The Forgotten Room: A Novel, Page 2

  It was even larger than he remembered. Modeled after England’s Knebworth House, but on an even grander scale, the sand-colored structure stretched away on both sides for what seemed leagues before terminating in East and West Wings. An odd mélange of Jacobean, Palladian, and high Gothic, leaded-glass windows winking in the sun, the mansion seemed even more Oz-like than Logan’s initial impression of Newport—save for the fact that the dark veins of ivy covering the facade; the oddly hooded, watchful appearance of the gables and turrets; and the low crenelations that ran along its roof as if in readiness for battle gave the building an appearance that was faintly sinister. No—that was too strong a word. “Disquieting,” Logan had termed it upon first sight, and he settled on that term again now. The high brick wall he had passed through could be seen far away on both sides, running up and down with the vagaries of the grassy terrain, and terminating on both sides at the steep, rocky cliffs above the Atlantic. Scattered around the flanks of the main structure were at least a dozen outbuildings of various shapes and sizes: a power plant, greenhouse, storage facilities, and a series of windowless structures that Logan knew to be laboratories, together forming a campus comprising almost a hundred acres.

  Easing the car ahead now, he drove up the lane to a parking area on the near side of the East Wing—the front entrance, with its four massive Solomonic columns supporting a marble pediment, was much too grand to actually be used for anything save decoration—got out of his car, and walked down a short tree-lined sidewalk to a set of double doors. Only here, screwed into the facade on a weather-darkened panel of bronze, did the place allow itself to be named: LUX.

  To one side of the doors were several devices: a numeric keypad, an intercom with a buzzer, and another technologic gadget Logan couldn’t identify. A printed sign above all three announced RESIDENTS AND GUESTS: USE KEYPAD AFTER HOURS. Logan was neither, and since it was noon, he pressed the buzzer.

  After a moment, a woman’s voice rasped through the speaker. “Yes?”

  “Dr. Jeremy Logan,” Logan said, leaning in toward the microphone.

  A brief delay. “Please come in.”

  There was a buzz; the doors sprang open; and Logan entered. Ahead lay the long, broad corridor he remembered. It quite clearly conveyed the double uses of the vast mansion. While the walls and ceilings were trimmed with elegant, almost rococo molding—implying the palatial abode of some robber baron of a previous century—the book-covered tables, heavily used wall-to-wall carpeting, door signs, and conspicuous red exit signs bespoke its second and quite different purpose.

  Logan walked about ten yards down the hall, then turned in at the door marked RECEPTION. Telephones rang, and fingers tapped busily on keyboards. And yet there was a strange, subdued feeling in the air that Logan was immediately aware of: something that, for him, cut like a knife through the normal, professional tone of a busy office at work.

  A woman was seated behind a long desk, and she watched him enter. “Dr. Logan?” she asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ve notified the director. He’ll be down in just a moment.”

  Logan nodded. “Thank you.”

  He looked around at the leather-upholstered wing chairs and sofas that made up the waiting room, decided on one, and was about to take a seat when the familiar form of Gregory Olafson appeared in the reception doorway. He was older, of course—his thick black hair had turned pure white, and there were wrinkles around his eyes that had once been merely laugh lines—but something other than years had aged his face. He smiled at the sight of Logan, but it was a brief smile, quickly gone.

  “Jeremy,” he said, walking forward and taking Logan’s hand. “Good to see you again.”

  “Gregory,” Logan replied.

  “I know you must be wondering what this is all about. Come with me, please—I’ll explain everything in my office.” And he led the way out of the room and into the main hallway, Logan following.

  3

  Olafson’s office was much as Logan remembered it. Dark, Edwardian-era wood panels, polished brass fixtures, and the anachronistic scribbly paintings hanging on the walls—Olaf son favored abstract expressionism. Along one wall, tall, thickly framed windows afforded a view of the well-tended landscape: greenery that swept down southward toward the rocky cliffs overlooking an angry ocean. The lower sashes of the leaded windows were slightly raised, and Logan was aware of both the distant crash of waves and the briny odor of the sea.

