The Obsidian Chamber

by Lincoln Child

  Nosing the big Rolls away, Pendergast turned onto Dune Road, driving slowly in order to check the numbers on the mailboxes. When he reached number 3, he stopped. The house was typical of the region: a small Cape Cod of weathered shingles, with a white picket fence around it and a small, carefully tended yard.

  As he examined the house, his cell phone rang. He pulled it from his jacket. “Yes?”

  “Secret Agent Man!” came the voice from River Pointe, Ohio.

  “Yes, Mime?”

  “Calling to give you an update. It seems that chauffeur of yours has been doing some serious traveling of his own. On November eighth, he chartered a private jet from Teterboro Airport, with no advance notice, using DebonAir Aviation. Final destination, Gander, Newfoundland. Well, that was the final destination of the charter, anyway—by poking through some private email exchanges between the DebonAir employees, I’ve learned your chauffeur wasn’t exactly a model passenger.”

  “Is Proctor still in the Gander area?”

  “Can’t find a trace of him. Not in the motels, not in the surrounding hamlets—nothing. That’s why I’m guessing Gander might not have been his last stop.”

  “But Gander is essentially the eastern tip of North America.”

  “Score one for our team! Roll the dice and play some Monopoly: where could your boy be headed?”

  “Europe?” Pendergast asked softly.

  “A possibility.”

  “Keep on it, Mime. Use all available resources—national and international.”

  “Oh, I will. International are actually better—I have lots of like-minded friends over there. And don’t forget: the meter’s running. I’ll check in when I know more.”

  The line went dead. Pendergast thoughtfully replaced the phone in his pocket. He was relieved Proctor was likely alive. Once again, he had to consciously force himself to leave finding Proctor to Mime. He had to focus all his energy on the present mystery.

  He sat very still, controlling his breathing, consciously lowering his heartbeat, establishing a mind-set. Then he opened the car door, walked up to the house, and knocked.

  It was answered by a short, heavyset man in his late fifties, with a thin comb-over of mouse-brown hair, beady eyes, and what appeared to be an expression of permanent suspicion on his face. He looked Pendergast up and down. “Yes?”

  “Thank you, I will come inside. It’s rather chilly out here.” And Pendergast slipped past the man and into a neat living room, with nautical prints on the walls and a hooked rug on the floor.

  “Just a minute,” the man protested. “I didn’t—”

  “Abner Knott, isn’t it?” Pendergast said, helping himself to a chair set before a low fire burning on the grate. “I heard your name mentioned in town.”

  “And I know about you, too,” Knott said, his little pig eyes looking Pendergast up and down. “You’re that FBI man that was in town last month.”

  “How clever of you to recognize me. If you’ll be so kind as to answer a few questions, I won’t take up more than a minute or two of your time.”

  Knott walked up to a chair across from Pendergast, but he did not sit down. He stood there staring, arms folded over his chest.

  “It’s my understanding you have three cottages to rent, here on Dune Road.” Pendergast had learned this—and much more—from his quiet inquiries in town that morning. He had also learned that Abner Knott was thoroughly disliked by the local citizenry. He was considered miserly and churlish, and held in almost as low esteem as R. J. Mayfield—the real estate developer undertaking the destruction of the Captain Hull Inn, and whose cheap, shabby condos were fast becoming the scourge of Cape Ann and points north.

  “I own three cottages. It’s no secret. Inherited two from my parents, and built the third one myself on a piece of adjoining land.”

  “Thank you. I also understand that during October, two of those cottages were empty—not surprising, being out of season—but the third was occupied. It was only occupied for about two weeks, however, which was unusual, since I understand you rent your cottages by the month.”

  “Who’s been talking about me?” Knott asked.

  Pendergast shrugged. “You know how few secrets there are in a small town like Exmouth. In any case, I’m interested in the temporary lodger in your cabin. Could you tell me about him?”

  Knott’s expression had become more and more truculent as Pendergast spoke. “No, I can’t tell you anything about him.”

  “Why is that, pray?”

  “Because my renters’ business is their own, and I don’t like to spread it around. Especially not to you.”

  Pendergast looked surprised. “Me?”

  “You. It wasn’t until you arrived in town that all our troubles started.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Well, that’s how I saw it. Saw it then, and see it today. So if it’s all the same to you, I’ll ask you to kindly vacate my premises—and my property. Unless you have some sort of warrant.”

  The man waited, arms crossed.

  “Mr. Knott,” Pendergast said after a moment. “It’s odd you should mention a warrant. You might be unaware of this, but my sudden departure from Exmouth has resulted in a rather large FBI operation. After what I’ve learned here today, I could have just such a warrant—and within forty-eight hours.”

  Knott’s expression grew, if anything, more truculent. “Go ahead.”

  Pendergast seemed to digest this a moment.

  “The door’s over there.”

  But Pendergast made no move to stand up. “So you refuse to answer my questions without a warrant?”

  “I said as much, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did. You also said I was the cause of the town’s troubles.” And here, Pendergast looked squarely at the short man standing before him. “But it hasn’t all been trouble—has it?”

