down the document.
'Mr. Pendergast?' He proffered a heavy silver fountain pen.
Pendergast signed the document.
The lawyer took the pen back, signed it himself with a flourish, impressed it with a notary public seal, dated it, and slipped it back in his briefcase. He shut it with a snap, latched it, and locked it.
'Done!' he said. 'You are now certified to have visited your grandfather's grave. I shall not have to disinherit you from the Pendergast family trust--at least, not for the present!' He gave a short chuckle.
Pendergast rose, and the little man stuck out a pudgy hand. 'Always a pleasure, Mr. Pendergast, and I trust I shall have the favor of your company in another five years?'
'The pleasure is, and shall be, mine,' said Pendergast with a dry smile.
'Excellent! I'll be heading back to town, then. Will you follow?'
'I think I'll drop in on Maurice. He'd be crushed if I left without paying him my respects.'
'Quite, quite! To think he's been looking after Penumbra unassisted for--what?--twelve years now. You know, Mr. Pendergast--' Here the little man leaned in and lowered his voice, as if to impart a secret. '--you really should fix this place up. You could get a handsome sum for it--a handsome sum! Antebellum plantation houses are all the rage these days. It would make a charming B and B!'
'Thank you, Mr. Ogilby, but I think I shall hold on to it a while longer.'
'As you wish, as you wish! Just don't stay out after dark--what with the old family ghost, and all.' The little man strode off chuckling to himself, briefcase swinging, and soon vanished, leaving Pendergast alone in the family plot. He heard the Mercedes start up; heard the crunch of gravel fade quickly back into silence.
He strolled about for another few minutes, reading the inscriptions on the stones. Each name resurrected memories stranger and more eccentric than the last. Many of the remains were of family members disinterred from the ruins of the basement crypt of the Pendergast mansion on Dauphine Street after the house burned; other ancestors had expressed wishes to be buried in the old country.
The golden light faded as the sun sank below the trees. Pallid mists began to drift across the lawn from the direction of the mangrove swamp. The air smelled of verdure, moss, and bracken. Pendergast stood in the graveyard for a long time, silent and unmoving, as evening settled over the land. Yellow lights--coming up in the windows of the plantation house--filtered through the trees of the arboretum. The scent of burning oak wood drifted on the air; a smell that brought back irresistible memories of childhood summers. Glancing up, Pendergast could see one of the great brick chimneys of the plantation house issuing a lazy stream of blue smoke. Rousing himself, he left the graveyard, walked through the arboretum, and gained the covered porch, the warped boards protesting under his feet.
He knocked on the door, then stood back to wait. A creaking from inside; the sound of slow footsteps; an elaborate unlatching and unchaining; and the great door swung open to reveal a stooped old man of indeterminate race, dressed in an ancient butler's uniform, his face grave. 'Master Aloysius,' he said, with fine reserve, not offering his hand immediately.
Pendergast extended his and the old man responded, the ribbed old hand getting a friendly shake. 'Maurice. How are you?'
'Middling,' the old man replied. 'I saw the cars drive up. Glass of sherry in the library, sir?'
'That will be fine, thank you.'
Maurice turned and moved slowly through the entry hall toward the library. Pendergast followed. A fire was burning on the hearth, not so much for warmth as to drive out the damp.
With a clinking of bottles, Maurice muddled about the sideboard and poured a measure into a tiny sherry glass, placed it on a silver tray, and carried it over with great ceremony. Pendergast took it, sipped, then glanced around. Nothing had changed for the better. The wallpaper was stained, and balls of dust lay in the corners. He could hear the faint rustle of rats in the walls. The place had gone downhill significantly in the five years since he had last been here.
'I wish you'd let me hire a live-in housekeeper, Maurice. And a cook. It would greatly relieve your burden.'
'Nonsense! I can take care of the house myself.'
'I don't think it's safe for you to be here alone.'
'Not safe? Of course it's safe. I keep the house well locked at night.'
'Naturally.' Pendergast sipped the sherry, which was an excellent dry oloroso. He wondered, a little idly, how many bottles were left in the extensive cellars. Many more, probably, than he could drink in a lifetime, not to mention the wine, port, and fine old cognac. As the collateral branches of his family had died out, all the various wine cellars--like the wealth--had concentrated around him, the last surviving member of sound mind.
He took another sip and put down the glass. 'Maurice, I think I'll take a turn through the house. For old times' sake.'
'Yes, sir. I'll be here if you need me.'
Pendergast rose and, opening the pocket doors, stepped into the entry hall. For fifteen minutes, he wandered through the rooms of the first floor: the empty kitchen and sitting rooms, the drawing room, the pantry and saloon. The house smelled faintly of his childhood--of furniture polish, aged oak, and, infinitely distant, his mother's perfume--all overlaid with a much more recent odor of damp and mildew. Every object, every knickknack and painting and paperweight and silver ashtray, was in its place, and every little thing carried a thousand memories of people long since under earth, of weddings and christenings and wakes, of cocktail parties and masked balls and children stampeding the halls to the warning exclamations of aunts.
Gone, all gone.
He mounted the stairs to the upper landing. Here, two hallways led to bedrooms in the opposite wings of the house, with the upstairs parlor straight ahead, through an arched doorway protected by a brace of elephant tusks.
