The Cabinet of Curiosities (Pendergast #3)(114)
Pendergast turned to Dr. Ostrom. “Will you kindly leave us alone?”
“Someone must remain,” said Ostrom. “And please give the patient some distance, Mr. Pendergast.”
“The last time I visited, I was allowed a private moment with my great-aunt.”
“If you will recall, Mr. Pendergast, the last time you visited—” Ostrom began rather sharply.
Pendergast held up his hand. “So be it.”
“This is a rather late hour to be visiting. How much time do you need?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Very well.” The doctor nodded to the attendants, who took up places on either side of the exit. Ostrom himself stood before the outer door, as far from the woman as possible, crossed his arms, and waited.
Pendergast tried to pull the chair closer, remembered it was bolted to the floor, and leaned forward instead, gazing intently at the old woman.
“How are you, Aunt Cornelia?” he asked.
The woman bent toward him. She whispered hoarsely, “My dear, how lovely to see you. May I offer you a spot of tea with cream and sugar?”
One of the guards snickered, but shut up abruptly when Ostrom cast a sharp glance in his direction.
“No, thank you, Aunt Cornelia.”
“It’s just as well. The service here has declined dreadfully these past few years. It’s so hard to find good help these days. Why haven’t you visited me sooner, my dear? You know that at my age I cannot travel.”
Pendergast leaned nearer.
“Mr. Pendergast, not quite so close, if you please,” Dr. Ostrom murmured.
Pendergast eased back. “I’ve been working, Aunt Cornelia.”
“Work is for the middle classes, my dear.
Pendergasts do not work.” Pendergast lowered his voice. “There’s not much time, I’m afraid, Aunt Cornelia. I wanted to ask you some questions. About your great-uncle Antoine.”
The old lady pursed her lips in a disapproving line. “Great-uncle Antoine? They say he went north, to New York City. Became a Yankee. But that was many years ago. Long before I was born.”
“Tell me what you know about him, Aunt Cornelia.”
“Surely you’ve heard the stories, my boy. It is an unpleasant subject for all of us, you know.”
“I’d like to hear them from you, just the same.”
“Well! He inherited the family tendency to madness. There but for the grace of God…”The old woman sighed pityingly.
“What kind of madness?” Pendergast knew the answer, of course; but he needed to hear it again. There were always details, nuances, that were new.
“Even as a boy he developed certain dreadful obsessions. He was quite a brilliant youth, you know: sarcastic, witty, strange. At seven you couldn’t beat him in a game of chess or backgammon. He excelled at whist, and even suggested some refinements that, I understand, helped develop auction bridge. He was terribly interested in natural history, and started keeping quite a collection of horrid things in his dressing room—insects, snakes, bones, fossils, that sort of thing. He also had inherited his father’s interest in elixirs, restoratives, chemicals. And poisons.”
A strange gleam came into the old lady’s black eyes at the mention of poisons, and both attendants shifted uneasily.
Ostrom cleared his throat. “Mr. Pendergast, how much longer? We don’t want to unduly disturb the patient.”
“Ten minutes.”
“No more.”
The old lady went on.
“After the tragedy with his mother, he grew moody and reclusive. He spent a great deal of time alone, mixing up chemicals. But then, no doubt you know the cause of that fascination.”
Pendergast nodded.
“He developed his own variant of the family crest, like an old apothecary’s sign it was, three gilded balls. He hung it over his door. They say he poisoned the six family dogs in an experiment. And then he began spending a lot of time down… down there. Do you know where I mean?”
“Yes.”
“They say he always felt more comfortable with the dead than with the living, you know. And when he wasn’t there, he was over at St. Charles Cemetery, with that appalling old woman Marie LeClaire. You know, Cajun voodoo and all that.”
Pendergast nodded again.
“He helped her with her potions and charms and frightful little stick dolls and making marks on graves. Then there was that unpleasantness with her tomb, after she died…”
“Unpleasantness?”
The old woman sighed, lowered her head. “The interference with her grave, the violated body and all those dreadful little cuts. Of course you must know that story.”
“I’ve forgotten.” Pendergast’s voice was soft, gentle, probing.
“He believed he was going to bring her back to life. There was the question of whether she had put him up to it before she died, charged him with some kind of dreadful after-death assignment. The missing pieces of flesh were never found, not a one. No, that’s not quite right. I believe they found an ear in the belly of an alligator caught a week later out of the swamp. The earring gave it away, of course.” Her voice trailed off. She turned to one of the attendants, and spoke in a tone of cold command. “My hair needs attention.”
One of the attendants—the one wearing surgical gloves—came over and gingerly patted the woman’s hair back into place, keeping a wary distance.