uneven, dusty floor; the huge plank-like feet of Dukchuk, turned partly away from him, their toenails black and ragged. And anger at the enormous unfairness of it. He had spent his life doing good, helping sick people, trying to be the best person he could be, earnest and kindhearted… and now was he to die the helpless victim of a crazy murderer?

  The hand gripping the envelope felt something else press against it: something cold and straight. The scalpel. His hand released the envelope, closed over the blade. And—quite abruptly—Felder knew what he had to do.

  In a single motion he pulled his hand from the pocket and—pinching the scalpel between his thumb and the knuckle of his middle finger, the index finger resting along its upper edge, as he’d been taught in dissection lectures at med school—slashed it with all the force he could muster through the massive Achilles tendon behind Dukchuk’s nearest ankle.

  There was a wet, sucking sound as the tendon—cleanly severed, its tension released—shot up like a fat rubber band and disappeared into the calf muscles of Dukchuk’s leg. Instantly the man fell to his knees. His eyes widened, his mouth formed a perfect O, and for the first time the manservant uttered a sound: a deafening, calf-like bawl of pure agony.

  Felder staggered to his feet, still grasping the bloody scalpel. Dukchuk howled a second time and clawed at Felder, but the psychiatrist jumped clear, at the same time slashing viciously at Dukchuk’s hand, opening the palm like a ripe melon.

  “You want some more, you son of a bitch?” Felder cried, astonished at his own rage. But Dukchuk was overwhelmed by pain, huddling on the floor now, clutching at his ankle, blood gushing from his hand, honking and bawling like a baby. He seemed to have forgotten all about Felder.

  With a superhuman surge of strength, Felder swung around, reeled up the staircase, and staggered into the dining room, knocking over a chair in his progress. From somewhere upstairs he heard the old lady call down fretfully: “For heaven’s sake, Dukchuk! Have your fun, but keep the noise down!”

  Felder limped as fast as he could through the darkened kitchen. From below he could hear Dukchuk howling mindlessly, but the sounds were muffled now. Making for the rear door, he fumbled open the locks, threw the door wide. Ignoring the pain of his broken ribs and injured leg, he crashed through the overgrowth behind the mansion, reached the carriage house, entered just long enough to retrieve his case and keys, staggered over to his Volvo, got in, fired up the engine, peeled out onto Center Street, and drove away from the nightmare mansion with all the speed he could manage.

  63

  IN THE BRAZILIAN FOREST, NIGHT STILL REIGNED. MISTS drifted through the dense trees and night-blooming orchids. Pendergast made a silent beeline back to where he had left Egon and soon found signs of the man’s blundering passage: broken branches, torn leaves, boot prints in the mossy floor. Following these signs, he moved swiftly until he could hear the man, still calling and wandering about. Pendergast made a long loop around him and came up from the opposite direction.

  “Here I am!” he cried, waving his light about. “Over here!”

  �
�Where were you?” Egon said, advancing on him with menace and suspicion, pointing the light in his face.

  “Blast it, where were you?” Pendergast cried angrily. “I gave you specific instructions to follow, and you disobeyed! I’ve been wandering about, lost, for hours—and I missed a chance to capture that Queen Beatrice. I’ve half a mind to report you to the authorities!”

  As Pendergast expected, Egon—steeped in a culture of authority and subordination—was instantly cowed. “I’m sorry,” he stammered out, “but you moved so fast, and then vanished—”

  “Enough excuses!” Pendergast cried. “A night has been wasted. I’ll let it go this time—but don’t ever lose track of me again. I could have been killed by a jaguar or eaten by an anaconda!” He paused, fuming. “Let’s go back to the town. You can show me to my quarters. I need some sleep.”

  They emerged into the town, wet and bedraggled, as dawn rose over the crater rim, casting a light that touched the bottoms of the clouds, blushing them coral. The crescent-shaped town came to clockwork life as the rays of sun invaded the cobbled streets: doors opening, chimneys smoking, streets filling with purposeful foot traffic. The island in the middle of the lake remained the same: black, grim, foreboding, issuing the faint sound of clanking machinery.

  As they walked along the thronging streets, Pendergast once again noted, this time with a shiver of horror, that some of the faces he had seen in the underground ghetto had their mirror image among these handsome, busy people.

  Egon led Pendergast to a small, half-timbered house adjacent to the town hall. Egon knocked and a woman answered in an apron, wiping her hands, the smell of baking bread issuing from the interior.

  “Herzlich willkommen,” she said.

  They entered to find two towheaded boys at a kitchen table eating bread with jam and soft-boiled eggs. They stopped and gaped at Pendergast with the same astonishment and curiosity the other townsfolk had displayed.

  “Nobody speaks English,” said Egon in his usual terse manner, ignoring the woman and her friendly greetings as he walked past her to a narrow staircase. He led the way up two stories to a cheerful garret with lace curtains, steeply pitched ceilings, and dormer windows looking back over town.