  Knott frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “This real estate developer, R. J. Mayfield. Most of the town is very unhappy he’s planning to build condos in Exmouth—tearing down the Inn and erecting an eyesore in its place.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” Knott said.

  “But then, there are a few who feel quite differently: those people who are eager to sell land to the Mayfield Corporation. Phase two of the Exmouth Harbour Village—still in the development stages, of course—will take up some of the coastline south of the old Inn.”

  Knott was silent.

  “And that would include your cottages. It seems, Mr. Knott, that you stand to earn a pretty penny from Exmouth Harbour Village—a lucky thing, given how the rest of the town is faring.”

  “What of it?” Knott said. “A man has a right to make money.”

  “It’s just that the scuttlebutt is your section of coastline is sand and limestone that, if speculation is true, has been eaten away by receding groundwater over the last century—meaning the odd sinkhole might open up somewhere at any minute. I’ll bet that’s something you don’t tell your renters, do you?”

  “Just gossip,” said Knott.

  Pendergast reached into his suit coat and removed an envelope. “The Tufts geologist who prepared this report back in 1956…Was he a gossip? I wonder what would happen if this were to fall into the hands of Mayfield? Say, this very afternoon?”

  Knott’s jaw dropped. “You—”

  “Oh, he’d no doubt learn of it eventually—surveys, engineering studies, and the like. But this way, he’d learn about it before he has a contract with you.” Pendergast shook his head. “And then, Mr. Knott, your luck would change—very fast.” He paused. “You see, between ourselves I’d really much prefer not to have to wait forty-eight hours to obtain that warrant.”

  There was a long, freezing silence.

  “What do you want to know?” Knott asked in a very low voice.

  Pendergast settled back and made himself comfortable in the chair, taking his time, removing a notebook, turning the pages to find a blank one. “When did your lodger take p
ossession of the cottage?”

  “Three or four days after you came into town.”

  “Did he ask for a particular cottage?”

  “Yes. The one with the best view of Skullcrusher Rocks.”

  “And when did he leave?”

  “The day after the—” Knott stopped abruptly, and his mouth worked silently for a few seconds. “The day after everything went to hell,” he finally said, lowering his eyes.

  “Is this the man?” And Pendergast held out a police photo of Diogenes.

  “No.”

  “Take a closer look.”

  Knott leaned in, squinting at the picture. “It really doesn’t look like him.”

  Pendergast was not surprised. “This renter. Did he tell you why he was here?”

  “Don’t know. You’d have to ask his lady friend.”

  “Lady friend?”

  “The one who lived with him.”

  A terrible feeling suddenly overwhelmed Pendergast. Is it even possible…? No, it wasn’t; he had to get a better grip on himself.

  “Could you please describe the woman?”

  “Blond. Young. Short. Athletic.”

  “What can you tell me about her?”

  “Got a couple jobs in town. Before the two left so suddenly, that is.”

  “What jobs were those?”

  “Waitress in the Chart Room. Also worked part-time as an assistant in that tourist shop, A Taste of Exmouth.”

  For a moment, Pendergast went quite still. He knew this woman by sight—quite well, in fact. She had waited on him more than once at the Inn. So Diogenes had an accomplice—an assistant—a helper? This had never occurred to him before.

  He was roused by Knott shifting irritably before him. “Anything else?” the man said.

  “Just one more thing. I’d like to spend an hour or two in the cottage they rented—alone and undisturbed.”

  When Knott didn’t move, Pendergast extended a hand, palm upward, in anticipation of receiving the key. “Thank you,” he said. “You’ve been most helpful.”

  43

  CONSTANCE ROSE JUST before dawn, in time to watch the sun burst over the distant sea horizon and climb into a clear blue sky. She slept with the windows open, and it had been a cool night. She shed her nightdress and felt the sun on her body, warm and inviting. Turning, she went into the bathroom. It was spacious and white, with an old-fashioned slipper tub and a shower. She ran the water in the tub and went back into the bedroom, arranging a few of her possessions on the bureau. The infusion had been disappointingly uneventful, and she felt no different this morning than she had before. But Diogenes had warned her it might take a day or two to feel the effects, which he assured her would be quite dramatic, invigorating, and energizing.

  When she emerged from the bath, she could smell coffee brewing. She descended the back stairs, which ended in a small hallway leading to the conservatory; a short walk brought her to the kitchen. Diogenes was seated at a table in a breakfast nook, in a bow window looking out over the gardens. His lean frame was wrapped in an elegant silk morning gown, his ginger hair combed back; he looked fresh, trim, self-assured, and attractive. The likeness to his dead brother was undeniable. The bicolored eyes added an almost dashing touch. Again she had that queer feeling of strangeness, as if she’d fallen out of her own life and onto an alien planet.

  “What will you have for breakfast?” he asked.

  “Do you have kippers?”

  “Indeed we do.”

  “Well, then, if it isn’t too much trouble, kippers, two soft-boiled eggs, rashers, and toast.”

