Crooked River

21

Constance lay in the old four-poster set back from the windows of a second-floor bedroom in the Mortlach House. The lawyer, Mr. Mayfield, had brought in an army of cleaners and house-dressers, and the shingle-style Victorian had been made bright and airy. Although Constance had kept a sharp eye out, she had yet to see blood seep out from behind the wallpaper, as the lawyer’s secretary had assured her it did.

Her windows were open to admit the gulf breezes, and the faint thunder of waves on the still-cordoned beach reached her ears. Other than that, the house was silent. The bedrooms were all on the second floor, and she found that her sleeping quarters were closer to Aloysius’s than she was used to. It was an old house, and well built, but not nearly as solid as the Riverside Drive mansion where she lived in New York City. This was their first night in the place; Pendergast had gone to Key West this afternoon and wouldn’t be getting in until half past one, if not later.

As she lay on the bed, she watched a tendril of moonbeam make its way across the paneled ceiling. She felt no drowsiness. She had come to know herself well over the many years since her birth, and there was no mystery to her wakefulness: her senses were on high alert and she was waiting for something to happen.

The mystery, however, was... what?

Upon arrival, she had done her best to immerse herself in Aloysius’s case: doing bits of online research, expressing her opinion of his speculations and offering a few of her own. But she found it hard to develop an interest in the matter. A hundred human feet, washing ashore — it was a bizarre and awful thing, but it had little to do with the intellectual and murderous battle of wits she so enjoyed assisting Pendergast with in his cases. Death on this scale was more like genocide, and genocide was never clever or mysterious: it was just the ugliest, cruelest side of humanity, manifesting itself in a brutal and pointless fashion. Enoch Leng, her first guardian, had been a scholar of genocide, and through him she had learned more about the subject than she ever would care to have known.

She had finally admitted to Pendergast that she had little interest in the case and would prefer to pursue other things while on the islands. But there was another reason she wanted nothing to do with the case, which she hadn’t shared with Pendergast.

If one looked deep enough into the death records of late-nineteenth-century New York City, one could learn that a young married couple had died during a cholera epidemic ravaging the docklands slums. But the death certificates did not tell the full story. After the husband, a stevedore, died of the disease, his wife — out of her head with fever and despair — either fell or jumped into the East River. Two little girls, Mary and Constance, were there to see their mother’s body being hoisted from the foul water with grappling hooks.

She had never told anyone, even Dr. Leng. But the memory was with her always, and she did not wish to have a hundred waterlogged feet sharpening the edges of those memories.

And so she had begun playing the role of tourist, wandering the streets, peering into shops, visiting the historical society, or sitting on the veranda of the Mortlach House, gazing toward the gulf and reading To the Lighthouse. She despised the book and had never been able to finish it, but now it was a martyrdom she was grimly determined to see through, like Henry IV of Germany enduring a hair shirt along the Walk to Canossa—

Constance’s train of thought came to an abrupt stop.

She lay perfectly still. There it was again: a rapping sound, faint but discernible. And it wasn’t from outside; it was in the house, down below — perhaps the basement, which Constance had not yet explored.

And now, lying in bed, Constance realized what she had been waiting for: evidence of the Mortlach ghost.

She sat up with a mixture of thrill and fear. Her eyes were already accustomed to the dark, and reaching over, she picked up the antique Italian stiletto that she always carried with her. She swung her legs out of the bed, rising to her feet in perfect silence while slipping into a silk robe. With equal stealth she crept to the door, then — very slowly — opened it.

The hall was empty, lit only by a single small lamp. Weapon at the ready, Constance paused again to listen.

Another tap, followed shortly by yet another: stealthy and hollow with a sense of purpose. They were definitely coming from the basement, and they sounded to Constance like someone tapping on the walls of the old mansion with a bony hand. It reminded her of the Mount Mercy Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where an inmate had been infamous for...

The breeze shifted and a sudden gust of wind caught the curtains of her windows, slamming her door shut with a thunderous bang.

Constance froze. She waited, motionless, listening for a long time, but there was no more tapping.

At last she turned and — as silently as she had risen from it — she returned to her bed, laid her head back on the down pillows, and once again stared at the continuing journey of the sliver of moonlight across the ceiling.