And I—I love you. But you made it very clear that you don’t return my love.

The notebook was of French make, with an orange cover of Italian leatherette, containing blank sheets of vellum Clairefontaine paper ideal for fountain pens. It was the kind Constance had used exclusively for the last dozen years, ever since the venerable English purveyor of leather-bound journals she always preferred had gone out of business. Pendergast had taken it from her private rooms in the sub-basement below the mansion: it was her most recent journal, left incomplete on her sudden departure for India.

He had not yet opened it.

Next he turned to the antique tortoiseshell comb and the old, elegant cameo in a frame of eighteen-karat yellow gold. The latter had been carved, he knew, from the prized sardonyx of Cassis madagascariensis.

Both items had been among Constance’s most favored possessions.

Knowing what I know, having said what we’ve said—continued living under this roof would be intolerable…

Plucking all three from the tabletop, Pendergast exited the room, went down the hall, and opened the unprepossessing door that led into the third and most private of his apartments. Beyond the door was a small room that ended in a shoji, a sliding wood-and-rice-paper partition. And beyond the shoji was—hidden deep within the massive walls of the old and elegant apartment building—a tea garden, recreated by Pendergast to the most exacting specifications.

He slowly closed the partition behind him, then paused, listening to the soft cooing of doves and inhaling the scent of eucalyptus and sandalwood. Everything—the path of flat stones meandering before him, the dwarf pines, the waterfall, the chashitsu or teahouse that lay half-hidden in the greenery ahead—was dappled in hazy, indirect light.

Now he made his way down the path, past the stone lanterns, to the teahouse. Bending low, he entered the dim confines of the chashitsu. He closed its sadouguchi, carefully set the three items he’d been carrying down to one side, then glanced around, making sure that everything necessary for the tea ceremony—the mizusashi, whisks, scoops, brazier, kama iron kettle—was in readiness. He set the tea bowl and container of matcha powder in their proper places, then took a seat on the tatami mat. Over the next thirty minutes, he immersed himself completely in the ceremony: ritually cleaning the various utensils; heating the water; warming the chawan tea bowl and, after at last scooping hot water into it, whisking in the proper proportion of matcha. Only then, once every last preparation had been completed with almost reverential exactitude, did he taste the tea, taking it in with barely perceptible sips. And as he did so, he allowed himself—for the first time in almost a month—to let the weight of grief and guilt fully occupy his mind, and in so doing, slowly fall away.

At long last, equanimity restored, he carefully and deliberately went through the final steps of the ceremony, re-cleaning the implements and returning them to their proper places. Now he again glanced at the three items he had brought with him. After a moment, he reached for the notebook and—for the first time—opened it at random and allowed himself to read a single paragraph. Instantly, Constance’s personality leapt out through her written words: her mordant tone, her cool intelligence, her slightly cynical, slightly macabre world view—all filtered through a nineteenth-century perspective.

He found it a great relief he could now read the journal with a degree of detachment.

He put the journal carefully back beside the comb and the cameo: the simple, spare walls and floor of this chashitsu seemed for the time their best home, and perhaps he would return to contemplate them, and their owner, again in the not-too-distant future. But now there were other matters to deal with.

He left the teahouse, walked down the path, exited the garden, and made his way—with a brisk, firm step—down a long series of passages toward the front door of the apartment. As he did so, he slipped his cell phone out of his suit jacket and speed-dialed a number.

“Vincent?” he said. “Meet me at the Cantucci town house, if you please. I’m ready for that walk-through you spoke of.”

And then, replacing the phone, he shrugged into a vicu?a overcoat and left the apartment.

11

D’AGOSTA WASN’T ALL that thrilled to be back at the Cantucci crime scene in what was practically the middle of the night, even if it was to meet Pendergast, who had finally agreed to examine the place. Sergeant Curry let him in the front door, and a moment later D’Agosta saw Pendergast’s huge vintage Rolls glide up to the curb, Proctor at the wheel. The special agent got out.

Pendergast glided past Curry. “Good evening, my dear Vincent.”

They started down the hall. “See all these cameras?” D’Agosta asked. “The perp hacked into the security system, bypassed all the alarms.”

“I should like to see the report.”

“I’ve got a complete set for you,” D’Agosta said. “Forensics, hair and fiber, latents, you name it. Sergeant Curry will give them to you on the way out.”

“Excellent.”

“Ingress was through the front door,” D’Agosta continued. “The hacked security system let him in. The perp moved extensively through the house. Here’s the way it played out, as best we understand it. It seems that while the killer was in the entryway, Cantucci wakes up. We think Cantucci goes to the CCTV and sees the guy downstairs. He puts on his bathrobe and gets his gun, a Beretta 9mm. He thinks the guy is coming up on the elevator, so he fires a bunch of rounds through the door when the elevator arrives—but the killer faked him out, sent the elevator up empty. So now Cantucci, probably checking the CCTV again, goes down to the third floor, where the guy is messing around with a safe holding his Stradivarius violin. And that’s where Cantucci is ambushed, killed by three arrows fired in quick succession, all three going through the heart. And then the perp decapitates him—practically as the heart stops beating, if the M.E. is to be believed.”

“Must have been a rather sanguinary process.”

D’Agosta wasn’t sure what Pendergast meant by that and let it go. “The perp then goes to the attic, where the safe holding the security system is located, opens it using the hacked code, takes out the hard drives, and leaves. Egress again out the front door. According to our expert, only an employee, or ex-employee, of the company that installed the security system could have pulled this off. It’s all in the report.”

“Very good. Let us proceed, then. One floor at a time, every room on each floor, please, even those in which nothing occurred.”

D’Agosta led Pendergast through the kitchen, then the downstairs sitting room, opening all the closet doors at his request. They climbed the stairs to the second floor, toured that, and then the third. This was where most of the action had taken place. There were two rooms in the back of the narrow town house, and one large sitting room in front.

“The killing occurred at the doorway to the music room,” said D’Agosta, indicating the wall where the arrows had struck. There was a broad, thick shower of blood descending from three splintered marks in the paneled wall, and a huge pool of dried blood in the carpet below. Here Pendergast paused, kneeling. Using a penlight, he probed about, once in a while slipping a small test tube out of his suit pocket, plucking something up with tweezers, putting it in, and stoppering the tube. He then examined the rug and the arrow marks with a loupe fixed to one eye. D’Agosta didn’t bother to remind him that the CSU team had already fine-combed everything; he had seen Pendergast turn up fresh clues in even the most thoroughly scrubbed crime scene.

Once he had finished going over the immediate area of the murder, Pendergast continued on in silence, making a slow and painstaking exploration of the music room, the safe, and the two other rooms on that floor of the town house. Next, they proceeded to the upper floors, then climbed into the attic. Again, Pendergast got down on his hands and knees among the dust in front of and inside the security safe, plucking and storing evidence in test tubes.

He half rose beneath the low ceiling. “Curious,” he murmured, “very curious indeed.”

D’Agosta had no idea what he found curious but he knew if he asked, he wouldn’t get an answer. “As I said, it had to be someone who worked for Sharps and Gund. The perp knew exactly how the system worked. I mean exactly.”

“An excellent line of inquiry to follow up. Ah—regarding the other murder, do you have any further revelations about the daughter?”

“Yeah. We managed to get copies of some sealed files from the Beverly Hills PD. She killed a boy while driving under the influence about eighteen months back—hit and run. Ozmian got her off with some mighty fine lawyering. The boy’s family took it pretty hard—threats were made.”