  The director motioned Logan toward a chair, then took a seat beside him. “I appreciate your coming so quickly.”

  “You said the matter was urgent.”

  “And so I think it is. But I’d be hard-pressed to tell you precisely why. That’s…” Olafson hesitated a moment. “That’s where you come in. I wanted to secure your services before another assignment came up.”

  The room fell silent for a long moment as the two men looked at each other. “Before I say anything more,” Olafson continued at last, “I need to know that you can put aside any prejudice, any ill will, that might have been caused by—ah—past differences.”

  This prompted another silence. From his armchair, Logan regarded the director of Lux. He’d been sitting in this same seat the last time he spoke to Olafson, a decade earlier. It had been about this time of year, as well. And the director had worn the same expression on his face: at once both anxious and eager. Fragments of Olafson’s short speech came back to Logan now, filtered through a veil of time and memory: Certain members are rather concerned…perceived lack of academic rigor…the good of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious policy institute must come first….

  Logan shifted in his chair. “It won’t be a problem.”

  The director nodded. “And I can be assured of your complete discretion? Much of what I’m going to tell you is secret, even from the faculty, Fellows, and staff.”

  “That’s part of my job. You shouldn’t even have to ask.”

  “Ah, but I had to, you see. Thank you.” Olafson glanced briefly out at the sea before returning his attention to Logan. “Do you remember Dr. Strachey?”

  Logan thought a moment. “Willard Strachey?”

  Olafson nodded.

  “He’s a computer scientist, right?”

  “That’s right. Strachey was recently at the center of a…very tragic event that took place here at Lux.”

  Logan recalled the atmosphere he’d sensed during his brief wait in the reception area. “Tell me about it.”

  The director glanced seaward again before answering. “Strachey hadn’t been himself for the last week or two.”

  “Can you be more specific?” Logan asked.

  “Restless. Apparently not sleeping, or sleeping very little. Irritable—which if you have any recollection of him, you’ll know was completely out of character. And he…” Olafson hesitated again. “He’d begun talking to himself.”

  “Indeed?”

  “So I’ve been told. Under his breath but extensively, sometimes even animatedly. Then, just three days ago, he experienced a sudden breakdown.”

  “Go on,” Logan said.

  “He became violent, began assaulting his assistant.” Olafson swallowed. “As you know, we have only a skeletal security force here—we really aren’t equipped to handle any…well, scenes of that sort. We restrained him as best we could, locked him in the visitors’ library on the first floor. And then we called nine one one.”

  Logan waited for the director to continue. But instead, Olafson stood up, walked to one wall, and pulled away a decorative curtain, revealing a projection screen. Then he opened a drawer in the same wall, took out a digital projector, and plugged it in, aiming it at the screen.

  “It would be easier—for you, and certainly for me—if you just saw for yourself,” he said. Then he moved toward the door, flicked off the lights, and turned the projector on.

  At first, the screen was black. Then a series of numbers scrolled quickly up its face. And then an image appeared,
black-and-white, slightly grainy at this level of magnification: the video feed from a security camera. A date and time stamp ran continuously along the lower edge of the frame. Logan recognized the room. It was, as Olafson had said, the Lux visitors’ library: an ornate space with elaborate sconces and a coffered ceiling. Three of the walls were lined floor to ceiling with books; the fourth wall contained several very tall windows of the same heavy sash construction as those in Olafson’s office. Armchairs, ottomans, and banquettes were arranged around the gracious space. It was not a working library—that was elsewhere in the mansion, and much more fully stocked—but was instead meant to impress guests and potential clients.

  From the bird’s-eye perspective of the security camera, Logan could make out a man pacing back and forth over the expensive carpeting, clearly afflicted by extreme agitation. He plucked at his clothes, pulled his hair. Logan recognized him as a decade-older version of Dr. Strachey, perhaps sixty or sixty-five years of age. Now and then the scientist stopped and bent forward, clapping his hands over his ears as if to block out some unbearable sound.

