Fever Dream - Douglas Preston [31]
“Aren’t we going to see your old digs?” D’Agosta asked. “Or at least what’s left of them?”
“Indeed we are.” Pendergast turned. “This is one of the oldest parts of Dauphine Street, right here, the very heart of the French Quarter—the real French Quarter.”
D’Agosta grunted. He noticed the attendant, across the lot, watching them with a certain amount of suspicion.
Pendergast pointed. “That lovely Greek Revival town house, for example, was built by one of the most famous of the early New Orleans architects, James Gallier Senior.”
“Seems they turned it into a Holiday Inn,” said D’Agosta, eyeing the sign in front.
“And that magnificent house, there, is the Gardette–Le Prêtre House. Built for a dentist who came here from Philadelphia when this was a Spanish city. A planter named Le Prêtre bought it in 1839 for over twenty thousand dollars—an immense fortune at the time. The Le Prêtres owned it until the ’70s, but the family sadly declined… It is now, I believe, luxury apartments.”
“Right,” said D’Agosta. The attendant was now walking over, a frown on his face.
“And right across the street,” said Pendergast, “is the old Creole cottage where John James Audubon stayed with his wife, Lucy Bakewell, for a time. It’s now a curious little museum.”
“Excuse me,” the attendant said, his eyes narrowed to frog-like slits. “No loitering allowed.”
“My apologies!” Pendergast reached into his suit and flipped out a fifty-dollar bill. “How careless of me not to offer you a gratuity. I commend you on your vigilance.”
The man broke into a smile. “Well, I wasn’t… but that’s much appreciated, sir.” He took the bill. “You take your time, no rush.” Nodding and smiling, he headed back to his booth.
Pendergast still seemed in no hurry to move on. He loitered about, hands clasped behind his dark suit, gazing this way and that as if he were in a museum gallery, his expression a curious mixture of wistfulness, loss, and something harder to identify. D’Agosta tried to suppress his growing irritation. “Are we going to find your old house now?” he finally asked.
Pendergast turned to him and murmured, “But we have, my dear Vincent.”
“Where?”
“Right here. This was Rochenoire.”
D’Agosta swallowed and looked about the asphalt parking lot with a fresh eye. A stray breeze kicked up a piece of greasy trash, whirling it around and around. Somewhere, a cat howled.
“After the house was burned,” said Pendergast, “the underground crypts were moved, the basement filled in, and the remains bulldozed. It was a vacant lot for years, until I leased it to the company that runs this parking lot.”
“You still own this land?”
“The Pendergasts never sell real estate.”
“Oh.”
Pendergast turned. “Rochenoire was set well back from the street, formal gardens in front, originally a monastic retreat, a big stone structure with oriel windows, battlements, and a widow’s walk. Gothic Revival, rather unusual for the street. My room was in the corner, on the second floor, up there.” He pointed into space. “It looked over the Audubon cottage to the river, and the other window looked toward the Le Prêtre house. Ah, the Le Prêtres… I used to watch them for hours, the people going back and forth in the lit windows, listening to the histrionics.”
“And you met Helen at the Audubon museum across the street?” D’Agosta hoped to steer the conversation back to the task at hand.
Pendergast nodded. “Some years ago I loaned them our double elephant folio for an exhibition, and I was invited to the opening. They were always keen to get their hands on our family copy, which my great-great-grandfather subscribed to directly from Audubon.” Pendergast paused, his face spectral in the stark light of the parking lot. “When I entered the little museum, I immediately saw a young woman across the room, staring at me.”
“Love at first sight?” D’Agosta asked.
The ghostly half smile returned. “It was as if the world suddenly vanished, no one else existed. She was utterly striking. Dressed in white. Her eyes were so blue they verged on indigo, flecked