Fever Dream (29 page)

“I keep telling you, the guy’s not all there.”

“I admit, he has his ways. This was about three in the morning so I thought, the hell with it, and crashed. Next thing I knew,
it was morning. He’s still in there, working away.”

Hayward felt herself doing a slow burn. “Typical Pendergast. Vinnie, he’s not your pal.”

She heard D’Agosta sigh. “I’ve been reminding myself that it’s his wife’s death we’re investigating here, that this all must
be a huge shock to him… And he is my friend, even if he shows it in weird ways.” He paused. “Anything new on Constance Greene?”

“She’s under lock and key in the Bellevue Hospital prison ward. I interviewed her. She still maintains she threw her baby
overboard.”

“Did she say why?”

“Yes. She said it was evil. Just like its father.”

“Jesus. I knew she was crazy, but not that crazy.”

“How did Pendergast take the news?”

“Hard to tell—like everything with Pendergast. On the surface, it barely seemed to affect him.”

There was a brief silence. Hayward wondered if she should try to pressure him to come home, but she realized she didn’t want
to add to his burdens.

“There’s something else,” D’Agosta said.

“What’s that?”

“Remember the guy I told you about—Blackletter? Helen Pendergast’s old boss at Doctors With Wings?”

“What about him?”

“He was murdered in his house the night before last. Two 12-gauge shells, point blank, blew his guts right through him.”

“Good Lord.”

“And that’s not all. John Blast, the slimy guy we talked to in Sarasota? The other one interested in the Black Frame? I’d
assumed he was the one tailing us. But I just heard it on the news—he was shot, too, just yesterday, not long after we snagged
the painting. And guess what: once again, two 12-gauge rounds.”

“Any idea what’s going on?”

“When I heard about Blackletter being shot, I figured Blast was behind it. But now Blast’s dead, too.”

“You can thank Pendergast for that. Where he goes, trouble follows.”

“Hold on a sec.” There was a silence of perhaps twenty seconds before D’Agosta’s voice returned. “That’s Pendergast. He just
knocked on my door. He says the painting is clean, and he wants my opinion. I love you, Laura. I’ll call tonight.”

And he was gone.

Penumbra Plantation

W
HEN D’AGOSTA OPENED THE DOOR, PENDERGAST
was standing outside in the plushly carpeted corridor, hands behind his back. He was still dressed in the plaid work
shirt and denim trousers of their foray to Port Allen.

“I’m very sorry, Vincent,” he said. “Please forgive what must seem to you like the very height of rudeness and inconsideration
on my part.”

D’Agosta did not reply.

“Perhaps things will become clearer when you see the painting. If you don’t mind—?” And he gestured toward the stairway.

D’Agosta stepped out and followed the agent down the hall toward the stairs. “Blast is dead,” he said. “Shot with the same
sort of weapon that killed Blackletter.”

Pendergast paused in midstep. “Shot, you say?” Then he resumed walking—a little more slowly.

The library door stood open, yellow light from within spilling out into the front hall. Silently, Pendergast led the way down
the stairs and through the arched doorway. The painting stood in the center of the room, on an easel. It was covered with
a heavy velvet shroud.

“Stand over there, in front of the painting,” said Pendergast. “I need your candid reaction.”

D’Agosta stood directly before it.

Pendergast stepped to one side, took hold of the shroud, and lifted it from the painting.

D’Agosta stared, flabbergasted. The painting was not of a Carolina Parakeet, or even of a bird or nature subject. Instead,
it depicted a middle-aged woman, nude, gaunt, lying on a hospital bed. A shaft of cool light slanted in from a tiny window
high up in the wall behind her. Her legs were crossed at the ankles, and her hands were folded over her breasts, almost in
the attitude of a corpse. The outlines of her ribs protruded through skin the color of parchment, and she was clearly ill
and, perhaps, not entirely sane. And yet there was something repugnantly inviting about her. A small deal table holding a
water pitcher and some dressings sat beside the bed. Her black hair spread across a pillow of coarse linen. The painted plaster
walls; the slack, dry flesh; the weave of the bed linens; even the motes in the dusty air were meticulously observed, rendered
with pitiless clarity and confidence—spare, stark, and elegiac. Although D’Agosta was no expert, the painting struck him with
an enormous visceral impact.

“Vincent?” Pendergast asked him quietly.

D’Agosta reached out, let the fingertips of one hand slide along the painting’s black frame. “I don’t know what to think,”
he said.

“Indeed.” Pendergast hesitated. “When I began to clean the painting,
that
is the first thing that came to light.” And he pointed at the woman’s eyes, staring out of the plane of the painting toward
the viewer. “After seeing that, I realized all our assumptions were wrong. I needed time, alone, to clean the rest of it.
I didn’t want you to see it exposed bit by bit: I wanted you to see the entire painting, all at once. I needed a fresh, immediate
opinion. That is why I excluded you so abruptly. Once again, my apologies.”

“It’s amazing. But… are you sure it’s even by Audubon?”

Pendergast pointed to one corner, where D’Agosta could just see a dim signature. Then he pointed silently to another, dark
corner of the painted room—where a mouse was crouching, as if waiting. “The signature is genuine, but more to the point, nobody
but Audubon could have painted that mouse. And I’m certain it was painted from life—at the sanatorium. It’s too beautifully
observed to be anything but real.”

D’Agosta nodded slowly. “I thought for sure it was going to be
a Carolina Parrot. What does a naked woman have to do with
anything?”

Pendergast merely opened his white hands in a gesture of mystery, and D’Agosta could see the frustration in his eyes. Turning
away from the easel, the agent said, “Glance over these, Vincent, if you please.” A refectory table nearby was spread with
a variety of prints, lithographs, and watercolors. On the left side were arranged various sketches of animals, birds, insects,
still lifes, quick portraits of people. Lying on top was a watercolor of a mouse.

