Brimstone

{ 13 }

The door to the tenth-floor suite at the Sherry Netherland Hotel was opened by an English butler so impeccably outfitted he seemed to have stepped from the pages of a Wodehouse novel. He bowed to Pendergast, standing to one side. The man's double-breasted Prince Albert frock coat was immaculately brushed, and when he moved, his starched white shirtfront rustled faintly. One white-gloved hand took Pendergast's coat; the other held out a silver tray. Without hesitation, Pendergast reached into his pocket, removed a slim gold card case, and placed his card on the tray.

"If the gentleman would kindly wait." The butler gave another slight bow and disappeared into a long hallway, carrying the tray before him. There was the soft opening of a door, the faint sound of clicking and hammering. Another, farther door was opened. Minutes later the butler returned.

"If the gentleman will follow me," he said.

Pendergast followed the butler into a wood-paneled sitting room, where he was greeted by a birch fire, flickering merrily within a large fireplace.

"The gentleman is welcome to seat himself where he pleases," the butler said.

Pendergast, always attracted to heat, chose the red leather chair nearest the fire.

"The count will be available momentarily. Would the gentleman care for amontillado?"

"Thank you."

The butler retreated noiselessly and reappeared less than thirty seconds later, bearing a tray on which reposed a single crystal glass half filled with a pale amber liquid. He set it on the nearby table and, just as noiselessly, was gone.

Pendergast sipped the dry, delicate liquid and gazed about the room with growing interest. It had been furnished in exquisite and yet understated taste, managing to be both comfortable and beautiful at the same time. The floor was covered with a rare Safavid carpet of Shah Abbassid design. The fireplace was old, carved from gray Florentine pietra serena , and it bore the crest of an ancient and noble family. The table that held his glass also bore an interesting array of items: several pieces of old silver, an antique gasogene, some lovely Roman glass perfume bottles, and a small Etruscan bronze.

It was the painting above the mantelpiece, however, that startled Pendergast. It appeared to be a Vermeer, depicting a lady at a leaded-glass window examining a piece of lace; the cool Flemish light from the window shone through the lace, which cast a faint shadow across the woman's dress. Pendergast was familiar with all thirty-five of Vermeer's known paintings. This was not one of them. And yet it could not be a forgery: no forger had been able to duplicate Vermeer's light.

His eye roamed farther. On the opposite wall was an unfinished painting in the Caravaggesque style, showing the conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus. It was a smaller and even more intense version of Caravaggio's famous painting in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. The more Pendergast looked at it, the more he doubted it was a copy or a "school of" rendering. In fact, it looked like a study in the master's own hand.

Pendergast now turned his attention to the right-hand wall, where a third painting hung: a little girl in a dark room, reading a book by candlelight. Pendergast recognized it as very similar to-yet not a copy of-a series of paintings on the same subject, The Education of the Virgin by the mysterious French painter Georges de la Tour. Could it possibly be real?

They were the only three paintings in the room: three breathtaking gems. But they weren't displayed with pomp and pretense; instead, they seemed to be part of the environment of the room, placed for private enjoyment rather than public envy. None of the paintings even bore a label.

His curiosity about Fosco increased.

More faint sounds emanated from chambers beyond. Immediately, the agent's preternatural hearing focused on them. A distant door had opened, and Pendergast could hear the whistling of a bird, the light patter of footsteps, and a deep, gentle voice.

Pendergast listened intently.

"Come out and hop upstairs! One, two, three, and up! Three, two, one-and down!"

A burst of chirping and twittering, combined with another sound-clacking and whirring-floated into the room from beyond, mingled with cheerful exhortations. Then, softly, a beautiful tenor voice sounded, singing the notes of a bel canto aria. The bird-if that's what it was-fell silent, as if under a spell. The voice rose in pitch and volume, then faded slowly away, and as it did, the butler returned.

"The count will see you now."

Pendergast rose and followed him down a long, broad corridor, lined with books, to a studio beyond.

The count stood in all his corpulent majesty in a capacious studio, one end with floor-to-ceiling glass, his back turned, looking out on a small balcony framed with rosebushes, sinking into twilight. He was wearing slacks and a crisp white shirt, open at the collar. Beside him was an immaculate worktable. At least a hundred tools were lined up on the table in geometric precision: tiny screwdrivers, pinpoint soldering irons, tiny jeweler's saws, watchmaker's vises and files. Laid out next to them was an array of exquisitely small gears, ratchets, springs, levers, and other finely machined metal parts, along with chips, small circuit boards, bundles of fiber-optic cabling, LEDs, bits of rubber and plastic, and other electronic objects of mysterious function.

In the center of the worktable stood a wooden T-bar stand, and on the stand stood a strange object that at first glance looked like a Triton cockatoo, brilliant white with a lemon-colored crest, but which on closer inspection proved to be a mechanical device: a robotic bird.

The butler indicated politely for Pendergast to seat himself on a nearby stool. As if by magic, his half-drunken glass of amontillado appeared; then the butler vanished like a ghost.

Pendergast watched the count. With his free hand, he plucked a casuarina nut from a tray, placed it between his fat lips, then protruded it. With a whistle of excitement, the robot cockatoo climbed to Fosco's shoulder, then to his ear, and-leaning forward with a whirring of gears-plucked the seed from the projecting lips, cracked it with its mechanical bill, and made every appearance of eating it.

"Ah! My pretty, playtime is over!" cooed the count. "Back to your perch." He gave his gloved hand a little wave. The cockatoo gave a screech of displeasure and flared his mechanical crest, but made no further movement.

"Ah, stubborn today, I see." The count spoke louder, more firmly. "Back to your perch, my pretty, or you will be eating millet instead of nuts the rest of the day."

With another screech, the cockatoo hopped off his shoulder onto the table, waddled over to the stand, climbed it with metal claws, and resumed its place, casting its beady LED eyes on Pendergast.

And now at last, the count turned with a smile and bow, offering Pendergast his hand. "I am so sorry to keep you waiting. My friend-as you see-requires his exercise."

"Most interesting," said Pendergast dryly.

"No doubt it is! It is true, I cut a ridiculous figure with my pets."

"Pets?"

"Yes. And you see how they love me! My cockatoo and-" He inclined his suety head toward the other side of the room, where what looked like a pack of mice were disporting themselves within an elaborate wire pagoda with various clicks and whirs and digital squeaks. "And my dear little white mice! But, of course, of all my pretties, Bucephalus here is my pride and joy." And Fosco turned toward the cockatoo. "Are you not, my pretty?"

The bird's only response was to bury its massive black bill within a fluff of fake beak feathers, as if rendered timid by the compliment.

"You must forgive Bucephalus!" Fosco said, tut-tutting. "He is not partial to strangers. He is slow to make friends and screams when displeased-ah, my friend, such screams as you would not believe! I have been forced to take the two apartments adjoining this and keep them unoccupied, at great personal expense. Mere walls, you see, are no defense against the lungs of this magnificent creature!"

The robotic cockatoo gave no acknowledgment of this panegyric, continuing to eye Pendergast motionlessly.

"But they are all quite fond of opera. As Congreve said, music hath charms et cetera. Perhaps you heard my poor singing. Did you recognize the piece?"

Pendergast nodded. "Pollione's aria from Norma , 'Abbandonarmi così potresti.'"

"Ah! Then you liked it."

"I said I recognized it. Tell me, Count, did you build these robots yourself?"

"Yes. I am a lover of animals and gadgets. Would you like to see my canaries? The real ones, I mean: I rarely distinguish between my own children and those of nature."

"Thank you, no."

"I should have been born an American, a Thomas Edison, where my inventiveness would have been encouraged. But instead I was born into the stifling, decaying Florentine aristocracy, where skills such as mine are useless. Where I come from, counts are supposed to keep both feet firmly in the eighteenth century, if not earlier."

Pendergast stirred. "May I trouble you with some questions, Count Fosco?"

The count waved his hand. "Let us do away with this 'Count' business. We are in America, and here I am Isidor. May I call you Aloysius?"

There was a short silence before Pendergast spoke again, voice cool. "If it's all the same to you, Count, I would prefer to keep this interview on a formal level."