  “We put him in there,” Olafson said, “so that he wouldn’t harm himself or anyone else until help could arrive.”

  As Logan watched, Strachey went up to the door and yanked at it violently, crying out as he did so.

  “What’s he saying?” Logan asked.

  “I don’t know,” Olafson replied. “Raving, I’m afraid. The audio quality is poor—only a few of our security cameras even have integrated microphones.”

  Now Strachey’s agitation increased. He pounded the walls, yanked books from their shelves and threw them across the room. Again and again he stopped and covered his ears, shaking his head like a dog shaking a rat. He approached the windows and beat them with his fists, but the leaded glass was too thick to be easily broken. He began to stagger, flailing, almost as if blind, running into walls, turning over tables. He stumbled in the direction of the camera and, for a brief moment, his voice became clearer. Then he turned away again, panting raggedly, looking around. And then, suddenly, he grew calm.

  From the corner of his eye, Logan saw Olafson turn away. “I must warn you, Jeremy—I’m afraid this part is terribly disturbing.”

  Under the gaze of the camera, Logan watched Strachey move toward the wall of windows. He walked slowly at first, then more quickly and confidently. Coming up to the closest window, he tried to raise it. The heavy, old-fashioned sash rose only a few inches.

  Strachey went to the next window, tugged at it with sharp, violent motions. It, too, went up just an inch or two. The old-fashioned, metal-trimmed window sashes were very heavy to begin with, Logan knew, and they probably hadn’t been cleaned and oiled in decades.

  Now Strachey approached a third window; tugged again. This one rose more easily than the others had. Logan watched as Strachey pushed the sash up farther, first using both hands, then applying a shoulder. Logan could hear the grunts of effort. Finally, Strachey managed to raise the window sash to its maximum height: almost five feet above the lower sill.

  There was no screen; the library was on the first floor of the building; the yawning window frame gave Strachey easy access to liberty. In another minute, he’d be through the open window and gone. What, Logan wondered, was the tragedy in one scientist gone rogue?

  Except that Strachey did not go out of the window. Instead, he bent low before it, reaching in toward the right edge, fiddling with something in the groove of the frame. It was, Logan realized, the window’s sash chain. He peered in at the screen, mystified. With one hand, Strachey now held the sash chain; with the other hand, he was performing some kind of twisting motion on an object that his body blocked from view.

  Then the hand pulled away. In it was an iron sash weight, about ten inches long and obviously heavy. Strachey had detached the sash weight from the window chain. He let the weight drop to the floor. His other hand still held tight to the sash chain. Only Strachey’s grasp on the chain now kept the window from crashing downward.

  Suddenly, a terrible dread flooded through Logan.

  Still holding tight to the chain, Strachey knelt in front of the window and rested his neck on the sill. There was a moment of stasis in which Logan, frozen in his seat, heard the man draw in several ragged breaths.

  And then Strachey let go of the chain.

  With a sharp screech like the whistle of a train, the heavy metal sash came hurtling down in its casing. There was a terrible crack of bone, audible even over the rattling of the window; Strachey’s body jerked as if touched by a live wire. Logan looked quickly away, but not before seeing the head go tumbling down into the flower beds outside the library, and the heavy flood of blood running dead black in the pitiless eye of the security camera.

  4

  For at least a minute, neither man moved. And then, silently, the director turned on the lights, stowed away the projector, slid the curtain back over the screen, and returned to his chair.

  “My God,” Logan murmured.

  “We couldn’t conceal the fact that Strachey killed himself,” Olafson said. “But for obvious reasons, we’ve tried to keep the details to a minimum. Nevertheless, rumors have been circulating.” He looked up at Logan. “I have to ask—do you have any initial thoughts?”

  “My God,” Logan said again. He was in shock. He tried summoning up a mental picture of Willard Strachey from his own time at Lux, but all he could recollect was a quiet, rather shy man with thin, mouse-colored hair. They had traded smiles and nods but never a conversation.

