Fever Dream - Douglas Preston [98]
And so, when Pendergast sent his car round to pick her up after lunch, she’d checked out of the hotel and accepted his invitation to stay at Penumbra. She hadn’t agreed to help, but she’d decided to hear the details. Some of it she knew already from Vinnie’s phone calls. It had sounded like a typical Pendergast investigation, all hunches and blind alleys and conflicting evidence, strung together by highly questionable police work.
But back at Penumbra, as Pendergast had explained the case—starting at dinner, and then continuing over coffee—Hayward realized that the bizarre story had an internal logic. Pendergast explained his late wife’s obsession with Audubon; how they had traced her interest in the Carolina Parakeet, the Black Frame, the lost parrot, and the strange fate of the Doane family. He read her passages from the Doane girl’s diary: a chilling descent into madness. He described their encounter with Blast, another seeker of the Black Frame, himself recently murdered—as had been Helen Pendergast’s former employer at Doctors With Wings, Morris Blackletter. And finally, he explained the series of deductions and discoveries that led to the unearthing of the Black Frame itself.
When Pendergast at last fell silent, Hayward leaned back in her chair, sipping her coffee, running over the bizarre information in her mind, looking for threads, logical connections, and finding precious little. A great deal more work would be necessary to fill in the blanks.
She glanced over at the painting known as the Black Frame. It was lit indirectly by the firelight, but she could nevertheless make out details: the woman on the bed, the stark room, the cold white nakedness of her body. Disturbing, to put it mildly.
She looked back at Pendergast, now attired in his signature black suit. “So you believe your wife was interested in Audubon’s illness. An illness that somehow transformed him into a creative genius.”
“Through some unknown neurological effect, yes. To someone with her interests, this would have been a very valuable pharmacological discovery.”
“And all she wanted with the painting was confirmation for this theory.”
Pendergast nodded. “That painting is the link between Audubon’s early, indifferent work and his later brilliance. It’s proof of the transition he underwent. But that doesn’t quite get to the central mystery in this case: the birds.”
Hayward frowned. “The birds?”
“The Carolina Parakeets. The Doane parrot.”
Hayward herself had been puzzling over the connection to Audubon’s illness, to no avail. “And?”
Pendergast sipped his coffee. “I believe we’re dealing with a strain of avian flu.”
“Avian flu? You mean, bird flu?”
“That, I believe, is the disease that laid Audubon low, that nearly killed him, and that was responsible for his creative flowering. His symptoms—high fever, headache, delirium, cough—are all consistent with flu. A flu he no doubt caught dissecting a Carolina Parakeet.”
“Slow down. How do you know all this?”
In reply, Pendergast reached for a worn, leather-bound book. “This is the diary of my great-great-grandfather Boethius Pendergast. He befriended Audubon during the painter’s younger days.” Opening the journal to a page marked with a silken strand, he found the passage he was looking for and began to read aloud:
Aug. 21st. J. J. A. spent the evening with us again. He had amused himself throughout the afternoon in the dissection of two Carolina Parakeets—a curiously colored