The flickering heat grew to fill his mind’s eye with endless, unquenchable fire. And then — quite suddenly — it winked out. Unrelieved blackness took its place.

Pendergast waited, in perfect equanimity, for his memory palace — the storehouse of knowledge and recollection to which he could retreat when in need of guidance — to appear. But the familiar marble walls did not rise up from the blackness. Instead, Pendergast found himself in a dim, closet-like area with a ceiling that sloped low over his head. Before him stood a latticed doorway looking out onto a service hallway; behind him was a wall covered with Rube Goldberg — like diagrams and treasure maps, scrawled by youthful hands.

This was the hideout known as Plato’s Cave, under the back stairs of the old house on Dauphine Street, where he and his brother, Diogenes, had gone to hatch childish schemes and plots… before the Event that sundered their comradeship forever.

This was the second time a memory crossing of Pendergast’s had taken an unexpected turn to this place. With a sudden apprehension, he peered into the dark space at the rear of Plato’s Cave. Sure enough: there was his brother, aged about nine or ten, wearing the navy blazer and shorts that were the uniform of Lusher, the school they attended. He was browsing through a book of Caravaggio’s paintings. He glanced up at Pendergast, gave a sardonic smile, and returned to the book.

“It’s you again,” Diogenes said, the boy strangely speaking in the adult’s voice. “Just in time. Maurice just saw a rabid dog running down the street near the Le Prêtres’ house. Let’s see if we can’t goad it into entering the Convent of St. Maria, shall we? It’s just noon, they’re probably all assembled at mass.”

When Pendergast did not reply, Diogenes turned over a page. “This is one of my favorites,” he said. “The Beheading of St. John the Baptist. Notice how the woman on the left is lowering the basket to receive the head. How accommodating! And the nobleman standing over John, directing the proceedings — such an air of calm command! That’s just how I want to look when I…” He abruptly fell silent and turned another page.

Still Pendergast did not speak.

“Let me guess,” said Diogenes. “This has to do with your dear departed wife.”

Pendergast nodded.

“I saw her once, you know,” Diogenes continued, not looking up from the book. “You two were in the gazebo in the back garden, playing backgammon. I was watching from behind the wisteria bushes. Priapus in the shrubbery, and all that sort of thing. It was an idyllic scene. She had such poise, such elegance of movement. She reminded me of the Madonna in Murillo’s Immaculate Conception.” He paused. “So you think she’s still alive, frater?”

Pendergast spoke for the first time. “Judson told me so, and he had no motive to lie.”

Diogenes did not look up from the book. “Motive? That’s easy. He wanted to inflict the maximum amount of pain at the moment of your death. You have that effect on people.” He turned another page. “I suppose you dug her up?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“The DNA matched.”

“And yet you still think she’s alive?” Another snicker.

“The dental records also matched.”

“Was the corpse also missing a hand?”

A long pause. “Yes. But the fingerprint evidence was inconclusive.”

“The body must’ve been in quite a state. How terrible for you to have that image lodged in your mind — your last image of her. Have you found the birth certificate yet?”

Pendergast paused, struck by the question. Now that the subject came up, he did not recall ever having seen her birth certificate. It hadn’t seemed important. He had always assumed she had been born in Maine, but that was now clearly a lie.

Diogenes tapped an image on the page: Crucifixion of Saint Peter. “I wonder how being hung upside down on a cross affects the continuity of one’s thought processes.” He looked up. “Frater. You’re the one who was — not to put too fine a point on it — in possession of her loins. You were her soul mate, were you not?”

“I thought so.”

“Well, sift your feelings. What do they tell you?”

“That she’s alive.”

Diogenes broke into a peal of laughter, his pink boyish mouth thrown back and open, the laugh grotesquely adult. Pendergast waited for it to subside. Finally Diogenes stopped, smoothed his hair, and laid the book aside. “This is so rich. Like the coming in of a foul tide, those bad old Pendergastian genes are finally rising to the fore in you. You now have a crazy obsession of your very own. Congratulations and welcome to the family!”

“It isn’t an obsession if it’s the truth.”

“Oh, ho!”

“You’re dead. What do you know?”

“Am I really dead? Et in Arcadia ego! The day will come when we shall, all of us Pendergasts, join hands in a great family reunion in the lowest circle of hell. What a party that will be! Ha ha ha—!”

With a sudden, violent burst of will, Pendergast sundered the memory crossing. Once again he was back in the old dressing room, sitting in the leather wing chair, with only the flickering candle for company.

CHAPTER 43

RETURNING TO THE SECOND-FLOOR PARLOR, Pendergast sipped his sherry in thoughtful silence. Although he’d told Maurice he was quite recovered, it was at heart a lie — and in no way was this clearer than in the oversight he now realized he had made.

In his earlier searches of Helen’s papers, he had neglected to note the one important document that was missing: her birth certificate. He had everything else. The news that she had entered the second grade speaking only Portuguese had been so astonishing that he had completely failed to consider the vexing question it raised about her birth certificate — or lack thereof. She must have hidden it in a place that was accessible and yet secure. Which suggested it was still somewhere in the last house she’d inhabited.

He took another sip of sherry, pausing to examine its rich amber color. Penumbra was a large, rambling mansion, and there would be an almost limitless number of places to hide a single piece of paper. Helen was clever. He would have to think it out.

Slowly, he began eliminating potential hiding places. It had to be in an area she spent time in, so that her presence there would not be considered unusual. A place she felt comfortable. A place where she would not be disturbed. And it would have to be in some corner, or within some piece of furniture, that would never be moved, emptied, dusted out, aired, or searched by someone else.

He remained in the parlor for several hours, deep in thought, mentally searching every room and corner of the mansion. Then — once he had definitively narrowed his search to a single room — he silently rose and descended the stairs to the library. He stood at its threshold, eyes traveling across the room, taking in the trophy heads, the great refectory table, the bookshelves and objets d’art, considering — then rejecting — dozens of possible hiding places in turn.

After thirty more minutes of thought, he had narrowed his mental search to a single piece of furniture.

The massive armoire that held the Audubon double elephant folio — Helen’s favorite book — stood against the left-hand wall. He entered the library, shut the sliding doors, and walked over to the armoire. After staring at it for some time, he slid open the bottom drawer that held the two massive books of the folio. He carried each book to the refectory table in the middle of the room and laid them carefully side by side. Then he went back to the armoire, took the drawer all the way out, and turned it over.

Nothing.

Pendergast allowed himself the faintest of smiles. There were only two logical hiding places within the armoire. The first had been empty. That meant the birth certificate would definitely be hidden in the other.