Brimstone

{ 47 }

As Pendergast drove south, D'Agosta booted the laptop, accessed the Internet via a wireless cellular connection, and initiated a search on Charles F. Ponsonby Jr. Within a few minutes, he had more information than he knew what to do with, starting with the fact that Ponsonby was Lyman Professor of Art History at Princeton University.

"I thought the name was familiar," Pendergast said. "A specialist in the Italian Renaissance, I believe. Lucky for us he's still teaching-no doubt as professor emeritus by now. Bring up his curriculum vitae, if you will, Vincent."

As Pendergast merged onto the New Jersey Turnpike and smoothly accelerated into the afternoon traffic, D'Agosta read off the professor's appointments, awards, and publications. It was a lengthy process, made lengthier by the numerous abstracts Pendergast insisted on hearing recited verbatim.

At last, he was done. Pendergast thanked him, then slipped out his cell phone, dialed, spoke to directory information, redialed, spoke again briefly. "Ponsonby will see us," he said as he replaced the phone. "Reluctantly. We're very close, Vincent. The photograph proves that all four of them were together at least once. Now we need to know exactly where they met, and-even more important-just what happened during that fateful encounter to somehow bind them together for the rest of their lives."

Pendergast pushed the car still faster. D'Agosta shot a surreptitious glance in his direction. The man looked positively eager, like a hound on a scent.

Ninety minutes later the Rolls was cruising down Nassau Street, quaint shops on the left and the Princeton campus on the right, Gothic buildings rising from manicured lawns. Pendergast slid the Rolls into a parking space and fed the meter, nodding to a crowd of students who stopped to gawk. They crossed the street, passed through the great iron gates, and approached the enormous facade of Firestone Library, the largest open-stack library in the world.

A small man with a thatch of untidy white hair stood before the glass doors. He was exactly what D'Agosta imagined a Professor Ponsonby would look like: fussy, tweedy, and pedantic. The only thing missing was a briar pipe.

"Professor Ponsonby?" Pendergast asked.

"You're the FBI agent?" the man replied in a reedy voice, making a show of examining his watch.

Three minutes late, D'Agosta thought.

Pendergast shook his hand. "Indeed I am."

"You didn't say anything about bringing a policeman ."

D'Agosta felt himself bristling at the way he pronounced the word.

"May I present my associate, Sergeant Vincent D'Agosta?"

The professor shook his hand with obvious reluctance. "I have to tell you, Agent Pendergast, that I don't much like being questioned by the FBI. I will not be bullied into giving out information on former students."

"Of course. Now, Professor, where may we chat?"

"We can talk right there on that bench. I would rather not bring an FBI agent and a policeman back to my office, if you don't mind."

"Of course."

The professor marched stiffly over to a bench beneath ancient sycamores and sat down, fussily cocking one knee over the other. Pendergast strolled over and took a seat beside him. There wasn't room for D'Agosta, so he stood to one side, arms folded.

Ponsonby removed a briar pipe from his pocket, knocked out the dottle, began packing it.

Now it's perfect, thought D'Agosta.

"You aren't the Charles Ponsonby who just won the Berenson Medal in Art History, are you?" asked Pendergast.

"I am." He removed a box of wooden matches from his pocket, extracted one, and lit the pipe, sucking in the flame with a low gurgle.

"Ah! Then you are the author of that new catalogue raisonné of Pontormo."

"Correct."

"A splendid book."

"Thank you."

"I shall never forget seeing The Visitation in the little church in Carmignano. The most perfect orange in all of art history. In your book-"

"May we get to the point, Mr. Pendergast?"

There was a silence. Ponsonby apparently had no interest in discussing academic subjects with gumshoes, no matter how cultivated. For once, Pendergast's usual charm offensive had failed.

"I believe you had a student named Ranier Beckmann," Pendergast went on.

"You mentioned that on the phone. I was his thesis adviser."

"I wonder if I could ask you a few questions."

"Why don't you ask him directly? I have no intention of becoming an FBI informant, thank you."

D'Agosta had run into this type before. Deeply suspicious of law enforcement, treating every question as a personal challenge. They refused to be flattered into compliance and fought you every step of the way, citing all kinds of spurious legalisms about the right to privacy, the Fifth Amendment, the usual bullshit.

"Oh, you didn't know?" Pendergast said, his voice smooth as honey. "Mr. Beckmann died. Tragically."

Silence. "No, I didn't know." More silence. "How?"

Now it was Pendergast's turn to be unforthcoming. Instead, he dropped another tantalizing nugget. "I've just come from the exhumation of his body . But perhaps this isn't an appropriate topic of conversation, seeing as how you two weren't close."

"Whoever told you that was misinformed. Ranier was one of my best students."

"Then how is it you didn't hear about his death?"

The professor shifted uneasily. "We lost touch after he graduated."

"I see. Then perhaps you won't be able to help us, after all." And Pendergast made a show of preparing to stand.

"He was a brilliant student, one of the best I've ever had. I was-I was very disappointed he didn't want to go on to graduate school. He wanted to go to Europe, do a grand tour on his own, a sort of wandering journey without any kind of academic structure. I did not approve." Ponsonby paused. "May I ask how he died and why the body was exhumed?"

