“So you brought a dummy aboard the Queen Mary and threw it overboard?”
“Exactly. A life-size doll. It went over the side in midpassage.”
There was a brief silence before Felder spoke again. “There’s something else I don’t understand. Why did you send me after your lock of hair? I’d always assumed it was a…” Here he colored. “A labor of love. To exonerate myself, to prove myself to you. But you’ve made it clear that you—you have no feelings for me along those lines.”
“Haven’t you guessed the answer, Dr. Felder?” Constance replied. “Actually, I suppose there are two answers.” She smiled slightly. “That day you came to visit me in the library here, I’d just learned my child had reached India safely. He’s in Dharamsala, with the Tibetan government in exile, very well protected. Now he can grow up and undergo the proper training to fulfill his position as the nineteenth rinpoche, in absentia. Safe from the Chinese.”
“So there’s no longer a need to maintain this fiction that you murdered your child.”
“Exactly. And as a result, there’s no need for me to remain any longer in Mount Mercy.”
“But to be allowed to leave, you’d have to be certified as compos mentis.”
Constance inclined her head.
“Which meant convincing me of your sanity.”
“That’s correct. But there’s also the second answer that I mentioned. By convincing you of my sanity, it would resolve the agonizing doubts in your own mind. If you knew I was speaking the truth, it would help you resolve the difficulties in my story—difficulties that I know have been wearing on you.”
So she did care for him—in some manner or another. At the very least, she’d noticed his internal struggle and taken pity on him for it. In the silence that followed, Felder found himself—in light of all this new information—framing the arguments he would put forward for overturning Constance’s commitment. He realized, with growing dismay, that nothing she’d just told him could be used as evidence. It would not even begin to stand up in a court hearing. He would have to find his own way through the legal maze—and the maze of demonstrating that the distant child in India was hers—but, he knew, he owed that to her… and more. At least, proving the child was alive would be fairly straightforward—thanks to advanced DNA testing.
He still had so many questions to ask that he found himself somehow unable to frame even one of them in his head. Instead, he realized he needed time to process all that he had heard. It was time to leave.
He picked up the two envelopes, held the old, yellowed one out to Constance. “This is rightfully yours,” he said.
“I’d be happier knowing it was in your possession.”
Felder nodded. He slipped both envelopes into his jacket pocket. He stood up, but did not leave, hesitating a moment. One important question still remained to be resolved.
“Constance,” he said.
“Yes, Doctor?”
“The, ah, arcanum. When did you stop taking it?”
“When my first guardian, Dr. Leng, was killed.”
He hesitated. “Does it ever bother you?”
“What?”
“The—sorry, I can’t think of a delicate way to put this—the knowledge that your own life has been artificially extended by the murder of innocent people.”
Constance regarded him with her deep, inscrutable eyes. The chapel seemed to go very still.
“Are you familiar,” she asked at last, “with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quotation: The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function?”
“I’ve heard it, yes.”
“Consider this. I was not merely the beneficiary of Dr. Leng’s experiments. I became the ward of the man who murdered and mutilated my own sister. I spent over a hundred years beneath his roof, reading his books, drinking his wines, consuming his food, conversing pleasantly with him in the evenings—all the while knowing who he was and what he did to my own sister. A rare case of opposing ideas, wouldn’t you say?”
She paused. Felder was struck by the unusual look in her eyes—of what? He could not say.
“So I ask you, Doctor: does that mean I have a first-rate intelligence—or that I am insane?” She paused, her deep eyes glittering. “Or… both?”
And with that, she nodded her dismissal, picked up her book, and began to read.
87
D’AGOSTA WAS FEARFUL THE OLD BAR MIGHT HAVE closed up. He hadn’t been there in years. Few of his fellow officers even knew of the place—the ferns in their macramé hangers guaranteed that no self-respecting cop would be caught dead in there. But as he turned the corner from Vesey onto Church Street, feet crunching against the light dusting of snow, he saw—with relief—that the place was still there. The ferns in the window appeared, if anything, deader than ever. He descended the steps and went inside.
Laura Hayward was already there. She was sitting in the back, at the very same table—how was that for a coincidence?—a fresh, foamy Guinness in one hand. She looked up as D’Agosta approached, smiled.
“I didn’t even know this place had a name,” she said as he sat down.
D’Agosta nodded. “Vino Veritas.”
“Maybe the owner’s a wine connoisseur. Or a Harvard graduate. Or both.”
D’Agosta didn’t quite understand this, so instead of replying he nodded to the waiter and pointed at Hayward’s drink.
“It seemed like a good place to meet,” he said as his own Guinness was placed before him. “Just a stone’s throw from Police Plaza.”
He took a sip from the pint glass, then sat back in his chair, trying to appear nonchalant. In fact he was nervous as hell. The idea had come to him that morning, on his way to work. No big plan this time, no elaborate preparations. Instinct told him that he’d better just go for it.
“Big doings in Captain Singleton’s office,” Laura said, teasingly.
“So the word’s already out?”
She nodded. “Midge Rawley. She’s the last person you’d think. I mean, she’s been Glen’s confidential secretary, known every last bit of his business, for—what?—at least ten years.”
“And I think she was loyal for all of them. Until just recently. At least, that’s when the payments took place—according to the bank records.”
“I’d heard she’d been having some personal problems. Separated from her husband, mother in a nursing home. I suppose that’s why they chose her.”
“Maybe they blackmailed her. Almost makes you feel sorry for her.”
“Almost. Until you remember it was her tip-off that betrayed the location of the Central Park boathouse meet. Which led to the shootout, the deaths of five people, and the kidnapping and murder of Helen Pendergast.” Laura paused. “Did the search warrant uncover anything?”
D’Agosta shook his head. “We’re hoping to learn more from the audio and video surveillance logs. Or maybe from Rawley herself. The Internal Affairs boys have her down in the Tombs right now. Who knows? She might get talkative.” He took another sip of his Guinness. He was getting more nervous by the minute—and this small talk wasn’t helping any.
“Anyway, you did good, Vinnie. This will be a real feather in your cap.”
“Thanks.”
“And it may take Singleton down a notch or two, as well.”
D’Agosta had thought of this. Having a mole discovered in his own private office would make Captain Singleton defensive, to say the least—and that, indirectly, would only help get D’Agosta off the hot seat. Although it was a damn shame—Singleton was a decent man.
“It’s really Pendergast who should get the credit,” he said.