"As you like. I see the good Pinketts supplied you with refreshment. He's a treasure, don't you think? The English lorded it over the Italians for so many centuries that it gives me pleasure to have at least one Englishman under my thumb. You're not English, are you?"

"No."

"Well then, we can speak freely of the English. Bah! Imagine, the only composer of note they ever produced was a man named Byrd." The count settled himself into a wing chair opposite, and as he did so, Pendergast noted again how lightly and easily the enormous man seemed to move, how delicately he seated himself.

"My first question, Count Fosco, involves the dinner party. When did you arrive?"

The count placed his white hands together reverently, as if about to pray, and sighed. "Grove wanted us at seven. And on a Monday night, too-very unlike him. We came straggling in, fashionably late, between seven-thirty and eight. I was the first to arrive."

"What was Grove's mental state?"

"Very poor, I should say. As I told you, he seemed nervous, high-strung. No so much that he couldn't entertain. He had a cook, but he prepared the main dishes himself. He was quite a good chef. He prepared an exquisite sole, lightly grilled over the fire, with lemon. Nothing more, nothing less. Perfection. Then he followed with-"

"I already have the menu, thank you. Did he give any indication why he was nervous?"

"No. In fact, he seemed to be at great pains to hide it. His eyes darted everywhere. He locked the door after each guest was let in. He hardly drank, which was quite out of character. He was a man who normally liked a good claret, and even on this occasion, he served some excellent wines, starting with Tocai from Friuli and then a '90 Petrus, truly magnificent."

Château Petrus 1990, considered the best since the fabled '61, was one of Pendergast's own most prized wines; he had a dozen bottles of the $2,000 Pomerol laid down in his cellar in the Dakota. He chose not to mention this fact.

The count continued his description with great good humor and volubility. "Grove also opened, quite spontaneously, a wine from the Castello di Verrazzano, their so-called bottiglia particolare , the one with the silk label. Exceptional."

"Did you know the other guests?"

The count smiled. "Lady Milbanke I know quite well. Vilnius I'd met a few times. Jonathan Frederick I knew only from his writings."

"What did you talk about at dinner?"

The smile widened. "It was most peculiar."

"Yes?"

"The first part of the dinner was taken up with a conversation about the Georges de la Tour painting you saw in my sitting room. What do you think of it, Agent Pendergast?"

"Shall we stay on the subject, Count Fosco?"

"This is the subject. Bear with me. Do you think it's a de la Tour?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"The brushwork on the lace is very characteristic, and the glow of the candle through the fingers is handled in pure de la Tour fashion."

The count looked at Pendergast curiously, a faint gleam of something indefinable in his eyes. After a long silence, he said very quietly and seriously, "You surprise me very much, Pendergast. I am truly impressed." The jocular, familiar note had vanished from his voice. He paused, then continued. "Twenty years ago I found myself in a little financial embarrassment. I put that very painting up for sale at Sotheby's. The day before the auction, Grove wrote a little piece in the Times calling it one of the Delobre fakes, done around the turn of the century. It was pulled from the auction, and despite my having the provenance in hand, I lost fifteen million dollars."

Pendergast considered this. "And that's what you talked about? His branding your de la Tour a forgery?"

"Yes, in the beginning. Then the conversation moved to Vilnius and his paintings. Grove reminded us of Vilnius's first big show, in SoHo in the early eighties. At the time, Grove wrote a legendarily scathing review. Suffice to say, Vilnius's career never recovered."

"An odd topic of conversation."

"Indeed. And then Grove brought up the subject of Lady Milbanke and the affair he'd had with her some years back."

"I imagine this was quite a lively dinner party."

"I have rarely seen its equal."

"And how did Lady Milbanke react?"

"How would you expect a lady to react? The affair broke up her marriage. And then Grove treated her abominably, left her for a boy ."

"It sounds as if each of you had reason to be mortal enemies of Grove."

Fosco sighed. "We were. We all hated him, including Frederick. I don't know the man at all, but I understand that some years ago, when he was editor of Art and Style , he had the temerity to write something nasty about Grove. Grove had friends in high places, and the next thing Frederick knew he'd been fired. The poor fellow couldn't find a job for years ."

