Fever Dream - Страница 6

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A. X. L. Pendergast stepped out of the rear compartment of the Rolls and looked around, taking in the scene. It was the end of an afternoon in late February. Mellow light played through the Greek columns, casting bars of gold into the covered porch. A thin mist drifted across the overgrown lawn and weed-heavy gardens. Beyond, cicadas droned sleepily in the cypress groves and mangrove swamps. The copper trim on the second-floor balconies was covered in a dense patina of verdigris. Small curls of white paint hung from the pillars, and an atmosphere of dampness, desuetude, and neglect hung over the house and grounds.

A curious gentleman emerged from the Mercedes, short and stocky, wearing a black cutaway with a white carnation in his boutonniere. He looked more like a maitre d' from an Edwardian men's club than a New Orleans lawyer. Despite the limpid sunlight, a tightly rolled umbrella was tucked primly beneath one arm. An alligator-skin briefcase was clutched in one fawn-gloved hand. He placed a bowler hat on his head, gave it a smart tap.

"Mr. Pendergast. Shall we?" The man extended a hand toward an overgrown arboretum, enclosed by a hedge, that stood to the right of the house.

"Of course, Mr. Ogilby."

"Thank you." The man led the way, walking briskly, his wingtips sweeping through the moisture-laden grass. Pendergast followed more slowly, with less sense of purpose. Reaching a gate in the hedge, Mr. Ogilby pushed it open, and together they entered the arboretum. At one point he glanced back with a mischievous smile and said, "Let us keep an eye out for the ghost!"

"That would be a thrill," said Pendergast, in the same jocular vein.

Continuing his brisk pace, the lawyer followed a once-graveled path now overgrown with weeds toward a specimen-size weeping hemlock, beyond which could be seen a rusting iron fence enclosing a small plot of ground. Peeking up from the grass within was a scattering of slate and marble headstones, some vertical, some listing.

The gentleman, his creased black trouser cuffs now soaked, came to a halt before one of the larger tombstones, turned, and then grasped the briefcase in both hands, waiting for his client to catch up. Pendergast took a thoughtful turn around the private graveyard, stroking his pale chin, before ending up next to the dapper little man.

"Well!" the lawyer said, "here we are again!"

Pendergast nodded absently. He knelt, pushed aside the grass from the face of the tombstone, and read aloud:

Hic Iacet Sepultus

Louis de Frontenac Diogenes Pendergast

Apr 2, 1899-Mar 15, 1975

Tempus Edax Rerum

Mr. Ogilby, standing behind Pendergast, propped his briefcase on the top of the tombstone, undid the latches, raised the cover, and slipped out a document. On the cover of the briefcase, balancing it on the headstone, he laid down the document.

"Mr. Pendergast?" He proffered a heavy silver fountain pen.

Pendergast signed the document.

The lawyer took the pen back, signed it himself with a flourish, impressed it with a notary public seal, dated it, and slipped it back in his briefcase. He shut it with a snap, latched it, and locked it.

"Done!" he said. "You are now certified to have visited your grandfather's grave. I shall not have to disinherit you from the Pendergast family trust--at least, not for the present!" He gave a short chuckle.

Pendergast rose, and the little man stuck out a pudgy hand. "Always a pleasure, Mr. Pendergast, and I trust I shall have the favor of your company in another five years?"

"The pleasure is, and shall be, mine," said Pendergast with a dry smile.

"Excellent! I'll be heading back to town, then. Will you follow?"

"I think I'll drop in on Maurice. He'd be crushed if I left without paying him my respects."

"Quite, quite! To think he's been looking after Penumbra unassisted for--what?--twelve years now. You know, Mr. Pendergast--" Here the little man leaned in and lowered his voice, as if to impart a secret. "--you really should fix this place up. You could get a handsome sum for it--a handsome sum! Antebellum plantation houses are all the rage these days. It would make a charming B and B!"

"Thank you, Mr. Ogilby, but I think I shall hold on to it a while longer."

"As you wish, as you wish! Just don't stay out after dark--what with the old family ghost, and all." The little man strode off chuckling to himself, briefcase swinging, and soon vanished, leaving Pendergast alone in the family plot. He heard the Mercedes start up; heard the crunch of gravel fade quickly back into silence.

He strolled about for another few minutes, reading the inscriptions on the stones. Each name resurrected memories stranger and more eccentric than the last. Many of the remains were of family members disinterred from the ruins of the basement crypt of the Pendergast mansion on Dauphine Street after the house burned; other ancestors had expressed wishes to be buried in the old country.

