The Strange Case of Monsieur Bertin
Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston
dedicate this story to
our most excellent readers
Constance Greene was sitting at the harpsichord, brows furrowed in concentration, when she heard a small intake of breath from A. X. L. Pendergast. She let her hands drop from the keyboard and glanced over. Her guardian was sitting in a comfortable leather chair by the fire, a glass of sherry on a nearby table, a curious expression on his face. He’d been opening the mail that Proctor had recently carried in on a silver platter.
“Is my playing disturbing you, Aloysius?” she asked.
It took him a moment to respond. “Never, Constance. Quite the opposite.”
“I feared my mistakes were wearing on your nerves.”
“Not in the least. And quite understandable: Contrapunctus XIV is not only the trickiest section in Art of the Fugue, but probably the most difficult harpsichord piece Bach ever wrote.”
Constance prepared to continue, then paused again, curious at how very still Pendergast had become. She noticed he was holding a black-edged card he’d just removed from a thick cream envelope. Rising from the instrument, she came over and seated herself in the chair on the opposite side of the hearth. It was a dark winter evening, a blizzard rattling the windows and wailing around the Riverside Drive mansion, the storm punctuated by a deep rumble of that rare phenomenon — lightning in winter. But the fire burned brightly, and the library was warm and snug.
“What is it?” she asked.
Without replying, Pendergast handed the card and envelope to her.
Death Notice
Monsieur Gaspard Louis Bertin, 81,
peacefully passed away at home on December 28, 2019.
The viewing will be held at the Culp Funeral Home, New Orleans,
on January 5, 2020, from Ten to Three o’Clock.
The service and interment will take place at the Metairie Cemetery on January 6,
at Two o’Clock, the Reverend Father Charles Fazande presiding.
Constance lowered the card. “The name’s familiar.”
“He was very close to the family. My childhood tutor, in fact. Our correspondence had become sadly infrequent, although I did see him briefly in New York a few years ago. It was when you were in Tibet, during the time of your — ah — confinement.”
“‘Confinement,’” she repeated in a dry voice. “Aloysius, sometimes I believe the difference in our ages is not as great as previously thought.” She handed him back the note. “Odd there’s no return address.”
“Odd indeed.” Pendergast took the envelope and looked at it for a long moment before reinserting the card. He remained unmoving, silvery eyes looking into the fire. A silence settled into the room. Constance felt very much at home in the warmth, the firelight reflecting off the spines of the books, the crackling of the fire making a contrapuntal rhythm to the ticking of snow on the windows.
Finally, Pendergast roused himself. “As I recall, your last visit to New Orleans was rather short — we were there only for the sale of Penumbra. It would probably be a good idea — for your genealogical research, I mean — if you saw more of the, ah, cradle of my family. Would you care to join me on another little trip?”
Constance crossed one leg over the other and smoothed her skirt. “You plan to attend the service, then?”
“I fear there is no other Pendergast left to do so. I should like very much to pay my respects to the late Monsieur Bertin.” He reached for the glass of sherry. “If nothing else, it would allow us to escape this beastly Hudson River wind.”
New Orleans was as different from Manhattan as could be imagined. A warm, lazy breeze stirred the flags on the wrought iron balconies lining the streets west of the French Quarter, the buds of the magnolia trees ready to burst. The limousine eased to the curb in front of a striking, well-tended redbrick mansion. This was the Culp Funeral Home, its discreet and stately prosperity a contrast to the rather shabby and trash-strewn neighborhood.
Pendergast descended from the car and Constance followed, glancing around curiously with her violet eyes.
The two of them made their way down the walkway to the main doors, which were standing open. This would be a first in Constance’s long experience: viewing a dead body, at least one that was not the product of sudden violence. Having spent much time around crypts and tombs, she knew the secrets of the mortician’s trade, and she found it peculiar that people would want to view the corpse of a loved one that had been arranged, through artifice, to appear merely asleep instead of decomposing. She knew Pendergast had been raised as a Catholic, but she had never been able to figure out his feelings about the church. He rarely spoke of it, but when he did it was usually in reverential tones. He never responded to her droll observations on religion — her own view was grounded in skepticism and indifference — even when she tried to bait him. But despite his outward respect, he never went to church.
A lone employee met them under the covered portal. He leaned toward them and spoke in a solemn, confidential voice. “Are you here for the Bertin viewing?”
“Yes.”
“Right this way, miss. Sir.” He led them down a hallway to a second set of double doors, wedged open, before a large, softly lit room. A man, evidently the funeral director, came forward out of the shadows and pressed their hands in turn, murmuring, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
They nodded their thanks and the man looked at them sympathetically for a moment. Then, with a muffled step on the soft carpet, he gestured for them to enter.
The room was entirely empty of people save for a lone figure swathed in black, sitting in a corner of the last row. The open casket stood on draped supports at the far end of the room, banked with lilies of the valley on either side. Near the head of the casket, a blown-up photograph of the deceased in life was displayed on an easel.
Constance followed Pendergast into the room, where he took a seat in one of the front rows.
The FBI agent sat very quietly for a long time, his head lowered. Constance, seated next to him, put on a grave face but surreptitiously cast her eyes about the room, taking a deep interest in the proceedings. She was fascinated by all things related to mortality — and the lack thereof. She could just see the deceased in his open casket, the bearded chin and nose sticking above the plush satin edge. The picture of him next attracted her interest. It showed a small, round-faced man wearing an old-fashioned wide-brimmed plantation hat, a coat, and a string tie, clutching a silver-headed cane. Around his neck dangled some odd-looking objects on a string, hard to identify in the poor-quality reproduction. But she believed they might be gris-gris charms or similar objects. A pair of beady black eyes stared at the camera, and a slightly ironic smile graced his face.
She knew quite a lot more about Bertin than she had let on to her guardian — at the time, it had seemed more polite to allow him to tell her of the man’s history. She knew, for example, that he was considered a scholar in the secret arts of obeah, Santeria, and other similar mystical beliefs. In fact, he had been rumored in some instances to have moved beyond mere scholarship into actual practice. She also knew that the last time Pendergast had seen him, Bertin had come to New York expressly at the agent’s request. Although she didn’t know the details, it had to do with the strange and tragic death of Bill Smithback, a reporter who had been Pendergast’s sometime antagonist and then friend. What sort of “studies” Bertin might have offered as Pendergast’s tutor she did not know, but she suspected they might have been rather more esoteric than usual. New Orleans was a city saturated in myth and ritual, a strange and exotic mix of the formal and the uninhibited, hidebound tradition and sensual carnality. Even this funeral parlor, normally the most neutral of buildings, had some subtle but surprising touches: strangely carved moldings on the outside. She had noticed figures of woven straw and grass hidden among the funeral sprays of flowers. The elderly lady in the corner was also enigmatic. She looked like someone from Constance’s childhood, dressed as she was in a shapeless Victorian dress of black muslin, her head swaddled in a veil, hunched over in what appeared to be fervent prayer. This was a place both in and out of time: where some religions were intoned by day, and others whispered by night. Bertin seemed to have had a foot in both.