Fever Dream

Pendergast paused in midstep. "Shot, you say?" Then he resumed walking--a little more slowly.

The library door stood open, yellow light from within spilling out into the front hall. Silently, Pendergast led the way down the stairs and through the arched doorway. The painting stood in the center of the room, on an easel. It was covered with a heavy velvet shroud.

"Stand over there, in front of the painting," said Pendergast. "I need your candid reaction."

D'Agosta stood directly before it.

Pendergast stepped to one side, took hold of the shroud, and lifted it from the painting.

D'Agosta stared, flabbergasted. The painting was not of a Carolina Parakeet, or even of a bird or nature subject. Instead, it depicted a middle-aged woman, nude, gaunt, lying on a hospital bed. A shaft of cool light slanted in from a tiny window high up in the wall behind her. Her legs were crossed at the ankles, and her hands were folded over her breasts, almost in the attitude of a corpse. The outlines of her ribs protruded through skin the color of parchment, and she was clearly ill and, perhaps, not entirely sane. And yet there was something repugnantly inviting about her. A small deal table holding a water pitcher and some dressings sat beside the bed. Her black hair spread across a pillow of coarse linen. The painted plaster walls; the slack, dry flesh; the weave of the bed linens; even the motes in the dusty air were meticulously observed, rendered with pitiless clarity and confidence--spare, stark, and elegiac. Although D'Agosta was no expert, the painting struck him with an enormous visceral impact.

"Vincent?" Pendergast asked him quietly.

D'Agosta reached out, let the fingertips of one hand slide along the painting's black frame. "I don't know what to think," he said.

"Indeed." Pendergast hesitated. "When I began to clean the painting, that is the first thing that came to light." And he pointed at the woman's eyes, staring out of the plane of the painting toward the viewer. "After seeing that, I realized all our assumptions were wrong. I needed time, alone, to clean the rest of it. I didn't want you to see it exposed bit by bit: I wanted you to see the entire painting, all at once. I needed a fresh, immediate opinion. That is why I excluded you so abruptly. Once again, my apologies."

"It's amazing. But... are you sure it's even by Audubon?"

Pendergast pointed to one corner, where D'Agosta could just see a dim signature. Then he pointed silently to another, dark corner of the painted room--where a mouse was crouching, as if waiting. "The signature is genuine, but more to the point, nobody but Audubon could have painted that mouse. And I'm certain it was painted from life--at the sanatorium. It's too beautifully observed to be anything but real."

D'Agosta nodded slowly. "I thought for sure it was going to be a Carolina Parrot. What does a naked woman have to do with anything?"

Pendergast merely opened his white hands in a gesture of mystery, and D'Agosta could see the frustration in his eyes. Turning away from the easel, the agent said, "Glance over these, Vincent, if you please." A refectory table nearby was spread with a variety of prints, lithographs, and watercolors. On the left side were arranged various sketches of animals, birds, insects, still lifes, quick portraits of people. Lying on top was a watercolor of a mouse.

A gap separated the drawings laid out on the right side. They were a different matter entirely. These consisted almost entirely of birds, so life-like and detailed they seemed ready to strut off the paper, but there were also some mammals and woodland scenes.

"Do you note a difference?"

"Sure. The stuff on the left sucks. On the right--well, it's just beautiful."

"I took these from my great-great-grandfather's portfolios," Pendergast said. "These"--he gestured to the rude sketches on the left--"were given to my ancestor by Audubon when he was staying at the Dauphine Street cottage in 1821, just before he got sick. That is how Audubon painted before he entered the Meuse St. Claire sanatorium." He turned to the work that lay to the right. "And this is how he painted later in life. After he left the sanatorium. Do you see the conundrum?"

D'Agosta was still stu

Pendergast shook his head. "Improved? No, Vincent, this is a transformation. Nobody improves that much. These early sketches are poor. They are workman-like, literal, awkward. There is nothing there, Vincent, nothing to indicate the slightest spark of artistic talent."

D'Agosta had to agree. "What happened?"

Pendergast raked the artwork with his pale eyes, then slowly walked back to an armchair he'd placed before the easel and sat down before the Black Frame. "This woman was clearly a patient at the sanatorium. Perhaps Dr. Torgensson grew enamored of her. Perhaps they had a relationship of some kind. That would explain why he clung to the painting so anxiously, even when sunk into deepest poverty. But that still doesn't explain why Helen would be so desperately interested in it."

D'Agosta glanced back at the woman, reclining--in an attitude almost of resignation--on the plain infirmary bed. "Do you suppose she might have been an ancestor of Helen's?" he asked. "An Esterhazy?"

"I thought of that," Pendergast replied. "But then, why her obsessive search?"

"Her family left Maine under a cloud," D'Agosta said. "Maybe there was some blemish in their family history this painting could help clear up."

"Yes, but what?" Pendergast gestured at the figure. "I would think such a controversial image would tarnish, rather than polish, the family name. At least we can now speculate why the subject of the painting was never mentioned in print--it is so very disturbing and provocative."

There was a brief silence.

"Why would Blast have wanted it so badly?" D'Agosta wondered aloud. "I mean, it's just a painting. Why search for so many years?"

"That, at any rate, is easily answered. He was an Audubon, he considered it his birthright. For him it became an idee fixe--in time, the chase became its own reward. I expect he would have been as astonished as we are at the subject." Pendergast tented his fingers, pressed them against his forehead.

Still, D'Agosta stared at the painting. There was something, a thought that wouldn't quite rise into consciousness. The painting was trying to tell him something. He stared at it.

Then, all of a sudden, he realized what it was.

"This painting," he said. "Look at it. It's like those watercolors on the table. The ones he did later in life."

Pendergast did not look up. "I'm afraid I don't follow you."

"You said it yourself. The mouse in the painting--it's clearly an Audubon mouse."

"Yes, very similar to the ones he painted in Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America."

"Okay. Now look at that mouse on that pile of early drawings."

Slowly, Pendergast raised his head. He looked at the painting and then the drawings. He glanced toward D'Agosta. "Your point, Vincent?"

D'Agosta gestured toward the refectory table. "That early mouse. I'd never have thought Audubon drew it. Same for all that early stuff, those still lifes and sketches. I'd never have thought those were by Audubon."

"That's precisely what I said earlier. Therein lies the conundrum."