Bloodless

47

It was 7:30 pm when Constance was summoned to Pendergast’s bedroom, accessible through a common door that joined their two suites. It was ascetic and clean, as his sleeping chambers always were: no doubt he’d asked the staff to remove items of furniture or decoration he deemed objectionable.

“Constance?” Pendergast said. “In here, if you please.”

The voice came from an open door on the far side of the bedroom. Constance knew Pendergast had taken this suite for himself specifically because it contained this extra room — a space originally intended, according to hotel legend, as a sniper’s nest from which to pick off approaching Yankees. She crossed the bedroom and entered it curiously.

Pendergast had turned it into a sort of private war room. The walls were of the darkest ocher, and there was only a single, narrow window — lending credence to the sniper story. The room was small and piled with books: volumes on local history, astrophysics, the supernatural beliefs of Eastern Europe, and a dozen other subjects that seemed to have no common thread among them. There were also maps of Savannah pinned to the walls, both old and new, with several locations marked with highlighter. When and how Pendergast had amassed all this, she had no idea.

But it was Pendergast himself who gave her the greater shock. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his skin even paler than usual. He was tense and appeared excited. He sat at a desk, a vintage Emeralite lamp throwing an absinthe-colored pool of light over the clutter of books and maps. Despite the room’s disorder, the desk itself held only a bottle of Lagavulin, a half-full glass, and a pill container. This, along with his demeanor, disturbed Constance.

“Please have a seat,” he told her.

She sat down opposite him.

Pendergast leaned in toward her. “I hope you’ll forgive me, dearest Constance, if I seem brusque. There is a need to move quickly. I’ve put many pieces of the puzzle together, but several are conjectural and others don’t fit properly. This is where I need your help. If I’m right, only Frost can supply the answers — and only you are in a position to get those answers from her.”

“She might not be up yet. She normally rises at ten PM.”

“You may have to rouse her. You’ve forged a bond with the old woman; you’re her confidante.”

“I would hardly call myself a confidante.”

“But you do feel a certain kinship with her, correct?”

“You could call it that.”

“And she feels the same for you?”

Constance nodded. Then she hesitated a moment — Pendergast’s entire frame was radiating eagerness, impatience. And yet she had to speak. “Aloysius, ‘kinship’... that’s only part of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“She knows I’m... not what I seem.”

“So you told me.”

“She told me my eyes were like hers — except even more aged. Sitting there, speaking to her... I could see myself on that sofa, surrounded by dusty books, writing in journals nobody would read.” Suddenly, she leaned forward across the table. “Aloysius, the truth is I’ve already been that woman. All those decades Dr. Leng prolonged my life artificially, kept me in that mansion, I was Felicity Frost... imprisoned in a young body instead of an old one. And now that Leng’s dead, and I’m aging at a normal rate...” She stopped, sat back abruptly. “Am I doomed to live through that twice? I’m already superannuated. Don’t you see?”

“Constance, I do see. And I could tell you I understand. But nobody, nobody could fully appreciate what it’s like to be blessed — cursed — with a life like yours. The terrible things you’ve witnessed, the years you endured alone... those are burdens you never asked to bear. And, alas, burdens only you can truly understand.”

Constance sat back, looking at him silently.

“But you’ve told me, whispered to me, of so much. I know your history almost as well as you do. Your life is not that of Miss Frost. You have me now.”

“I have you,” she echoed distantly.

Pendergast began to speak. “Constance, I don’t know how to—”

“You may not,” she interrupted. “But I do. So let’s get back to the reason you asked me here.”

“My dear Constance—”

“You need my help again. What are these answers you mentioned that only I can ask her?”

Pendergast hesitated, then — looking into her eyes — left his sentence unfinished. Instead, he reached into his jacket pocket and removed a folded sheet of what looked like airline stationery. “Four questions.”

Constance began to unfold the sheet, but Pendergast put a hand on hers. “She may lie at first — after all, she’s spent most of her lifetime lying. But she must be made to understand that what she’s been doing all these years now threatens to destroy Savannah. If necessary, show her these.” And, reaching into his jacket, he pulled out some beautifully composed photographs of a farm by the edge of a lake.

“How bucolic,” she said. Then she unfolded the sheet he’d given her. She read it once, twice, before looking up in disbelief. “These questions... they’re mad. Are you—?”

“I know how they seem,” he interrupted. “But if I’m right, Frost won’t think them mad at all.” Reaching forward and taking her other hand, he spoke quietly, urgently, for several minutes. The surprise on Constance’s face deepened — then turned slowly to astonishment. Her guardian, quite obviously, was in the throes of some all-consuming puzzle; the hands that gripped hers were icy cold.

“Be gentle, if you can,” he said. “But these questions must be asked with authority—and you cannot leave her rooms until you’re sure she has told you the truth.”

“That hardly seems like a recipe for fostering a relationship,” Constance said.

“This is more important than any relationship!” These angry, impatient words seemed to burst out of him. Then Pendergast looked away, and — for the first time in her memory — he flushed deeply.

When he did not release her hand, she detached it herself, then stood immediately. “I’ll do what I can.”

“I can ask no more,” he replied after a pause. “Except to promise you that—”

Without waiting to hear the rest, Constance turned and left the small room. A moment later, her heels could be heard crossing the marble floor of the suite’s foyer; then a door opened and shut, and only silence remained.