“We already know from Shottum’s letter that Leng committed those murders.”
“No question.”
“Then why do you need my help?”
“There’s almost nothing on record about Leng anywhere. I’ve tried the Historical Society, the New York Public Library, City Hall. It’s as if he’s been expunged from the historical record, and I have reason to think Leng himself might have eradicated his files. It seems that Leng was an early supporter of the Museum and an enthusiastic taxonomist. I believe there may be more papers in the Museum concerning Leng, at least indirectly. Their archives are so vast and disorganized that it would be virtually impossible to purge them.”
“Why me? Why doesn’t the FBI just subpoena the files or something?”
“Files have a way of disappearing as soon as they are officially requested. Even if one knew which files to request. Besides, I’ve seen how you operate. That kind of competence is rare.”
Nora merely shook her head.
“Mr. Puck has been, and no doubt will continue to be, most helpful. And there’s something else. Tinbury McFadden’s daughter is still alive. She lives in an old house in Peekskill. She’s ninety-five, but I understand very much compos mentis. She may have a lot to say about her father. She may have even known Leng. I have a sense she’d be more willing to speak to a young woman like yourself than to an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“You’ve still never really explained why you’ve taken such an interest in this case.”
“The reasons for my interest in the case are unimportant. What is important is that a human being should not be allowed to get away with a crime like this. Even if that person is long dead. We do not forgive or forget Hitler. It’s important to remember. The past is part of the present. At the moment, in fact, it’s all too much a part of the present.”
“You’re talking about these two new murders.” The whole city was buzzing with the news. And the same words seemed to be on everyone’s lips: copycat killer.
Pendergast nodded silently.
“But do you really think the murders are connected? That there’s some madman out there who read Smithback’s article, and is now trying to duplicate Leng’s experiments?”
“I believe the murders are connected, yes.”
It was now dark. Water Street and the piers beyond were deserted. Nora shuddered again. “Look, Mr. Pendergast, I’d like to help. But it’s like I said. I just don’t think there’s anything more I can do for you. Personally, I think you’d do better to investigate the new murders, not the old.”
“That is precisely what I am doing. The solution to the new murders lies in the old.”
She looked at him curiously. “How so?”
“Now is not the time, Nora. I don’t have sufficient information to answer, not yet. In fact, I may have already said too much.”
Nora sighed with irritation. “Then I’m sorry, but the bottom line is that I simply can’t afford to put my job in jeopardy a second time. Especially without more information. You understand, don’t you?”
There was a moment’s silence. “Of course. I respect your decision.” Pendergast bowed slightly. Somehow, he managed to give even this simple gesture a touch of elegance.
Pendergast asked the driver to let him out a block from his apartment building. As the Rolls-Royce glided silently away, Pendergast walked down the pavement, deep in thought. After a few minutes he stopped, staring up at his residence: the Dakota, the vast, gargoyle-haunted pile on a corner of Central Park West. But it was not this structure that remained in his mind: it was the small, crumbling tenement at Number 16 Water Street, where Mary Greene had once lived.
The house would contain no specific information; it had not been worth searching. And yet it possessed something less definable. It was not just the facts and figures of the past that he needed to know, but its shape and feel. Mary Greene had grown up there. Her father had been part of that great post–Civil War exodus from the farms to the cities. Her childhood had been hard, but it may well have been happy. Stevedores earned a living wage. Once upon a time, she had played on those cobbles. Her childish shouts had echoed off some of those very bricks. And then cholera carried away her parents and changed her life forever. There were at least thirty-five other stories like hers, all of which ended so cruelly in that basement charnel.