Nora took a breath. “What did Leng look like?”
Clara McFadden did not answer immediately. “I’ll never forget him,” she said at last. “Have you read Poe’s ‘Fall of the House of Usher’? There’s a description in the story that, when I came upon it, struck me terribly. It seemed to describe Leng precisely. It’s stayed with me to this day, I can still quote the odd line of it from memory: ‘a cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and very luminous… finely molded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy.’ Leng had blond hair, blue eyes, an aquiline nose. Old-fashioned black coat, formally dressed.”
“That’s a very vivid description.”
“Leng was the kind of person who stayed with you long after he was gone. And yet, you know, it was his voice I remember most. It was low, resonant, strongly accented, with the peculiar quality of sounding like two people speaking in unison.”
The gloom that filled the parlor seemed inexplicably to deepen. Nora swallowed. She had already asked all the questions she had planned to. “Thank you very much for your time, Ms. McFadden,” she said as she rose.
“Why do you bring all this up now?” the old lady asked abruptly.
Nora realized that she must not have seen the newspaper article or heard anything about the recent copycat killings of the Surgeon. She wondered just what she should say. She looked about the room, dark, frozen in shadowy Victorian clutter. She did not want to be the one to upset this woman’s world.
“I’m researching the early cabinets of curiosities.”
The old lady transfixed her with a glittering eye. “An interesting subject, child. And perhaps a dangerous one.”
ELEVEN
SPECIAL AGENT PENDERGAST LAY IN THE HOSPITAL BED, MOTIONLESS SAVE for his pale eyes. He watched Nora Kelly leave the room and close the door. He glanced over at the wall clock: nine P.M. precisely. A good time to begin.
He thought back over each word Nora had uttered during her visit, looking for any trivial fact or passing reference that he might have overlooked on first hearing. But there was nothing more.
Her visit to Peekskill had confirmed his darkest suspicions: Pendergast had long believed Leng killed Shottum and burned the cabinet. And he felt sure that McFadden’s disappearance was also at the hands of Leng. No doubt Shottum had challenged Leng shortly after placing his letter in the elephant’s-foot box. Leng had murdered him, and covered it up with the fire.
Yet the most pressing questions remained. Why had Leng chosen the cabinet as his base of operations? Why did he begin volunteering his services at the houses of industry a year before killing Shottum? And where did he relocate his laboratory after the cabinet burned?
In Pendergast’s experience, serial killers were messy: they were incautious, they left clues. But Leng was, of course, very different. He was not, strictly speaking, a serial killer. He had been remarkably clever. Leng had left a kind of negative imprint wherever he went; the man seemed defined by how little was known about him. There was more to be learned, but it was deeply hidden in the masses of information strewn about his hospital room. There was only one way to coax this information out. Research alone would not suffice.
And then there was the growing problem of his increasing lack of objectivity regarding this case, his growing emotional involvement. If he did not bring himself sharply under control, if he did not reassert his habitual discipline, he would fail. And he could not fail.
It was time to make his journey.
Pendergast’s gaze shifted to the massings of books, maps, and old periodicals that filled half a dozen surgical carts in his room. His eyes moved from surface to tottering surface. The single most important piece of paper lay on his bedside table: the plans for Shottum’s Cabinet. One last time, he picked it up and gazed at it, memorizing every detail. The seconds ticked on. He laid down the yellowing plat.
It was time. But first, something had to be done about the intolerable landscape of noise that surrounded him.