There had also been several large folders in the office relating to the West Wing renovation, and — feeling overwhelmed — Logan had packed these up and sent them back to his own rooms for later examination. He had then gone to speak with Lux’s doctor in residence. The two spent twenty minutes going over Strachey’s physical and psychological history. As Olafson had indicated, all tests and examinations showed Strachey to have been in excellent health for a man of his age, emotionally stable, with no indications of either preexisting conditions or future complications.
Now he returned to the parlor. He’d held out mild hope that Strachey had kept a diary or private journal, but there was no sign of any. So instead he reached into his duffel, removed the video camera, and made another tour of the apartment, filming each room. Replacing the camera, he took out a small notebook and a rectangular device about the size of a police radio, with a control knob centered at the bottom and a large analog gauge monopolizing the top: a trifield natural EM meter. He made yet another tour of the apartment, carefully watching the needle of the meter and making occasional jottings in his notebook. Finally, he pulled another handheld device from the duffel, studded with knobs, toggle switches, and a digital readout: an air-ion counter. He took several readings, but found the air ionization to be no different from that of the other areas of the mansion he’d sampled already.
His eye drifted around the room, stopping at the antique radio. It was a cathedral-style tabletop model of rose-colored wood. Absently, he turned the power knob to the on position. Nothing happened. Curious, he picked up the radio, turned it over in his hands, opened the back. There was a jumble of old brown and yellow wires and machinery, but the vacuum tubes had been replaced with what at a brief glance appeared to be more modern equipment. He shrugged, replaced it on its shelf, and turned away.
Placing the tools and the notebook back in the duffel, he glanced around again, selected the most comfortable-looking armchair — judging from the nearby book stand and the well-used footrest, Strachey’s favorite chair as well — settled into it, closed his eyes, and waited.
At quite a young age, Logan had discovered he was an empath — someone with a unique, almost preternatural ability to sense the feelings and emotions of others. At times — if those feelings were strong enough, or if the person had resided in one place for a sufficient length of time — Logan could still sense them even after the occupant had departed.
He sat in the chair, in the dim amber light, emptying himself of his own feelings and preoccupations and waiting for the room to speak to him. At first, there was nothing save a vague, dissociated sense of security and comfort. This was not surprising: there were clearly no smoking guns, no hidden skeletons, no emotional issues, that would have prompted Strachey to…
And then something odd happened. As Logan sat there, eyes closed, relaxed, he began to hear music. At first it was soft — so soft it was barely audible. But as he waited, growing attentive, it began to grow clearer: lush, deeply romantic.
This had never happened before. As a sensitive, Logan was used to receiving emotional impressions, strong feelings, occasionally bits and pieces of memories. But never any sensory stimuli such as music. He sat up in the chair and opened his eyes, looking around, to see if perhaps the music was coming from an adjoining set of rooms.
Immediately, the music stopped.
Logan got up, shut off the lights, then returned to the chair. Once again, there was nothing at first. The sense of comfort was gone; so was the music. Gradually he began to be aware that, instead of the well-being he’d felt earlier, he now felt a faint — very faint — sense of uncertainty, perplexity, unease.
And then the piano music returned: once again, softly at first, then louder. The lush, romantic melody was still there — but as Logan listened, it slowly changed. It grew strange, haunting, maddeningly complicated: long rushes of rising arpeggios in a minor key, played faster and faster. There was something disturbing and ineffable in the music — something interwoven into the complex passages, almost below the threshold of comprehension, that seemed to Logan, as he listened, to be almost diabolical.
And then, along with the music, he began to smell something — a smell that was somehow part and parcel of the music itself — an increasingly strong and nauseating reek of burning flesh. A memory came to him suddenly, or perhaps it was precognition: an old house, flames billowing ferociously from its windows…
Suddenly, he jumped up from the chair. His mouth had gone dry, and his heart was hammering in his chest. He staggered through the darkness to the light switch, snapped it on, then leaned against the wall, gasping in breaths, shaking his head to clear away the terrifying music.
Within a few minutes his breathing had returned to normal. Gathering up his duffel and slinging it over a shoulder, he stepped out of the door and into the hall — reaching inside to switch off the lights again — and then, locking the door, pocketed the key and made his way back down the elegant corridor to his own rooms, careful as he did so to keep his mind as blank and as empty as possible.
10
The Grounds and Infrastructure Maintenance Center was a hangarlike outbuilding in the eastern shadow of the mansion, sitting amid a minicampus of other, smaller structures. Although its facade was cleverly designed to imitate that of Dark Gables, its huge sliding doors and flat roof betrayed its true nature.
Jeremy Logan stepped through an employees’ entrance and found himself in a cavernous space. To the far right was a veritable battalion of landscaping and earthmoving equipment: commercial mowers, chippers, Kubota tractors, Ditch Witch trenchers, and half a dozen more esoteric pieces of gear were lined up, gleaming and ready for use. Behind them were two repair bays with a large attached parts section. In the bays, Logan could make out mechanics in jumpsuits performing operations on disassembled machinery. In the middle of the maintenance center were several long, massive industrial shelves, stretching from the concrete floor to the ceiling and containing pallets full of every imaginable item necessary to keep the complex running, from light switches to PVC pipe to circuit boards to plumbing fixtures to office accessories, all carefully labeled. Next came an extensive machine shop. Finally, stretching along the left-hand wall of the maintenance center, was a small cluster of cubicles, staffed with workers typing at workstations or speaking into telephones. Logan walked up to the closest worker and asked directions to the office of Ian Albright. He was pointed toward a set of exposed metal steps set into the nearest wall.
Albright’s office was small but functional. One wall was entirely of glass and looked out over his maintenance domain. Albright himself was middle-aged and roundish, with a drinker’s red nose and a cheery disposition. “Have a seat, then,” he said with a laugh, perching himself on the edge of a desk covered with work orders, invoices, and memos. “Dr. Olafson said to expect you.” Albright spoke in a working-class London accent that Logan found refreshing after the somewhat stifling academic atmosphere inside the main house.
“Thanks,” he said as he sat down. “I have to confess, Mr. Albright—”
“Ian, if you please.”
“I have to confess, Ian, I’m not exactly sure what your job description is. One person referred to you as the ‘infrastructure supervisor.’ Another as the ‘site manager.’ ”
Albright threw back his head and laughed. “That’s a lot of rubbish, that. I’m just a glorified super — with a whacking great council house to look after.” And he indicated the Lux headquarters with a westward wave of his hand and another laugh.