Page 48 of Angel of Vengeance
A mile down the road, he halted his horse and dismounted. He lit a small lantern, then crouched to examine the frozen surface of the road. He noted the ground had become rutted during the freeze-thaw cycle of winter; the relative warmth of the day softened the muddy surface of the road, which would then freeze again at night. The previous Sunday, however, there had been an overcast sky; in the city it had not gone below freezing, and he surmised that had been the case out here as well. Leng’s cart would have left tracks. Unfortunately, he could see that too many wagons and carriages had passed in the intervening time, erasing any useful information.
Pendergast remounted Napoleon, loosened the reins to let the horse have his head, and closed his eyes once again. As the horse continued at a rocking pace, Pendergast used a series of mental exercises to clear his mind of stray thoughts, letting it become like a crystal pool of water. Gradually, the image of Binky in the hay wagon formed in his head, like a reflection on the water. The girl lay with her feet shackled, hands bound before her, a gag around her mouth. Blindfolded, as well: Leng would take no chances with a resourceful, energetic guttersnipe who’d learned the arts of survival in the worst slum of New York City. In the reflected image of his mind, it seemed to Pendergast that she was also tied or otherwise bound to the wagon itself, in order to prevent her from wriggling up and over the sideboards.
But as he observed the scene, he grew convinced that Leng, careful as he was, had made a mistake. Binky’s hands were bound in front… but her fingers were free.
Now Pendergast opened his eyes and halted the horse. He dismounted, relit the lantern, and—leading the animal by the reins—walked slowly along the road, head down, lantern held low to illuminate the ground. The road dipped and rose, and the night deepened as he continued on.
He had gone a quarter of a mile when he found what he was looking for: a piece of damp straw folded into a loose, crude knot.
Remounting Napoleon, he continued on. The tranquil crystal pool vanished from his mind, leaving two images behind. One was of Binky, cleverly tying pieces of straw together with her nimble fingers and dropping them over the side to serve as a sort of breadcrumb trail. But that image dissolved into another, very different, one: Leng, seated at the reins, a handful of straw in his lap—now and then tossing out precisely the same thing.
42
THE NEXT FIFTEEN MINUTES, Constance felt sure, would be the most important—and dangerous—of her time in Leng’s mansion.
With infinite care, she had learned the rhythms of the house. Leng’s outstanding characteristic, she had noted, was a strict adherence to dining routine. When he was in, usually three or four nights a week, he had dinner punctually, alone, and ate a limited menu. At eight o’clock promptly he was served le premier plat, usually smoked buffalo tongue, a pâté of snipe in jelly, or jugged hare. This was followed, invariably, by terrapin soup at eight fifteen. Then at eight forty-five came le plat principal, usually beef or lobster, with a glass of claret or white burgundy, which occupied the doctor for half an hour, until he was served pastries and coffee.
Because Leng was fussy to the point of metathesiophobia when it came to food punctuality, the preparation of dinner was always a fraught affair. The doctor would let it be known, before leaving in the morning, whether he’d be in for dinner, and the necessary arrangements would begin around noon, with marketing and the assembling of ingredients. The cook, with his sous chef and two assistants, would begin work at around five. The kitchen and pantry were on the first floor, their rear wall partially below ground due to the slope of the land, while Leng’s private dining room was almost directly above it, on the second floor. A dumbwaiter served both to bring up the various dishes—then served by the butler—and to send down dirty plates. The preparations reached a crescendo around quarter to eight and slacked off at eight thirty, when Leng briefly left the dining room to sharpen his appetite for the main course with a pipe of tobacco. The dinner reached its zenith between eight forty-five and ten. That was when Leng retired to his private salon and the last plates were sent down to the scullery maid.
This unchanging concerto de cuisine, so very surgical in its demanding nature, was a boon to Constance, especially given Leng’s otherwise unpredictable schedule. From her hidden chambers in the sub-basement—two floors below the kitchen, three floors below the dining room—she choreographed her plan of action. She had timed and rehearsed her plan and tried a dry run to ensure it could work. Now it was time for the main event.
Dressed in her black catsuit, she ascended from her hidden quarters to the basement, and from there to the first floor at five minutes after eight, taking up position behind a panel in the passage between the kitchen and the scullery. She had contrived to keep her hands and arms free by employing a crossbody strap, slung over her neck like a leather scarf and containing a pouch on either side. One held the poison she had managed to extract and concentrate with infinite care, along with a small glass beaker of hydrofluoric acid that she intended to fling at any attacker, should she be discovered. The other pouch contained a “top break” Enfield Mk I service revolver with a full complement of .476 cartridges. This was not for defensive purposes—it was to be used on herself as a last resort.
As the minutes stretched on, she remained still as death. Then, from her vantage point behind the panel, she silently withdrew her pocket watch: eight thirty precisely. And, just as precisely, the dumbwaiter descended with a whir; the scullery maid opened its door, removed the dirty plates, and trotted off down the corridor. A moment later, the sous chef returned with the dinner plates, arranged them in the dumbwaiter, and sent them up. The butler waiting above, Constance knew, was ready to deliver the main course to the table—and then discreetly withdraw.
This was Constance’s window of opportunity. She waited one hundred seconds exactly, then slipped across the corridor, freed the mechanism holding the dumbwaiter at the floor above, and manually wheeled it downward. Then she opened it. As expected, it was empty: the dinner had been taken to the table.
