Bloodless (Aloysius Pendergast #20)(58)

“Someone might come along acute enough to beat me at my own game. Maybe ten or twenty years ago, I would have found such parrying amusing—even challenging. But I’m tired now…old and tired.” Her gaze returned to Constance. Leaning forward, she picked up her glass, drained it, and set it back down on the tea table. “So let’s finish the game.”

There was an edge in her voice that put Constance on guard. The elderly woman had proven a surprise: far sharper than she’d expected.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Frost went on. “You’re a perspicacious creature. You’ll make a statement about me that you think might be true. If it’s true, I will say as much and you can make another statement. But once you make a statement that’s wrong, the roles are reversed…and I get to make statements about you on the same terms. Agreed?”

Constance hesitated. She had the vague feeling she’d just been outmaneuvered in a chess game. But after a moment, she nodded.

The old woman sat back. “Proceed.”

“Very well.” Constance considered. “You were very fond of Patrick Ellerby.”

Frost tut-tutted, as if this were hardly deserving of an opening gambit. “True.”

“Yet he was disobedient. He disappointed you, even betrayed you.”

A shadow crossed the proprietress’s face, but she nodded. “True.”

Constance paused. She did not want to try Frost’s patience with trivial observations, but blind guessing was even more dangerous.

“You have, at least once in your life, reinvented yourself.”

Now it was Frost’s turn to pause. “True.”

“In some respects, you have an outlaw personality. The normal rules don’t apply to you.”

A hesitation and she colored slightly. “True.”

“You have a deep knowledge of science: particularly mathematics, programming, physics.”

“True.”

Constance continued probing, using her own past as a guide. “You had a difficult childhood.”

“False!” Frost laughed in triumph. “My childhood was quiet and unremarkable, thank you very much.”

“Where did you grow up?”

“None of that!” Miss Frost resettled herself on the chaise longue. “It’s my turn.”

Again, something in the way this was said made Constance wary.

“I’ll give you a handicap,” Frost said. “I’ll make only a single observation about you. If I’m wrong, you win. But if I’m right…then you have to explain.”

Constance waited, uneasy.

“Ready?”

She nodded.

“You’re older than you look,” Miss Frost said. “And not just measured in weeks, or months, or years…but much, much older.”

Constance said nothing.

“Don’t care to answer?” the old lady prodded. “Or perhaps you’re wondering how I know. Because I do know; there’s no guessing involved. At first, I thought it was some caprice of my imagination. After all, how could your knowledge be as deep as, or deeper than, my own, which I’ve spent eight decades acquiring? So I began salting our conversation with little traps. ‘Springes to catch woodcocks,’ as Shakespeare put it.”

“What traps were those?” Constance asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

“You not only knew the exact year absinthe was declared illegal, but you understood what I meant by ‘smothering a parrot’—an expression that hasn’t been used in a hundred years. You use archaic words. The very structure of your sentences is nineteenth-century, and you knew what I meant by a ‘snickersnee.’ You recognized who crafted my antiques, who painted my paintings—even when you didn’t voice a name, I could see it in your expression. You can run circles around me in Latin and ancient Greek.” The old lady leaned in slightly. “No one can absorb so much knowledge in twenty-odd years. But what really betrayed you, my dear, were your eyes.”

“What about them?”

“They are not the eyes of a young woman. Your eyes could be those of an old woman—they could be mine—except they reflect even deeper experience. They are the eyes of…a sphinx.”

Constance had no answer.

“So,” Miss Frost went on, “I’m fascinated. Captivated. Entranced. I want to know the mechanism. I want to know how you did it.”

Quite abruptly, Constance stood up.

“Are you forfeiting, Miss Greene?” she asked. “There’s still so much we can learn—from each other.”

Constance remained motionless. Then, slowly, she sat down again.

“You owe me an answer, my dear,” Frost said.

“The answer is…” Constance stopped for a moment. “True.”

The old woman’s eyes went wide. “Really!”

Constance volunteered nothing else.

“Go on. As I said, I want to know the mechanism.” When silence was the only reply, she said: “It’s only fair—”

“My life span was unnaturally extended by a scientific experiment—one that took place over a century ago.”

This was said in a completely expressionless voice. Frost’s eyes went wider still. She looked like a medium who’d just discovered that her fake crystal ball did, in fact, have magical properties. “Oh, my good Lord.” Then, summoning her wits again, she asked: “And were you grateful for this gift?”