Brimstone (Pendergast #5)(14)
“I would be delighted.” And Constance curtsied again.
Wren nodded, turned to leave.
“Mr. Wren?” Constance called after him.
Wren turned, beetled eyebrows raised in query.
She looked back at him. “Thank you again. For everything.”
Pendergast quietly shut the doors to the library and accompanied Wren back down the echoing galleries.
“You read her the newspapers?” Wren asked.
“Just selected articles, of course. It seemed the easiest form of—how best to put it?—social decompression. We’re now up to the 1960s.”
“And her nocturnal, ah, rambles?”
“Now that she’s under my care, there’s no need for foraging. And I’ve decided on the site of her recuperation: my great-aunt’s estate on the Hudson. It’s deserted these days. It should be a good reintroduction to sunlight, if handled gently enough.”
“Sunlight.” Wren repeated the word slowly, as if tasting it. “It still seems impossible she was there all that time, after what happened, in those tunnels down by the river access. I keep wondering why she revealed herself to me.”
“Perhaps she’d grown to trust you. She’d watched you at work long enough, over the summer. You clearly loved the collections, which are precious to her as well. Or perhaps she had just reached the point where human contact was necessary, no matter what the risk.”
Wren shook his head. “Are you sure, really sure, she’s only nineteen years old?”
“That question is more difficult than it sounds. Physically, her body is that of a nineteen-year-old.”
They had reached the front door, and Wren waited for Pendergast to unlock it. “Thank you, Wren,” the FBI agent said, opening the door. Night air rushed in, carrying with it the faint sounds of traffic.
Wren stepped through the door, paused, turned back. “Have you decided what you’re going to do about her?”
For a moment, Pendergast did not reply. Then he nodded silently.
{ 8 }
The Renaissance Salon of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was one of the museum’s most remarkable spaces. Taken piece by piece, stone by stone, from the ancient Palazzo Dati of Florence and reassembled in Manhattan, it re-created in perfect detail a late Renaissance salone. It was the most imposing and austere of all the grand galleries in the museum, and for this reason, it was chosen for the memorial service of Jeremy Grove.
D’Agosta felt like an idiot in his cop’s uniform, with its Southampton P.D. patch in gold and blue and its lowly sergeant’s stripes. People turned toward him quickly, stared as if he was some kind of freak, and then just as quickly dismissed him as hired help and turned away.
As he followed Pendergast into the hall, D’Agosta was surprised to see a long table groaning with food, and another sporting enough bottles of wine and liquor to lay low a herd of rhinos. Some memorial service. More like an Irish wake. D’Agosta had been to a few of those during his NYPD days and felt lucky to have survived them. They’d obviously set this whole thing up with remarkable speed—Grove had been dead only two days.
The room was crowded. There were no chairs: people were meant to mingle, not sit reverentially. Several television crews had set up their gear near a carpet-covered stage, which was bare save for a small podium. A harpsichord stood in a far corner of the salon, but it was barely audible over the noise of the crowd. If there was anybody shedding tears over Grove, they were hiding it pretty well.
Pendergast leaned over. “Vincent, if you are interested in any comestibles, now is the time to act. With a crowd like this, they won’t last long.”
“Comestibles? You mean that food on the table? No, thanks.” His dalliance with the literary world had taught him that events like these served things like fish eggs and cheese that smelled so bad it encouraged you to check the bottom of your shoes.
“Then shall we circulate?” Pendergast began moving sylphlike through the crowd. Now a lone man mounted the stage: impeccably dressed, tall, hair carefully groomed back, face glistening with a professional makeup job. The crowd hushed even before he reached the microphone.
Pendergast took D’Agosta’s elbow. “Sir Gervase de Vache, director of the museum.”
The man plucked the microphone from the podium, his elegant figure straight and dignified.
“I welcome you all,” he said, apparently feeling it unnecessary to introduce himself. “We are here to memorialize our friend and colleague Jeremy Grove—but as he would have wanted it: with food, drink, music, and good cheer, not long faces and lugubrious speeches.” He spoke with a trace of a French accent.
Although Pendergast had stopped the moment the director gained the stage, D’Agosta noticed that the FBI agent was still scouring the room with his restless eyes.
“I first met Jeremy Grove some twenty years ago, when he reviewed our Monet exhibition for Downtown. It was—how shall I say it?—a classic Grove review.”
There was a ripple of knowing laughter.
“Jeremy Grove was, above all else, a man who told the truth as he saw it, unflinchingly and with style. His rapier wit and irreverent sallies enlivened many a dinner party . . .”
D’Agosta tuned out. Pendergast was still ceaselessly scanning the room, and now he began moving again, slowly, like a shark that has just scented blood in the water. D’Agosta followed. He liked to watch Pendergast in action. There, at the liquor table, pouring himself a stiff drink, was a striking young man dressed entirely in black, with a neat goatee. He had exceptionally large, deep, liquid eyes, and fingers that were even more spidery than Pendergast’s.