Fever Dream - Douglas Preston [86]
“It’s amazing. But… are you sure it’s even by Audubon?”
Pendergast pointed to one corner, where D’Agosta could just see a dim signature. Then he pointed silently to another, dark corner of the painted room—where a mouse was crouching, as if waiting. “The signature is genuine, but more to the point, nobody but Audubon could have painted that mouse. And I’m certain it was painted from life—at the sanatorium. It’s too beautifully observed to be anything but real.”
D’Agosta nodded slowly. “I thought for sure it was going to be a Carolina Parrot. What does a naked woman have to do with anything?”
Pendergast merely opened his white hands in a gesture of mystery, and D’Agosta could see the frustration in his eyes. Turning away from the easel, the agent said, “Glance over these, Vincent, if you please.” A refectory table nearby was spread with a variety of prints, lithographs, and watercolors. On the left side were arranged various sketches of animals, birds, insects, still lifes, quick portraits of people. Lying on top was a watercolor of a mouse.
A gap separated the drawings laid out on the right side. They were a different matter entirely. These consisted almost entirely of birds, so life-like and detailed they seemed ready to strut off the paper, but there were also some mammals and woodland scenes.
“Do you note a difference?”
“Sure. The stuff on the left sucks. On the right—well, it’s just beautiful.”
“I took these from my great-great-grandfather’s portfolios,” Pendergast said. “These”—he gestured to the rude sketches on the left—“were given to my ancestor by Audubon when he was staying at the Dauphine Street cottage in 1821, just before he got sick. That is how Audubon painted before he entered the Meuse St. Claire sanatorium.” He turned to the work that lay to the right. “And this is how he painted later in life. After he left the sanatorium. Do you see the conundrum?”
D’Agosta was still stunned by the image within the black frame. “He improved,” he said. “That’s what artists do. Why’s that a conundrum?”
Pendergast shook his head. “Improved? No, Vincent, this is a transformation. Nobody improves that much. These early sketches are poor. They are workman-like, literal, awkward. There is nothing there, Vincent, nothing to indicate the slightest spark of artistic talent.”
D’Agosta had to agree. “What happened?”
Pendergast raked the artwork with his pale eyes, then slowly walked back to an armchair he’d placed before the easel and sat down before the Black Frame. “This woman was clearly a patient at the sanatorium. Perhaps Dr. Torgensson grew enamored of her. Perhaps they had a relationship of some kind. That would explain why he clung to the painting so anxiously, even when sunk into deepest poverty. But that still doesn’t explain why Helen would be so desperately interested in it.”
D’Agosta glanced back at the woman, reclining—in an attitude almost of resignation—on the plain infirmary bed. “Do you suppose she might have been an ancestor of Helen’s?” he asked. “An Esterhazy?”
“I thought of that,” Pendergast replied. “But then, why her obsessive search?”
“Her family left Maine under a cloud,” D’Agosta said. “Maybe there was some blemish in their family history this painting could help clear up.”
“Yes, but what?” Pendergast gestured at the figure. “I would think such a controversial image would tarnish, rather than polish, the family name. At least we can now speculate why the subject of the painting was never mentioned in print—it is so very disturbing and provocative.”
There was a brief silence.
“Why would Blast have wanted it so badly?” D’Agosta wondered aloud. “I mean, it’s just a painting. Why search for so many years?”
“That, at any rate, is easily answered. He was an Audubon, he considered it his