Douglas Preston - Crimson Shore

“But how did you know of the third brother? Your explanation to Lake this morning seemed intentionally vague.”

“It was. It was clear, from my investigations, that somebody was living in the marshlands. The missing food, the trails I had come across, the smell of a campfire, the sense I had of being shadowed in my excursions into the salt grass, pointed to only one thing. And they also suggested Joe Dunwoody as a suspect. The thread of cloth I found from Dana Dunwoody’s clothing, and his visit to the Salem library to look at the inscriptions, made the brotherly angle even more likely. But it was my visit to the medical examiner that clinched it. Dana’s killing was a sudden, unexpected act of rage — not like the premeditated murder of McCool.” He seated himself once again on the bed next to Constance. “And while Dunkan tried to cover his tracks by carving up his brother as he’d carved up the historian, he didn’t have much stomach for the task — hence the hesitant nature of the cuts.”

Constance took another sip of wine. The howl of the wind and drumming of rain was pleasant here in this cozy room, with its dim lighting and its crackling fire. She could feel the warmth of Pendergast’s body next to hers.

She noticed that Pendergast was looking at her. Was that look quizzical — or was it expectant?

“Yes, Constance?” he asked mildly. “I sense you have other questions about the case.”

“It’s just...” she began after a long moment, trying to marshal her distracted thoughts. “It’s just that something seems to be missing.” She said this more to fill an increasingly dangerous silence than anything else.

“How so?”

“Those tracts I read in the Salem library. About the ‘wandering place,’ the ‘dark pilgrimage to a southern shore.’ We proved that the witches did not die out, as everyone had thought, but that they had moved — to the south.”

“It’s a curious side story, without a doubt.” Pendergast took another sip of wine, then refilled both of their glasses. He once again sat down on the bed. The decanter was now almost empty.

Constance put her glass on the table. “Then where did they go — and what happened to them? The only place south of the site you discovered in the marshes is Oldham.”

“But Oldham wasn’t a witches’ settlement. It was a working fishing village — that was depopulated, I might add, some eighty years ago, following the hurricane of ’38. And it was not witches who carved those inscriptions into the bodies of McCool and Dana Dunwoody — we already have statements from the real ‘engraver,’ who is anything but a witch. And wasn’t it you who, not so long ago, was deriding any possible link to witchcraft in this case?” A pause. “You can’t take such things too literally, my dear Constance. I know of your penchant for the bizarre and unusual — all those years of reading outré books in the sub-basement of Eight Ninety-One Riverside Drive, after all, must have had their effect — but even if the story is true, ‘south’ could have meant anything or anyplace. It could have meant Gloucester or even Boston. And by now, those witches — assuming they were witches — are but a distant memory.”

Constance fell silent. Pendergast put his hand over hers. “Trust me — you have to let it go. I have yet to work a case in which every strand braids together perfectly.”

Still Constance said nothing; she was now hardly listening. She felt her heart accelerate and her chest grow tight. A tingling sensation spread over her body. Pendergast’s hand, still lying over hers, felt like a burning thing. The storm of emotions within her seemed to break. Almost without knowing what she was doing — as if someone else was controlling her actions — she slipped her hand out from beneath Pendergast’s, then placed it over his. Slowly, deliberately, she raised his hand from the quilt and placed it on her knee.

Pendergast went rigid. His eyes looked into hers, the firelight reflecting in flashing, silvery shards.

Equally slowly, equally deliberately, she began guiding his hand upward under her dress.

There was a moment of stillness. And then, he turned toward her with such suddenness that his wineglass dashed against the floor, shattering into a thousand pieces. One hand tightened on the inside of her thigh, while the other hand grasped the front of her dress with nearly enough force to tear buttons away. His lips crushed hers... and then, just as abruptly, he drew back. Almost before she could comprehend what was happening, he had risen from the bed in a smooth motion. Now, inexplicably, he began retrieving the fragments of his wineglass and dropping them into the wastebasket with hands that shook ever so slightly. Constance simply watched him, not moving, stunned and unable to think.

“I am terribly sorry, Constance,” she could hear him saying. “I believe I may have damaged your dress.”

Still, she couldn’t find any words.

“You must understand. I am a man, you are a woman... I have greater affection for you than for any other living soul...” He continued picking up the glass as he spoke.

She found her voice. “Stop fussing.”

He paused, standing between the table and the dying fire. His face was flushed. “I feel that the peculiar nature of our relationship precludes our acting on any feelings that we might...”

“Do shut up.”

He fell silent. He remained standing, looking at her.

Constance rose. She felt confusion first, then embarrassment, and finally humiliation and anger. She stared at him, her body trembling.

“Constance?”

With a sudden, violent, backhanded movement, she dashed the other glass from the table, shattering it against the hearth. “Pick that up, too, why don’t you?”

Then she turned, strode toward the door, and flung it wide.

“Wait!” Pendergast cried after her. “Don’t leave—”

But the rest of the sentence was cut off as she slammed the door and ran downstairs toward her own room.

Percival Lake returned from the window that looked out over the bluffs to the raging Atlantic below. It was turning out to be quite the storm. Every sweep of the lighthouse’s beam cast a fleeting radiance across the distant dunes and ocean, illuminating the line of white rollers marching in and thundering up the beach. The lights of the house were out, but the lighthouse had its own emergency generator, supplied by the Coast Guard, which kept it going no matter what the weather.

He turned from the window and watched Carole lighting the last of the candles, which flickered along the mantelpiece and on tables in the living room. That, combined with the warm glow from the fire in the massive stone fireplace, gave the room a delicious atmosphere. Blackouts were common out where they were, at the very end of the line. Lake enjoyed them... as long as they didn’t go on too long.

Carole straightened up. She had seemed nervous and overwrought the last few days, but now was back to her splendid self. “I just love candlelight,” she said.

Lake came over and put his arm around her. “I have an idea. A very special idea.”

“I know what your ‘special ideas’ are all about,” she said, giving him an elbow.

“Well, this one is different. Come with me.” He plucked up a candle in a holder and, leading her by the arm, went to the cellar door. “Come.”

He led her down the narrow stairs. At the bottom, the sound of the storm was muffled, the creaking of the joists in the old house louder.

“What do you have in mind?” she asked.

“You’ll see.”

He went down the basement corridor, past his sculpture studio, and into the oldest section of the basement. It was still a wreck from the theft, the shelves that had held the bottles lying on the floor, surrounded by broken glass and the smell of wine. The niche Pendergast had discovered still stood open, gaping, the rusted chains hanging within. To think that all those precious bottles were at the bottom of the ocean! He bypassed the empty shelves and went to the wooden case of Chateau Haute-Braquilanges.