Two Graves

10

THE TAXICAB PULLED UP TO THE SEVENTY-SECOND STREET entrance of the Dakota, stopping opposite the doorman’s pillbox. A uniformed man emerged and, with the gravitas of doormen the world over, approached the cab and opened the rear door.

A woman stepped out into the early-morning sunlight. She was tall and sleek and beautifully dressed. The white, broad-brimmed hat she wore set off her freckled face, deeply tanned despite the lateness of the season. She paid the driver, then turned toward the doorman.

“I’ll need to use your house phone, if you please,” she said in a brisk English accent.

“This way, ma’am.” And the doorman led her down a long, dark passage beneath a portcullis to a small room facing the building’s interior courtyard.

She picked up the phone, dialed an apartment number. The phone rang twenty times without answer. The doorman waited, eyeing her. “There’s no answer, miss.”

Viola eyed the doorman. This was someone who could not be pushed around. She offered a sweet smile. “As you know, the housekeeper is deaf. I’ll try again.”

A reluctant nod.

Another twenty rings.

“Miss, I think that’s enough. Allow me to take your name.”

She rang again. The doorman was now frowning, and she could see he was getting ready to reach over and press the ENGAGED button.

“Please, just a moment,” she said, with another brilliant smile.

Even as the doorman’s hand was reaching over to cut her off, the phone was finally answered.

“Hello?” she said quickly. The hand withdrew.

“May I know the reason for this damnable persistence?” came the monotonal, almost sepulchral voice.

“Aloysius?” the woman asked.

A silence.

“It’s me. Viola. Viola Maskelene.”

There was a long pause. “Why are you here?”

“I’ve come all the way from Rome to speak to you. It’s a matter of life and death.”

No response.

“Aloysius, I appeal to you on… on the strength of our past relationship. Please.”

A slow, quiet exhalation of breath. “I suppose you must come up, then.”

The elevator whispered open to a small landing, with maroon carpeting and walls of dark, polished wood. The single door opposite was standing open. Lady Maskelene walked through the doorway and then stopped, shocked. Pendergast was standing inside, wearing a silk dressing gown of muted paisley. His face was gaunt, his hair limp. Without bothering to shut the door, he turned away wordlessly and walked over to one of the room’s leather sofas. His movements, normally brisk and economical, were sluggish, as if he were moving underwater.

Lady Maskelene closed the door and followed him into the room, which was rose-colored with the sparse decoration of a few ancient, gnarled bonsai trees. Three of the walls held a scattering of impressionist paintings. The fourth was a sheet of water, falling over a slab of black marble. Pendergast took a seat on the sofa, and she sat down beside him.

“Aloysius,” she said, taking his hand in both of hers, “my heart breaks for you. What an awful, awful thing. I’m so terribly sorry.”

His eyes looked through her rather than at her.

“I can’t even begin to imagine how you must feel right now,” she said, pressing his hand. “But the one thing you mustn’t feel is guilt. You did everything you possibly could—I know you did. What happened was beyond your power to prevent.” She paused. “I wish there was something I could do to help you.”

Pendergast freed his hand from hers, closed his eyes, and tented his fingertips on his temples. He seemed to be making a huge effort to concentrate, to bring himself into the moment. Then he opened his eyes again and looked at her.

“You mentioned a life at stake. Whose?”

“Yours,” she replied.

This did not seem to register at first. After a moment or two, Pendergast said, “Ah.”

There was another silence. Then he spoke again. “Perhaps you’d care to explain the source of your information?”

“Laura Hayward contacted me. She told me what had happened, what was going on. I dropped everything and flew from Rome on the very next plane.”

She couldn’t stand the dull way he was looking at her—looking past her. This was so unlike the courtly, collected, nuanced Pendergast she had first met at her villa on Capraia—the man under whose spell she had fallen—that she could not bear it. A terrible anger rose in her heart at the people who had done this to him.

After a hesitation, she took him in her arms. He stiffened but did not protest.

“Oh, Aloysius,” she whispered. “Won’t you let me help?”

When he still did not respond, she said, “Listen to me. It’s fine to grieve. It’s good to grieve. But this—shutting yourself up here, refusing to speak to anyone, refusing to see anyone… it’s no way to handle this.” She held him tighter. “And you must deal with it—for Helen’s sake. For my sake. I know it will take time. That’s why I’m here. To help you through your grief. Together we can—”

“No,” Pendergast murmured.

Surprised, she waited.

“There will be no handling it,” he said.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “Of course there will. I know it seems utterly hopeless right now. But given time, you’ll see that—”

He sighed with something like impatience, some of his self-possession returning. “I see that it is necessary to enlighten you. Will you come with me?”

She looked at him for a moment. She felt a flicker of hope, even relief. This was a flash of the old Pendergast, taking charge.

He rose from the sofa and led the way to an almost invisible door set into one of the rose walls. Opening it, he started down a long, dim hallway, stopping at last at a paneled door that was standing ajar. Pushing it wide, he stepped in.