"I'm sorry, but that information can be disclosed only to Mr. Beckmann's family and friends."

"I tell you, we were very close. I gave him a book at parting. I've only done that with half a dozen students in my forty years of teaching."

"And this was in 1976?"

"No, it was in 1974." The professor was very glad to offer the correction. Then a new thought seemed to strike him. He looked at Pendergast afresh. "It wasn't homicide . was it?"

"Really, Professor, unless you can get the permission of a family member to release this information-you do know someone in his family, I daresay?"

The professor's face fell. "No. No one."

Pendergast arched his eyebrows in surprise.

"He wasn't close to his family. I can't recall him ever mentioning them."

"Pity. And so you say that Beckmann left for Europe in 1974, right after graduation, and that was the last you heard of him?"

"No. I got a note from Scotland at the end of August of that year. He was preparing to leave some farming commune he'd joined and head to Italy. I felt it was just some stage he had to go through. To tell you the truth, these past dozen years I'd been half expecting to see his name turn up in one of the journals, or perhaps to hear of an art opening of his. I've often thought of him over the years. Really, Mr. Pendergast, I would appreciate hearing anything you might be able to tell me about him."

Pendergast paused. "It would be highly irregular . " He let his voice trail off.

D'Agosta had to smile. Flattery hadn't worked, so Pendergast had taken another tack. And now he had the professor begging him for information.

"Surely you can at least tell me how he died."

His pipe had gone out, and Pendergast waited while the professor drew out another match. As Ponsonby struck it, Pendergast spoke. "He died an alcoholic in a flophouse in Yonkers and was buried in the local potter's field."

The professor dropped the burning match, his face a mask of horror. "Good God. I had no idea."

"Very tragic."

The professor tried to cover up his shock by opening the matchbox again, but his shaking hands spilled them over the bench.

Pendergast helped pick them up. The professor poked them back one by one into the trembling box. He put his pipe away, unlit. D'Agosta was surprised to see the old man's eyes film over. "Such a fine student," he said, almost to himself.

Pendergast let the silence grow. Then he slipped Beckmann's copy of Lives of the Painters out from his suit coat and held it out to Ponsonby.

For a moment, the old man didn't appear to recognize it. Then he started violently. "Where did you get this?" he asked, grasping it quickly.

"It was with Mr. Beckmann's effects."

"This is the book I gave him." As he opened the flyleaf to the dedication page, the photograph slipped out. "What's this?" he asked as he picked it up.

Pendergast said nothing, asked no questions.

"There he is," Ponsonby said, pointing at the photo. "That's just how I remember him. This must have been taken in Florence in the fall."

"Florence?" said Pendergast. "It could have been taken anywhere in Italy."

"No, I recognize that fountain behind them. It's the one in Piazza Santo Spirito. Always a big hangout for students. And there, behind, you can just see the portone of the Palazzo Guadagni, which is a shabby student pensione. I say the fall because they're dressed that way, although I suppose it could have also been in spring."

Pendergast retrieved the picture, then asked offhandedly, "The other students in the photograph were also from Princeton?"

"I've never seen any of them before. He must have met them in Florence. Like I said, the Piazza Santo Spirito was a gathering place for foreign students. Still is." He closed the book. His face looked very tired and his voice cracked. "Ranier . Ranier had such promise."

"We are all born with promise, Professor." Pendergast stood up, then hesitated. "You may keep the book, if you wish."

But Ponsonby didn't seem to hear. His shoulders were bent, and he caressed the spine with a trembling hand.

As they drove back to New York in the gathering dusk, D'Agosta stirred restlessly in the front passenger seat. "Amazing how you extracted all that information from the professor without his even knowing it." And it was amazing, though also a little sad: despite the professor's arrogance and high-handedness, he'd seemed terribly moved by the death of a favorite student, even one not seen for three decades.

Pendergast nodded. "One rule, Vincent: the more unwilling the subject is to release information, the better the information is, once released. And Dr. Ponsonby's information was as good as gold." His eyes gleamed in the dark.

"It looks like they met up in Florence in the fall of '74."

"Exactly. Something happened to them there, something so extraordinary it resulted in at least two murders, thirty years later." He turned to D'Agosta. "Do you know the saying, Vincent, 'All roads lead to Rome'?"

"Shakespeare?"

"Very good. In this case, however, it appears all roads lead to Florence. And that is precisely where our road should lead."

"To Florence?"

"Precisely. No doubt Bullard himself is on his way there, if he's not there already."

"I'm glad there's not going to be any argument about my coming along," D'Agosta said.

"I wouldn't have it any other way, Vincent. Your police instincts are first-rate. Your marksmanship is astonishing. I know I can trust you in a tight spot. And the chances of ourselves ending up in just such a spot are rather good, I'm afraid. So if you wouldn't mind sliding out the laptop again, we'll book our tickets now. First class, if you don't mind, open return."

"Leaving when?"

"Tomorrow morning."