  “A hearty breakfast. I approve. Coffee or espresso?”

  “Espresso, thank you.”

  He brought her a demitasse and busied himself at the stove while she drank the coffee. Her breakfast was soon placed in front of her, and he served himself the same. They ate in silence. Diogenes was one of those rare people, Constance thought, who was not disturbed or made anxious by long silences. For this she was grateful. A talker would have been intolerable.

  At last, Diogenes put down his empty cup. “And now—a tour?”

  He rose, took her hand, and led her out onto the back veranda and down the stairs to the white sand. The path, lined on both sides by rich beds of flowers, meandered past a picturesque palapa, outdoor fireplace, and stone patio with an old brick grill and an arrangement of weather-beaten teak furniture. From there the path wandered through a grove of buttonwood to emerge at a long, white beach. Gurumarra’s cottage was just visible through the foliage. The sun glittered off the water, which whispered and lapped on the sand.

  Diogenes had fallen silent, but his light step and graceful way of moving, and the glow in his eyes, told her how precious this place was to him. She felt awkward in her long, old-fashioned dress.

  At the end of the beach, a cluster of mangroves blocked their way along the shore and the trail cut inland, winding up the low, sandy bluff, over the top, and partway down the other side; and there, suddenly, a most unusual structure appeared, hidden by the curve of the bluff, looking over the beach and out to the Gulf. It was built of weathered, dark marble and looked like a small, circular temple, but in between the columns were tall, mullioned windows, each pane a mysterious, dark-gray color, almost black.

  It was so surprising a vision that Constance involuntarily halted.

  “Come,” said Diogenes in hushed tones, leading her around the structure. He grasped the bronze knob of a tall door, and it whispered open, disclosing the spare interior. He handed her inside and closed the door behind.

  Constance felt overwhelmed. It was utterly simple, with a black marble floor, gray marble columns, and a domed roof. But it was the mullioned windows and the quality of light that made the interior unworldly. The panes were of some sort of smoked, glassy substance, infused or inflected with billions of little shimmerings of light, depending on how one moved one’s point of view. The light that came through them had a strange, attenuated quality that rendered the interior absolutely colorless. And as she looked at Diogenes, and the rapt expression on his face, she saw that he and herself were both rendered in black-and-white tones, all the color sucked out of the air. It was a most uncanny phenomenon. But rather than being disturbing, she found it serene and spiritual, as if all unnecessary adornment, all vulgar embellishment, had been stripped away, leaving only simplicity and truth. The temple was completely empty beyond a black leather divan, which occupied a space somewhat off center.

  They must have stood there for several minutes, in silence, before Diogenes spoke. But he didn’t actually speak: he hummed a low melody that Constance recognized as the opening voice of Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. And as he hummed the tonic voice, then switched to the second voice, and the third, the temple began filling with sound building upon sound, layer upon layer, creating a contrapuntal wonder of echoes.

  He stopped but the sound continued for seconds, dying away slowly.

  He turned to her and she could see a glint of moisture in his dead eye. “This,” he said, “is where I come to forget myself and the world. This is my place of meditation.”

  “It’s extraordinary. The effect of the light is almost impossible to believe.”

  “Yes. You see, Constance, the great horror of my life is that I can see only in black and white. Color has been denied to me since…the Event.”

  She inclined her head. The Event, she knew, referred to the tragic accident of his childhood that left him blind in one eye—among other things.

  “I’ve clung to the memory of color. But when I enter here, in this monochromatic light, I can somehow glimpse the color that I so desperately miss. I can see, almost out of the corner of my vision as it were, ephemeral flashes of color.”

  “But how?”

  He spread his hands. “These panes are all ground and polished from the mineral called obsidian. Volcanic glass. Obsidian has some singular properties when it interacts with light. In the past, I once made a careful and spec
ial study of the effects of light and sound on the human body—and this is one of the results.”

  Constance looked around again. The morning sun was hitting one side of the temple, the light diffusing in, cool and gray, seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. The opposite side of the temple was dark, but not black. Neither pure white nor pure black was present in the room—everything was in infinite gradations of gray.

  “So this is your obsidian chamber.”

  “Obsidian chamber…you might call it that. Yes, you could very well call it that.”

  “What do you call it?”

  “My Tholos.”

  “Tholos. A circular Greek temple.”

  “Precisely. This one is based on the dimensions of the small Tholos of Delphi.”

  He fell silent, and Constance was content to simply stand and absorb the remarkable serenity, the beautiful simplicity, of the space. It was silent, and she felt herself falling into the most peculiar reverie, a dream-like state of nothingness, her sense of self dissolving.

  “Let us go.”

  She took a deep breath, returning to reality, and in a moment found herself outside, blinking in the bright light, overwhelmed by the tidal wave of color that engulfed her.

  “Shall we continue the tour?”

  Constance looked at him. “I…feel a little disoriented. I’d like to return to the library and rest. Later, if you don’t mind, I’d like to explore on my own.”

  “Of course,” Diogenes replied, spreading his hands. “The island is yours, my dear.”

  44