  He tried to push the shock away and address Olafson’s question. “I think,” he began slowly, “that to kill oneself in such a way…can only mean this was a man who absolutely could not bear to live another minute. He couldn’t wait until he had access to pills, a gun, a car, the roof of a building—he had to die. Immediately.”

  The director nodded, leaned forward. “I don’t concern myself with the day-to-day operations of Lux; I leave that to Perry Maynard. But I knew Will Strachey for thirty years. He was the most stable, the most gentle, the most rational of men. He was also one of my best friends. He was a groomsman at my wedding. There is no way he would ever attack somebody. And he would never, ever, commit suicide—especially in such a way. Will abhorred ugliness or scenes. An act like this would be completely outside his nature.”

  Olafson leaned a little closer. “The authorities, of course, just listed it as a suicide and had done. It seems they have a dim view of policy institutes and their residents to begin with. And the police psychiatrist dismissed it as, to the best of my recollection, a ‘brief reactive psychosis brought on by a fugue state.’ ” The director scoffed. “But I know that isn’t the case. And I know something else: that man in the video is not the man I knew. It’s as simple—and as mystifying—as that. And that is why we’ve asked you here.”

  “It’s not exactly my line of work,” Logan said. “I’m no private detective; I’m an enigmalogist.”

  “And isn’t this an enigma?” Olafson asked, passion adding a faint tremor to his voice. “I just told you—that man on the video can’t be Strachey. He would never have done such a thing. And yet there’s no denying that he killed himself. You saw him do it. I saw the body.” He paused to pass a hand across his forehead. “We need to learn what happened to him. Not for myself—but for the good of Lux.”

  “You say you were one of his best friends,” Logan said. “Was there anything troubling him—anything in either his personal or professional life?”

  “I didn’t see as much of him over the last year or two as I’d have liked.” Olafson waved a hand toward his desk as if pleading a heavy workload. “But I’m sure there was nothing. He never married, never minded being single. He was independently wealthy. There were no health issues—annual physicals are one of the perks here, and nothing came up at his examination two months ago; I checked. I believe he was in the process of wrapping up his work; his assistant Kim, or Dr. Maynard, could tell you more about that than I.
But I can assure you the prospect of retirement didn’t concern him. Will Strachey was a full Fellow here at Lux; he’d already made a lasting contribution to his chosen area of research. He had a lot to be proud of—and he had a lot to live for. The last time we had lunch together, he spoke of all the things he was looking forward to when he retired. Touring the cathedrals of Europe—he was a huge fan of architecture and architectural design, knew a great deal about it. Picking up the piano again; did you know that he was a talented pianist, classically trained? He’d had to put his more serious instrumental studies aside years ago when his database work became all consuming. Sailing the Mediterranean—he was quite the sailor. This was a man with everything to live for. Everything.”

  For almost a minute, silence descended on the office. And then, at last, Logan nodded. “One condition. I’ll need unrestricted access to Lux’s offices, labs, and records.”

  The director hesitated for just a second. “Very well.”

  “Am I going to need a brief? A reason to be here, poking around, asking questions? After all, there’s my, shall we say, past history with Lux to consider.”

  A pained look crossed Olafson’s face. “I’ve thought about that. Many of the people you knew ten years ago are still here. And, of course, you’ve become rather well known since then. But if you’re to operate with a free hand, I don’t see how there can be any coyness or dissembling. You’re here, at the request of the board, to look into the circumstances surrounding Dr. Strachey’s death. It’s as simple as that—and I wouldn’t be any more specific.”

  “Very well. Anything else I should know before I start?”

  “Yes.” The director paused a moment. “It’s only fair to warn you that not everyone is going to be happy to see you. I’m not just referring to the ‘past history’ you mentioned. A lot of new blood has joined Lux since you were here, but at heart it is still a very conservative place. There are people who are going to question your motives; people who won’t trust you. You might as well know that the board was deadlocked, three to three, on bringing you in. I myself cast the tiebreaking vote.”