"When did the dinner party break up?"

"After midnight."

"Who left first?"

"I was the first to stand and anounce my departure. I have always required a great deal of sleep. The others rose at the same time. Grove was most reluctant to see us go. He kept pressing after-dinner drinks on us, coffee. He was most anxious that we stay."

"Do you know why?"

"He seemed frightened of being alone."

"Do you recall his precise words?"

"To a certain extent." Fosco broke out into a high-pitched, upper-class drawl that was startling in its realism. "My friends! You're not going already? Why, it's just midnight! Come, let's toast our reconciliation and bid good riddance to my years of misguided pride. I have an excellent port that you must try, Fosco-and he plucked my sleeve-a Graham's Tawny, 1972 vintage." Fosco gave a sniff. "I was almost tempted to stay when I heard that."

"Did you all leave together?"

"More or less. We said our good-byes and straggled out across the lawn."

"And that was when? I'd like to know as precisely as possible, if you please."

"Twelve twenty-five." He looked at Pendergast for a moment and then said, "Mr. Pendergast, forgive me if I observe that, among all these questions, you haven't asked the most important one of all."

"And what question would that be, Count Fosco?"

"Why did Jeremy Grove ask us, his four mortal enemies, to be with him on the final night of his life?"

For a long time, Pendergast did not answer. He was carefully considering both the question and the man who had just posed it. Finally he said simply, "A good question. Consider it posed."

"It was the very question Grove himself asked when he gathered us around his table at the beginning of the dinner party. He repeated what his invitation said: that he invited us to his house that night because we were the four people he had most wronged. He wished to make amends."

"Do you have a copy of the invitation?"

With a smile, Fosco removed it from his shirt pocket and handed it over-a short, handwritten note.

"And he'd already begun to make amends. As with his reappraisal of Vilnius's work."

"A splendid review, don't you think? I understand Vilnius has just landed Gallery 10 to show his work, and they've doubled his prices."

"And Lady Milbanke? Jonathan Frederick? How did he make amends to them?"

"While Grove couldn't put Lady Milbanke's marriage back together, he did give her something in compensation. He passed her an exquisite emerald necklace across the table, more than enough to replace that dried-up old husk of a baron she lost. Forty carats of flawless Sri Lankan emeralds, worth a million dollars if a penny. She practically swooned. And Frederick? He was a long shot for the position of president of the Edsel Foundation, but Grove arranged the job for him."

"Extraordinary. And what did he do for you?"

"Surely you already know the answer to that."

Pendergast nodded. "The article he was writing for Burlington Magazine. 'A Reappraisal of Georges de la Tour’s The Education of the Virgin .'"

"Precisely. Proclaiming himself in error, making appropriately abject apologies, beating his breast and affirming the glorious authenticity of the painting. He read the article aloud to us over the dinner table."

"It remained beside his computer. Unsigned and unmailed."

"Only too true, Mr. Pendergast. Of the four of us, I was the only one cheated by his death." He spread his hands. "If the murderer had waited a day, I would be forty million richer."

"Forty million? I thought it had been put up for sale at fifteen."

"That was Sotheby's estimate twenty years ago. That painting would go for at least forty million today. But with Grove on record that it's one of the Delobre fakes . " Fosco shrugged. "An unsigned article beside a dead man's computer means nothing. There is one good thing: I'll have the lovely painting to look at for the rest of my life. I know it's real, and you know it's real, even if no one else does."

"Yes," Pendergast said. "Ultimately that's all that matters."

"Well put."

"And the Vermeer that hangs beside it?"

"Real."

"Indeed?"

"It has been dated to 1671, between the period of Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid and The Allegory of Faith "

"Where did it come from?"

"It's been in my family for several hundred years. The counts of Fosco never felt the need to trumpet their possessions."

"I'm truly astonished."

The count smiled, bowed. "Do you have time to see the rest of my collection?"

Pendergast hesitated for only a second. "As a matter of fact, I do."

The count rose and went to the door. Just before they exited, he turned to the mechanical cockatoo, still on his perch.

"Keep an eye on the place, Bucephalus, my pretty."

The bird gave a digitized squawk in reply.