Lincoln Child - The Strange Case of Monsieur Bertin

She glanced at him. “Do you mean to say this is your first time in his house?”

“This is the first time I’ve received an invitation — even indirectly.” And he held up the key.

Through the open door on the left, leading into the front parlor, Constance saw a mountain of books, papers, and magazines, along with other bric-a-brac, piled almost to the ceiling, leaving a narrow alley to the next room. A mouse scampered into the middle of the floor and stopped to stare at them with curiosity, joined by two others.

“Oh dear,” said Constance drily.

Pendergast reached out and flicked on the lights, which did little to dispel the gloom. “In houses like this, the library was usually down the hall to the left, behind the parlor.”

They passed the central staircase. Even the treads were stacked with clutter, barely leaving room for going up and down. They passed through a door and went through an equally overstuffed passageway, barely navigable, that ended in a library. This room, oddly enough, was clear, and it appeared it was where Bertin spent his waking hours in reading — along with esoteric studies, if the mortar and pestle, test tubes, and various bottles of dried insects, frogs, spiders, and roots were any indication. Constance was aware of a mixture of familiar smells: formaldehyde, ether, alcohol, as well as a sweetish herbal odor she couldn’t immediately place. At the far end of the room stood an elaborate marble fireplace, covered with carved wooden statues and strange ornaments that reminded Constance of certain decorations she had seen in the funeral home. To the right of the fireplace was the table mentioned by the old priest. Both ends were stacked with books, but the center was bare save for a massive leather-bound Bible, heavily tooled with silver studs and a chased-silver clasp.

“The Bible of my youth,” said Pendergast. He stepped into the room, and Constance followed. More mice came out from hiding, staring at them, noses raised and twitching.

“The house is overrun!” said Constance.

“Have you noticed the empty bowls on the floor, here and there? It appears the poor creatures haven’t been fed since their master died.”

“At least they’re not cats,” Constance said as they walked to the Bible on the table. It was a beautiful specimen, the well-worn leather cover dark with age. She reached for it curiously.

Suddenly Pendergast spoke:

“Do not touch it!”

She pulled her hand back, then looked at her guardian. “What on earth’s the matter?”

“Look under the table.”

There, barely visible in the dim light, lay a dead mouse, mouth yawning in a nasty grimace, eyes cloudy, feet curling into empty air.

“Note the recent gnawing around the clasp of the Bible,” said Pendergast. “The mouse was hungry, looking for a meal. That would seem to be the result.”

He glanced about for a moment, then took a few steps toward a stack of books on which a mouse was sitting back on its haunches, waiting. With a lightning movement, he snatched up the mouse and brought it over, while it struggled and peeped. With his free hand, he reached into his suit coat and removed a DNA evidence collection tube containing a small swab. He unstoppered the tube and swabbed the silver clasp, then brought the cotton end of the swab toward the mouse he was holding.

“Wait,” said Constance. “Please don’t do that. It’s cruel. That was a pet, you know.”

Pendergast hesitated, an expression of something like chastisement crossing his face. “You are right. What was I thinking?” He gently released the mouse, then got down on his hands and knees and started turning over some papers that were scattered in a far corner. In a moment he snatched up something else and brought it over.

It was a huge, disgusting palmetto bug. He held it up, antennae and legs frantically churning. “Does this sacrifice meet with your approval?”

“Indeed. There are far too many roaches in the world.”

Pendergast swabbed the silver clasp again, touched the swab to the head of the cockroach, then released it. It started to scurry off, but before it could get even a few inches it went into a mad dance, flailing and twitching hideously before flipping over and becoming still, legs contracted.

“Poisoned,” said Constance. “What does it mean?”

Pendergast did not answer. He knelt down and, removing a loupe from his suit coat, examined the dead mouse under the table, looking particularly closely at the paws. Then he stood up, his expression grave. “I must re-evaluate everything. Everything .” He closed his eyes and stood still as five minutes ticked off, then ten.

At last he began to speak, eyes still closed. “I’ve been a fool. As you know, I was initially suspicious of Bertin’s demise... but for the wrong reasons. And when those reasons didn’t bear out, I let down my guard. But now I can see all the clues that have been so carefully laid out for me. Including this last, deadly one.”

“Would you mind explaining?”

“Not at all.” Pendergast paused a moment. “Back at the viewing, I noted Bertin’s left hand was slightly more necrotized than the right. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, since bodies in death don’t always decompose evenly. Now I understand. Bertin was left-handed, and thus he would have received the strongest dose of poison on that hand when unclasping this Bible. The mouse’s paws are similarly black and show distinct signs of necrosis.”

“Murdered by a poisoned Bible.”

“Precisely.”

Constance peered gingerly at the clasp of the Bible, then at its edges. “The poison lacks any distinct scent,” she said. “The doctor missed it.”

“I have little doubt it will prove to be a rare and exotic compound. And I have no doubt now that we were the only ones who received the death notice. It was intended to lure us down from New York. And then, there is the clue of the key.”

“What about the key?”

“Why would Bertin mail the key to the priest, when he went to church every Sunday? And, lastly, we have the funeral package so conveniently, and recently, purchased. I have little doubt whoever drew us into this game was behind that, too.”

“Who?”

“An excellent question.”

“Do you think the poison on the Bible was meant for us?”

“Meant for us, yes. But perhaps not to kill us. Another lure, perhaps.”

“For what, then?”

“For what, indeed?” Pendergast’s glittering eyes rested on her. “The Bible seems to be at the heart of this little scheme. Let us open it.” He fetched a letter opener and a small dagger lying on the library desk, and used them to unfasten the clasp and open the heavy cover. On the endpapers was drawn, in a beautiful nineteenth-century hand, a family tree.

“Why,” said Constance, “this isn’t Bertin’s ancestry. This is yours!”

They both stared at the diagram in silence.

“Freshly inked,” said Pendergast. “Almost certainly drawn after Bertin died.”

Constance gazed at the tree. She was familiar with it, having spent much of the last year untangling the Pendergast family’s complicated genealogy. This tree was remarkably detailed and accurate, and it ended with Pendergast himself — the last of his line. At least, almost the last.

But she continued to stare. There was something off about the tree, something not right.

“This Edmond Pendergast,” she said, pointing at a dead-end branch of the tree. “1815 to 1910.”

“How odd,” said Pendergast. “I don’t recall an ancestor by that name. Certainly there’s no such tomb in the family catacombs. I would have seen it as a child.”

“There is no ancestor of that name.”