Viola followed, glancing around curiously. She had been in Pendergast’s Dakota apartment before, of course, but never in this room. It was a revelation. The floor was covered in antique wood planking, very wide and beautifully varnished. The walls were clad in historic textured wallpaper of an exceedingly subtle design. The ceiling was painted as a blue trompe l’oeil sky in the style of Andrea Mantegna. There was a single display case, containing numerous strange things: a piece of lava, twisted and dark; an exotic lily of some kind, pressed within a sealed case of clear plastic; a stalactite, its end roughly broken off; what appeared to be a piece from a wheelchair; several mangled bullets; an antique case of surgical instruments; various other items. It was an eccentric and even bizarre collection, whose meaning was perhaps clear only to Pendergast himself.

This must be Pendergast’s private study.

But what most caught her eye was the Louis XV desk that occupied the middle of the room. It was made of rosewood, with gilt edging and fantastically complex inlays. Its surface was empty save for three items: a small glass medical container with a rubber top; a hypodermic syringe; and a silver dish that held a small white pyramid of some fine powdery substance.

Pendergast took a seat behind the desk. There was only one other chair in the room: an ornate fauteuil pushed up against the far wall. Viola placed it before the desk and sat down as well.

For a moment, they sat in silence. Then, with a wave of his hand, Pendergast indicated the items on the desk.

“What are those, Aloysius?” Viola asked, fear rising in her heart.

“Phenylcholine para-methylbenzene,” he said, pointing at the white powder. “First synthesized by my great-great-grandfather in 1868. One of the many odd potions he developed. After initial private, ah, trials, it remains to this day a family secret. It is said to confer upon the user a state of complete and utter euphoria, offering total negation of care and sorrow, along with, supposedly, a unique intellectual epiphany, for a period of twenty to thirty minutes—before inducing irreversibly fatal, and painful, renal failure. I have always been curious to experience its initial effects, yet until now never have—for self-evident reasons.”

Speaking about the objects on the desk seemed to rouse a degree of energy in Pendergast. His bruised-looking eyes shifted to the small medication bottle. “Hence, this.” He picked it up and showed it to her, the colorless liquid within shifting slightly. “A mixture of sodium thiopental and potassium chloride, among other compounds. It will induce unconsciousness, then stop the heart—well before the unpleasant side effects of the para-methylbenzene manifest themselves. While still providing enough time to give me a modicum of peace and, perhaps, even diversion before the end.”

Viola looked from Pendergast, to the objects on the desk, then back to Pendergast. As the implications of what he was saying became clear, a feeling of dread and horror swept over her.

“Aloysius, no,” she whispered. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am deadly serious.”

“But…” She fell silent as her throat closed up involuntarily. This can’t be happening, it just can’t be happening… “But this isn’t you. You have to fight this. You can’t take the… the coward’s way out. I won’t let you.”

At this, Pendergast put his hands on the desk, rose slowly to his feet. He walked to the door, held it open for her. After a certain hesitation she rose and followed him as he turned and walked back down the corridor, through the hidden doorway, and into the reception room. It was as if she were in a bad dream: She wanted to stop him, she wanted to sweep those hateful things off the table and dash them to the ground. And yet she could not. So deep was her shock that she felt herself powerless to do anything. It’s a matter of life and death—her own words now returned, torturing her with their irony.

Pendergast said nothing more until they had reached the door leading to the elevator. Then, at last, he spoke again. “I thank you for your concern,” he said, his voice strangely faint and hollow, as if coming to her from a great distance. “And for the time and effort you have taken on my behalf. But now I must ask you to return to Rome.”

“Aloysius—” she began, but he raised a hand for silence.

“Good-bye, Viola. You would do well to forget me.”

Viola realized she was crying. “You can’t do this,” she said, her voice trembling. “You simply can’t. It’s too selfish. Aren’t you forgetting something? There are people, many people, who care about you. Who love you. Don’t—please don’t—do this to them. To us.” She hesitated and added, in an angrier tone: “To me.”

As she spoke, something seemed to flicker in Pendergast’s eyes—a faint spark, like the glow of an ember encased in ice—before vanishing again. It came and went so quickly she could not be certain she’d seen it at all. Maybe it was a trick of the tears that filled her own eyes.

He took her hand, gave it an almost imperceptible pressure. Then, without another word, he opened the front door.

Viola looked at him. “I won’t let you do this.”

He looked at her briefly, even kindly. “Surely you know me well enough to realize that nothing you or anyone can do will change my mind. And now it is time for you to go. It would be highly distressing to both of us if I were forced to have you shown out.”

She continued to look at him, pleadingly, for another minute. But his gaze had gone far away once again. At last she turned away, her entire body shaking. Sixty seconds later, she was once more walking across the interior courtyard, legs like rubber, without the faintest idea of where she was headed, the tears coursing freely down her cheeks.

Pendergast stood in the reception room for a long time. Then—very slowly—he made his way back to his private study; seated himself behind the desk; and—as he had been doing for numberless hours—once again began to contemplate the three items arrayed before him.