A gap separated the drawings laid out on the right side. They were a different matter entirely. These consisted almost entirely
of birds, so life-like and detailed they seemed ready to strut off the paper, but there were also some mammals and woodland
scenes.

“Do you note a difference?”

“Sure. The stuff on the left sucks. On the right—well, it’s just beautiful.”

“I took these from my great-great-grandfather’s portfolios,” Pendergast said. “These”—he gestured to the rude sketches on
the left—“were given to my ancestor by Audubon when he was staying at the Dauphine Street cottage in 1821, just before he
got sick. That is how Audubon painted before he entered the Meuse St. Claire sanatorium.” He turned to the work that lay to
the right. “And
this
is how he painted later in life. After he left the sanatorium. Do you see the conundrum?”

D’Agosta was still stunned by the image within the black frame. “He improved,” he said. “That’s what artists do. Why’s that
a conundrum?”

Pendergast shook his head. “Improved? No, Vincent, this is a
transformation
. Nobody improves that much. These early sketches are poor. They are workman-like, literal, awkward. There is nothing there,
Vincent,
nothing
to indicate the slightest spark of artistic talent.”

D’Agosta had to agree. “What happened?”

Pendergast raked the artwork with his pale eyes, then slowly walked back to an armchair he’d placed before the easel and sat
down before the Black Frame. “This woman was clearly a patient at the sanatorium. Perhaps Dr. Torgensson grew enamored of
her. Perhaps they had a relationship of some kind. That would explain why
he clung to the painting so anxiously, even when
sunk into deepest poverty. But that
still
doesn’t explain why Helen would be so desperately interested in it.”

D’Agosta glanced back at the woman, reclining—in an attitude almost of resignation—on the plain infirmary bed. “Do you suppose
she might have been an ancestor of Helen’s?” he asked. “An Esterhazy?”

“I thought of that,” Pendergast replied. “But then, why her obsessive search?”

“Her family left Maine under a cloud,” D’Agosta said. “Maybe there was some blemish in their family history this painting
could help clear up.”

“Yes, but what?” Pendergast gestured at the figure. “I would think such a controversial image would tarnish, rather than polish,
the family name. At least we can now speculate why the subject of the painting was never mentioned in print—it is so very
disturbing and provocative.”

There was a brief silence.

“Why would Blast have wanted it so badly?” D’Agosta wondered aloud. “I mean, it’s just a painting. Why search for so many
years?”

“That, at any rate, is easily answered. He was an Audubon, he considered it his birthright. For him it became an idée fixe—in
time, the chase became its own reward. I expect he would have been as astonished as we are at the subject.” Pendergast tented
his fingers, pressed them against his forehead.

Still, D’Agosta stared at the painting. There was something, a thought that wouldn’t quite rise into consciousness. The painting
was trying to tell him something. He stared at it.

Then, all of a sudden, he realized what it was.

“This painting,” he said. “Look at it. It’s like those watercolors on the table. The ones he did later in life.”

Pendergast did not look up. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”

“You said it yourself. The mouse in the painting—it’s clearly an Audubon mouse.”

“Yes, very similar to the ones he painted in
Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America
.”

“Okay. Now look at that mouse on that pile of early drawings.”

Slowly, Pendergast raised his head. He looked at the painting
and then the drawings. He glanced toward D’Agosta. “Your point,
Vincent?”

D’Agosta gestured toward the refectory table. “That early mouse. I’d never have thought Audubon drew it. Same for all that
early stuff, those still lifes and sketches. I’d
never
have thought those were by Audubon.”

“That’s precisely what I said earlier. Therein lies the conundrum.”

“But I’m not so sure it’s a problem.”

Pendergast looked at him, curiosity kindling in his eyes. “Go on.”

“Well, we have those early, mediocre sketches. And then we have this woman. What happened in between?”

The glimmer in Pendergast’s eyes grew brighter. “The
illness
happened.”

D’Agosta nodded. “Right. The illness changed him. What other answer is there?”

“Brilliant, my dear Vincent!” Pendergast smacked the arms of his chair and leapt to his feet, pacing about the room. “The
brush with death, the sudden encounter with his own mortality, somehow changed him. It filled him with creative energy, it
was the transformative moment of his artistic career.”

“We’d always assumed Helen was interested in the
subject
of the painting,” D’Agosta said.

“Precisely. But remember what Blast said? Helen didn’t want to own the painting. She only wanted to
study
it. She wanted to confirm
when Audubon’s artistic transformation took place
.” Pendergast fell silent and his pacing slowed and finally halted. He seemed stuck in a kind of stasis, his eyes turned within.

“Well,” said D’Agosta. “Mystery solved.”

The silvery eyes turned on him. “No.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why would Helen hide all this from me?”

D’Agosta shrugged. “Maybe she was embarrassed by the way you met and the little white lie she told about it.”

“One little white lie? I don’t believe that. She kept this hidden for a far more significant reason than that.” Pendergast
sank back into the plush chair and stared at the painting again. “Cover it up.”

D’Agosta draped the cloth over it. He was beginning to get worried. Pendergast did not look completely sane himself.

Pendergast’s eyes closed. The silence in the library grew, along with the ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner. D’Agosta
took a seat himself; sometimes it was best to let Pendergast be Pendergast.

The eyes slowly opened.

“We’ve been looking at this problem in entirely the wrong way from the very beginning.”

“And how is that?”

“We’ve assumed Helen was interested in Audubon, the artist.”

“Well? What else?”

“She was interested in Audubon, the
patient
.”

“Patient?”

A slow nod. “That was Helen’s passion. Medical research.”

“Then why search for the painting?”

“Because he painted it right after his recovery. She wanted to confirm a theory she had.”