Free The Wheel of Darkness by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child Page B

reluctant conversationalist.
    “How clever of you,” responded Pendergast. “And for my part, do I detect, behind your English accent, a touch of Far Rockaway, Queens?”
    Mayles felt the smile freeze on his face. How in the world did the man know
that
?
    “Don’t be concerned, Mr. Mayles—I’ve made a study of accents, among other things. In my line of work I find it useful.”
    “I see.” Mayles took a sip of the Vernaccia to cover up his surprise and quickly turned the conversation away. “Are you a linguist?”
    A certain amusement seemed to lurk in the man’s gray eyes. “Not at all. I investigate things.”
    Mayles had his second surprise of the dinner. “How interesting. You mean, like Sherlock Holmes?”
    “Something like that.”
    A rather unpleasant thought ran through Mayles’s head. “And are you . . . investigating now?”
    “Bravo, Mr. Mayles.”
    Some of the others were now listening, and Mayles didn’t quite know what to say. He felt a twinge of nerves. “Well,” he went on with a light laugh, “I know who did it: Mr. Mustard in the pantry. With the candlestick.”
    As the others laughed politely, he again turned the conversation away from this potentially difficult line. “Miss Greene, have you ever seen the painting
Proserpine
, by Rossetti?”
    The woman turned her eyes on him, and he felt a shiver of disquiet. There was something distinctly strange in those eyes. “I have.”
    “I do believe you resemble the woman in the painting.”
    She continued to look at him. “Should I be flattered to be compared to the mistress of the lord of the underworld?”
    This bizarre answer, its intensity—and her resonant, old-fashioned voice—put Mayles out. But he was an expert at riding any vagary of conversation, and he had a ready reply. “Pluto fell in love with her because she was so beautiful, so vital—as you are.”
    “And as a result Pluto kidnapped her and dragged her into hell to be his mistress.”
    “Ah well, some people have all the luck!” Mayles glanced around and received an appreciative laugh for his little bon mot—even Miss Greene smiled, he was relieved to notice.
    The dealer, Lionel Brock, spoke: “Yes, yes, I know the painting well. It’s in the Tate, I believe.”
    Mayles turned a grateful face toward Brock. “Yes.”
    “A rather vulgar work, like all the Pre-Raphaelites. The model was Jane Morris, the wife of Rossetti’s best friend. Painting her was a prelude to seducing her.”
    “Seduction,” said Miss Greene. She turned her strange eyes on Mayles. “Have you ever seduced, Mr. Mayles? Being cruise director on a luxury ocean liner must be a marvelous platform from which to do it.”
    “I have my little secrets,” he said, with another light laugh. The question had cut rather closer to the bone than he was accustomed to. He didn’t think he would put Miss Greene at his table again.
    “
Afar from mine own self I seem, and wing strange ways in thought, and listen for a sign
,” Greene recited.
    This was followed by silence.
    “How lovely,” said the meatpacking heiress, Mrs. Emily Dahlberg, speaking for the first time. She was a strikingly aristocratic woman in a gown, draped in antique jewels, slender and well-kept for her age, and—Mayles thought—she looked and spoke exactly like the Baroness von Schräder in
The Sound of Music
. “Who wrote that, my dear?”
    “Rossetti,” said Greene. “The poem he wrote about Proserpine.”
    Brock turned his gray eyes on Constance. “Are you an art historian?”
    “No,” she replied. “I’m a pedant and an obscurantist.”
    Brock laughed. “I find pedants and obscurantists charming,” he said with a smile, leaning toward her.
    “Are you a pedant as well, Dr. Brock?”
    “Well, I . . .” He laughed off the question. “I suppose some might call me that. I’ve brought along some copies of my latest monograph, on Caravaggio. I’ll send a copy over to your stateroom—you can decide for