The golden light faded as the sun sank below the trees. Pallid mists began to drift across the lawn from the direction of the mangrove swamp. The air smelled of verdure, moss, and bracken. Pendergast stood in the graveyard for a long time, silent and unmoving, as evening settled over the land. Yellow lights--coming up in the windows of the plantation house--filtered through the trees of the arboretum. The scent of burning oak wood drifted on the air; a smell that brought back irresistible memories of childhood summers. Glancing up, Pendergast could see one of the great brick chimneys of the plantation house issuing a lazy stream of blue smoke. Rousing himself, he left the graveyard, walked through the arboretum, and gained the covered porch, the warped boards protesting under his feet.

He knocked on the door, then stood back to wait. A creaking from inside; the sound of slow footsteps; an elaborate unlatching and unchaining; and the great door swung open to reveal a stooped old man of indeterminate race, dressed in an ancient butler's uniform, his face grave. "Master Aloysius," he said, with fine reserve, not offering his hand immediately.

Pendergast extended his and the old man responded, the ribbed old hand getting a friendly shake. "Maurice. How are you?"

"Middling," the old man replied. "I saw the cars drive up. Glass of sherry in the library, sir?"

"That will be fine, thank you."

Maurice turned and moved slowly through the entry hall toward the library. Pendergast followed. A fire was burning on the hearth, not so much for warmth as to drive out the damp.

With a clinking of bottles, Maurice muddled about the sideboard and poured a measure into a tiny sherry glass, placed it on a silver tray, and carried it over with great ceremony. Pendergast took it, sipped, then glanced around. Nothing had changed for the better. The wallpaper was stained, and balls of dust lay in the corners. He could hear the faint rustle of rats in the walls. The place had gone downhill significantly in the five years since he had last been here.

"I wish you'd let me hire a live-in housekeeper, Maurice. And a cook. It would greatly relieve your burden."

"Nonsense! I can take care of the house myself."

"I don't think it's safe for you to be here alone."

"Not safe? Of course it's safe. I keep the house well locked at night."

"Naturally." Pendergast sipped the sherry, which was an excellent dry oloroso. He wondered, a little idly, how many bottles were left in the extensive cellars. Many more, probably, than he could drink in a lifetime, not to mention the wine, port, and fine old cognac. As the collateral branches of his family had died out, all the various wine cellars--like the wealth--had concentrated around him, the last surviving member of sound mind.

He took another sip and put down the glass. "Maurice, I think I'll take a turn through the house. For old times' sake."

"Yes, sir. I'll be here if you need me."

Pendergast rose and, opening the pocket doors, stepped into the entry hall. For fifteen minutes, he wandered through the rooms of the first floor: the empty kitchen and sitting rooms, the drawing room, the pantry and saloon. The house smelled faintly of his childhood--of furniture polish, aged oak, and, infinitely distant, his mother's perfume--all overlaid with a much more recent odor of damp and mildew. Every object, every knickknack and painting and paperweight and silver ashtray, was in its place, and every little thing carried a thousand memories of people long since under earth, of weddings and christenings and wakes, of cocktail parties and masked balls and children stampeding the halls to the warning exclamations of aunts.

Gone, all gone.

He mounted the stairs to the upper landing. Here, two hallways led to bedrooms in the opposite wings of the house, with the upstairs parlor straight ahead, through an arched doorway protected by a brace of elephant tusks.

He entered the parlor. A zebra rug lay on the floor, and the head of a Cape buffalo graced the mantel above the massive fireplace, looking down at him with furious glass eyes. On the walls were numerous other heads: kudu, bushbuck, stag, deer, hind, wild boar, elk.

He clasped his hands behind his back and slowly paced the room. Seeing this array of heads, these silent sentinels to memory and events long past, his thoughts drifted irresistibly to Helen. He'd had the old nightmare the previous night--as vivid and terrible as ever--and the malevolent effects still lingered like a canker in the pit of his stomach. Perhaps this room might exorcise that particular demon, at least for a while. It would never disappear, of course.

On the far side, against the wall, stood the locked gun case that displayed his collection of hunting rifles. It was a savage, bloody sport--driving a five-hundred-grain slug of metal at two thousand feet per second into a wild animal--and he wondered why it attracted him. But it was Helen who had truly loved hunting, a peculiar interest for a woman--but then Helen had been an unusual woman. A most unusual woman.

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