Fever Dream - Douglas Preston [18]
D’Agosta followed the agent down a long hallway, as dimly lit as the reception room. He glanced curiously left and right: at a library; a room hung with oil paintings floor-to-ceiling; a wine cellar. Pendergast stopped at the only closed door in the hallway, opening it with the same strange movement of his fingers against the wood. The room beyond was barely large enough for the table and two chairs that it contained. A large steel bank-style vault, at least four feet in width, dominated one of the side walls.
Again Pendergast motioned D’Agosta to take a seat, then vanished into the hall. Within moments he returned, a leather Gladstone bag in one hand. He set this on the table, opened it, and drew out a rack of test tubes and several glass-stoppered bottles, which he arrayed carefully on the polished wood. His hand trembled once—only once—and the test tubes clinked quietly in response. After the apparatus was unpacked, Pendergast turned to the vault and with five or six turns of the dial unlocked it. As he swung the heavy door open, D’Agosta could see a grid of metal-fronted containers within, not unlike safe-deposit boxes. Pendergast selected one, withdrew it, and placed it on the table. Then, closing the vault, he took the seat opposite D’Agosta.
For a long moment, he remained motionless. Then came another rumble of thunder, muffled and distant, and it seemed to rouse him. He removed a white silk handkerchief from the Gladstone bag and spread it on the table. Then he slid the steel box closer, lifted its lid, and took from it two items: a tuft of coarse red hair and a gold ring, set with a beautiful star sapphire. He took away the tuft of hair with a set of forceps; the ring he gently removed with his bare hand, in a gesture so unconsciously tender D’Agosta felt himself pierced to the heart.
“These are the items I took from Helen’s corpse,” Pendergast said. The indirect lighting exaggerated the hollows of his drawn face. “I haven’t looked at these in almost twelve years. Her wedding ring… and the tuft of mane she tore from the lion as it devoured her. I found it clutched in her severed left hand.”
D’Agosta winced. “What are you going to do?” he asked.
“I’m going to play a hunch.” Opening the glass-stoppered bottles, Pendergast poured a selection of different powders into the test tubes. Then, using the forceps, he pulled bits of mane from the reddish tuft and dropped a few strands carefully into each tube in turn. Finally, he pulled a small brown bottle from the bag, its top sealed with a rubber eyedropper. He unscrewed the eyedropper from the bottle and let several drops of clear liquid fall into each tube. There was no obvious reaction in the first four test tubes. But in the fifth, the liquid immediately turned a pale green, the color of green tea. Pendergast stared intently at this tube for a moment. Then, using a pipette, he removed a small sample of the liquid and applied it to a small strip of paper he took from the bag.
“A pH of three point seven,” he said, examining the strip of paper. “Precisely the kind of mild acid required to release the lawsone molecules from the leaf.”
“The leaf of what?” D’Agosta asked. “What is it?”
Pendergast glanced from the strip of paper to him and back again. “I could do further tests, but there seems little point. The mane of the lion that killed my wife had been treated with molecules originally from the plant Lawsonia inermis. More commonly known as henna.”
“Henna?” D’Agosta repeated. “You mean the mane was dyed red?”
“Precisely.” And Pendergast looked up again. “Proctor will drive you home. I can spare you three hours to make the necessary arrangements—not a minute more.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Vincent, we’re headed for Africa.”
8
D’AGOSTA STOOD, A LITTLE UNCERTAINLY, IN THE hallway of the tidy two-bedroom he shared with Laura Hayward. It was technically her apartment, but recently he’d finally begun splitting the rent with her. Just getting her to concede to that had taken months. Now he fervently hoped