She clambered into the cramped space and closed the door behind her. Then she opened the trap in the roof and used the rope-and-pulley mechanism to lift herself up the fifteen feet from the main floor to the dining room. The dumbwaiter was of too primitive a design to have an interlock, so she bolted it in place manually, then paused to listen. The dining room beyond was silent. Once again, she checked her pocket watch: 8:35.
A faint smell of tobacco permeated the interior of the dumbwaiter.
Now Constance opened the door on the back side. Leng’s dining room came into view. The dinner was set, china and sterling glittering, butler gone, and the food in place, waiting for Leng’s return in a minute or two—or even less.
Constance quickly stepped out of the dumbwaiter and up to Leng’s chair, glancing over the meal: filet de bœuf et sa sauce Bordelaise.
That would do nicely.
Keeping alert for the sound of footsteps in the hallway outside, she plucked a wad of cotton wool from the pouch and unwrapped it, revealing a tiny ampoule with a cork stopper. Without hesitation, she opened it and poured the clear liquid contents into the gravy boat holding the rich sauce. She mixed the sauce briefly with an index finger. Unconsciously, she raised the finger to her tongue—then stopped herself with a mordant smile at this almost fatal mistake. Instead, she dipped it into a large finger bowl and rinsed it off, the copper container masking any faint brownish hue that resulted. After a final glance around, she climbed back into the dumbwaiter, lowered it to the first floor, and put the ceiling trap back into place. Once again she looked at her pocket watch: 8:41.
The corridor outside was silent. Constance opened the dumbwaiter, crawled out, closed its door, raised it back to its proper level, and returned to her hidden observation post on the far side of the hallway.
Leng returned to the dining room, and she could hear the faint sounds of his meal for the next half hour. Finally, the dirty plates were loaded on the dumbwaiter and sent down. Looking out from her peephole, Constance saw that the filet had been wholly consumed—and that the gravy boat with the Bordelaise was at least half-empty.
“The condemned man ate a hearty supper,” she murmured to herself as she ducked out of the nook, then through the door leading down to the basement—and beneath.
43
GEORGE HARRISON—WHO, DESPITE HIS name, had no musical gifts whatsoever—closed the servants’ entrance to the Rockefeller “cottage,” helped Joe remove his coat, and then took off his own. He hung them on pegs while Joe ran ahead into the kitchen. Every day, Mrs. Cookson had raisin porridge waiting on the stove for Joe when he got home from school. This morning, however, they’d made the journey to the schoolhouse only to learn that one of the teachers was ill, and that class would not resume until tomorrow—Saturday. Which meant, Mrs. Cookson said, that Joe would get his porridge early… once he’d completed his studies.
Joe was fitting in well at the two-room schoolhouse. On the first day, his accent had attracted the attention of an older bully, but after Joe had used his fists to place the fellow into a recumbent position, the other students quickly came to respect him. The teacher had initially planned on a remedial syllabus for the boy but, on discovering his reading and writing skills were unexpectedly strong, found a place for him in the upper schoolroom. It was, D’Agosta supposed, one of the benefits of a tiny school, where such labels as fifth or sixth grade had little meaning. He was pleased by the way Joe, even though still keeping much to himself, had begun to make progress in his studies and was getting along with his classmates. The only thing the least unusual was the six-day school week: because fathers needed extra hands to help work during the season, there were sixteen weeks off during summer instead of the usual twelve.
D’Agosta moved through the warm kitchen and proceeded on to the back parlor, where a fire was burning and a copy of the Portland newspaper, a week old, was waiting. He picked it up and began leafing through it. He found these 1880s papers pretty thin: six or eight columns of print set off by ornamented headlines. The most interesting stories were buried inside, lurid descriptions of criminal goings-on, reports of strange marvels from “the uttermost corners of the Orient,” or the like. The stories on the front page were more or less incomprehensible to someone who had no background in the politics or controversies of the day.
He put the paper aside and sighed. Life on the island, he had to admit, was dull. He dutifully made uneventful, daily rounds of the common rooms of the freezing mansion. Mrs. Cookson was friendly and eager to minister to their needs, but her conversation was limited and her worldview cramped. He missed his wife, Laura, terribly and felt broken up that they had parted in anger. She had to be freaked out by his sudden disappearance.
Mr. Cookson turned out to be a surprise. He had initially remained taciturn and indisposed to small talk, but that changed when D’Agosta offered to help paint the ten small bedrooms in the servants’ wing. The man made a feeble attempt to rebuff the offer, but it was clear he was no fan of standing on ladders and slopping paint on ceilings. As they worked together, D’Agosta began to like the wizened, mustachioed man, who only spoke when he had something worthwhile to say, and often with a wit so dry it took a moment to realize that it was wit at all.
The island seemed safe enough. Strangers were rare and immediately noted. A few artists and writers arrived from time to time to spend a week or two in the offseason, wandering around the shores and cliffs. D’Agosta himself had decided the less time he spent out of the mansion, the better: he’d been accepted as one of Mr. Rockefeller’s “people” and was happy to leave it at that. His outside excursions mostly consisted of walking Joe to and from school, and he used the opportunity to look for anything out of place. Nothing raised his suspicions. And Joe, thank God, knew how to keep his mouth shut.