Reaching at last the stairway leading upward, she stopped. If the person or persons had exited the sub-basement, there was no longer any point in continuing the search.
Now she returned to the entrance of her secret chamber, and the flower in its cut-glass vase. It was an orchid of the rarest beauty — but of a variety unknown to her. The exterior of the labellum was pure white, of an elongated shape. Inside it was pink, flushing almost red near the stamen.
Constance examined it for several minutes, her mind drifting over the various possibilities, none of which seemed likely, or even possible. Shaking her head, she cleaned up the broken glassware and crockery, piled it on the silver tray, and took it upstairs to the elevator, placing it inside for Mrs. Trask to collect. She removed the new tray with its covered dish — from which rose a heavenly aroma. Next to it, nestled in a silver bucket full of crushed ice and draped with a linen cloth, was a bottle of Perrier-Jouët Fleur de Champagne. She carried them back to the sub-basement. But instead of retreating as far as her private set of rooms, she stopped in the chamber that contained Enoch Leng’s vast collection of dried flowers and other flora. Here, setting the tray and bucket on an ancient desk, she consulted several encyclopedic books on the subject, including a few devoted to orchids. While she worked, her eyes strayed to the bottle of champagne, and on impulse she slid it from the ice, popped the cork, and poured herself a small glass.
Despite a thorough search of the dusty tomes, she could find no match to the flower that had been left, apparently, for her. But these books were half a century old, and no doubt other orchids had been bred, or discovered, in the years since.
She continued on to her set of rooms, closing the stone door behind her. Entering the small library, she settled at her desk, poured herself another glass of champagne, and booted up her laptop that — thanks to a Wi-Fi repeater installed in the basement — had limited access to the Internet.
It was the work of fifteen minutes to find a precise match. The flower was a newly discovered species of Orchidaceae, native to the Himalayas. It had been collected along the Tibetan-Indian border.
And it had been named Cattleya constanciana.
Constance stared. This was madness. Had it been named after her? Impossible; it had to be mere coincidence. And yet, the location where it had been found… was that a coincidence, as well? It was not far from the Tibetan monastery where her child was currently living in hiding. And the orchid had been found, described, and named only six months before. But who had discovered it was not indicated.
She continued her research, finally coming across the original note in The Orchid Review, published by the Royal Horticultural Society. Under Discoverer, the name was rendered merely as Anonymous.
It had been named after her. There were too many coincidences; there could be no other explanation.
She turned off the laptop and sat very still. She should report this intrusion to Proctor. And yet — strange though it seemed — she did not wish to. He would not take it well, this invasion of the house under his watch. He was a blunt tool. This situation, whatever its precise nature might be, seemed to call for more finesse. She was confident in her ability to handle whatever might come her way. She did not lack for means of self-defense: she had overcome threats far worse than this. Her own natural tendency toward sudden and effective violence was her best protection. If only Aloysius were here; he would know what was going on.
Aloysius. She realized that almost an hour had passed without incessant thoughts of her guardian. And now, thinking of him did not summon forth the usual stab of grief. Maybe she was, at last, finally adjusting to his death.
No; she would not report this to Proctor. At least, not yet. She was in her element; she knew of a dozen other places within these vast subterranean vaults, places even more secret, to which she could retreat. And yet some sixth sense told her it would not be necessary. What had happened was an intrusion… but it did not feel like a violation. It felt like something else. She was not sure what, exactly… but in a most peculiar way, she sensed — in this time of alienation and terrible loneliness — that she was sharing a private exile with some sort of kindred spirit.
That night, when she at last retired, she was careful to put a steel door jammer against the inside of the stone wall that led out into the room of Japanese prints. She was just as careful to lock the deadbolt to her bedroom, and to keep her Maniago stiletto close by. But before doing these things, she brought the beautiful orchid, and its equally beautiful vase, into her chambers and placed them on one side of her writing desk.
14
Constance looked up from her journal.
What was it that had so suddenly caught her attention? A noise of some sort? She listened, but the sub-basement was as quiet as a tomb. A draft of air, perhaps? That was absurd; no breezes stirred in this ancient space, so far below the streets of Manhattan.
She sighed. It was nothing; she was simply restless and distracted. She glanced at her watch: ten minutes past two in the morning. Her eyes lingered on the watch with sadness. It was a ladies Rolex with a platinum jubilee band, and it had been a present from Pendergast the previous Christmas. It matched the timepiece he wore on his own wrist.
She shut the journal abruptly. It was impossible to escape the memory of Aloysius; everything reminded her of him.
She had woken half an hour before. Recently, and most uncharacteristically, her sleep patterns had become disturbed — waking in the middle of the night only to find herself unable to fall asleep again. Perhaps this accounted for the lethargy that had been stealing over her in recent afternoons, prompting the naps that, almost inevitably, had turned into prolonged dozes. But at least she couldn’t blame the insomnia on recent events, Pendergast’s death or the apparent intrusion into her sub-basement: she had been waking at unexpected hours since at least the beginning of their trip to Massachusetts. At that time, her nocturnal alertness had occasioned an important step forward in their investigation. Now it was simply an annoyance.
So she had risen from her wakeful bed and gone into her library to write in her journal. The normally soothing practice proved another frustration: the words just wouldn’t come.
Her glance moved from the closed journal to the dishes from last night’s dinner, piled on the silver tray. The meal had been a chilled one, almost as if Mrs. Trask had known that Constance would be too preoccupied to eat it directly: a brace of cold-water lobster tails, sauce rémoulade; quail eggs au diable… and, of course, a bottle of champagne, of which she had drunk far too much. She could feel it now, a gentle throbbing behind her temples.
Almost as if Mrs. Trask had known I would be too preoccupied to eat it directly…
A strange thought arose in Constance’s mind: was it really Mrs. Trask who was preparing these dishes? But who else could it be? She would not have hired another chef, especially not on her own authority. Besides, the housekeeper jealously guarded her maternal role, always fussing, and would never allow anyone else to prepare food in the house.
Constance placed her fountain pen on the table. She was clearly out of sorts. It was probably due to the wine, which she was unused to drinking, along with the rich meals of late. She could, at least, put a stop to all that. And while she thought of it, it might be a good idea, after all, to speak to Proctor about her recent discoveries in the sub-basement.
Picking up her pen again, she reached into her desk, removed a single piece of cream-laid writing paper, and jotted a note: