Chapter 5
CHAPTER
Elsa returned to Elmhurst the next day but hadn’t been able to leave until after her morning staff meeting.
So by the time she finally reached the mansion, she found Luke and Tom in the courtyard, eating their lunches.
As soon as Luke saw her, he buttoned his collar and rolled down his sleeves. Tom didn’t bother with either.
Barney stretched out in the sunshine, so content with his situation he only wagged his tail when he saw her and made no other move.
“Now, that’s a good boy,” she said, standing over him. She was almost tempted to rub his belly.
Almost.
Tom finished off a Coca-Cola, then lit a Lucky Strike. “Take a load off.”
She sat on a bench opposite them, arranged her pleated skirt over her knees, and smiled. “Just the gentlemen I was looking for.”
“There’s only one gentleman here,” Tom told her, squinting from the sun, “and it isn’t me.”
“Are you some kind of a rogue, Tom?” Elsa teased.
Luke elbowed Tom in the ribs. “Don’t be fooled. He’s as good a man as they come.” He picked up a ball, showed it to Barney, then threw it across the lawn.
“But still not a gentleman,” Tom insisted around the cigarette between his lips. “Luke and I grew up together, but not in the way you might think. My pop was, and still is, the valet for Luke’s father. We lived parallel lives, I guess you could say, until after—”
“Did you say you wanted to see us about something?” Luke’s interruption surprised Elsa almost as much as Tom’s revelation. She’d gathered the two had some personal connection but could never have guessed Tom’s family had been in service to Luke’s.
Barney bounded back up with the drool-covered ball in his mouth. Luke wrestled the ball from him and threw it again. “We should get back to work,” he said.
“Sorry, I did want to talk to you.” Elsa lifted a hand to stay them before lacing her fingers in her lap.
“The last time I was here, I visited with Tatiana Petrovic, the gardener. She told me that the aviary Mr. Spalding has been looking for was willed to her and her daughter. It would make all the difference in securing their future. I thought you should know why it matters.”
A gust of wind blew Luke’s hair across his brow. “That’s interesting. Spalding didn’t mention that he didn’t have any right to it.”
“He could be looking on their behalf since he wouldn’t want the Petrovics searching the mansion themselves,” she suggested.
Luke eyed her. “Think so?”
Well, she had thought so before he looked at her like that. She supposed a man with his experiences would have trouble believing the best of people.
Tom inhaled on his cigarette and blew the smoke to one side. “Regardless, we’ve emptied all the cases now and never saw an aviary. If we come across it in other areas of the house, we’ll give it directly to the Petrovics.”
“We did find a few more field notebooks while you were out,” Luke said. “I placed them on the dining room table for you.”
“That’s wonderful, thank you!” Rising, she dusted off the back of her skirt and followed the men inside while Barney flopped in the shade beneath a bench.
Before she reached the dining hall, however, the sound of a door slamming drew her to the entry hall.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Spalding,” she greeted him.
He looked up from the clipboard he carried. “Miss Reisner. How is your work here coming along?” His camel brown suit matched his fading hair.
“Slowly but surely. I’m making progress, but I’m afraid it’s a tedious and painstaking job to match up all the notes, find the birds, and tag them accordingly.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Smoothing his necktie, he glanced at the crates of books Luke and Tom had boxed up from the library. “I hope these will be gone by tomorrow. My mother—Uncle Linus’s sister—and my children are coming, eager to pilfer.”
“Yes, sir, I understand these will go out by this evening. The birds will take me much longer to finish sorting through.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “My family doesn’t want those birds, I assure you. I trust they’ll leave you alone as they search for unclaimed valuables.” Leaving the entry hall, he moved through the corridor.
Elsa went with him. “Speaking of valuables, I understand the aviary was willed to the Petrovics.”
He inhaled sharply, his mustache twitching. “A foolish decision made by an old woman clearly not in her right mind.”
Oh dear. “But you’ll honor her wishes, won’t you?”
“It’s a moot point since no one knows where it is,” he countered, and Elsa didn’t press the matter.
At the library, he exchanged a few words with Luke, then bypassed the dining hall and entered the stair tower.
Rather than climb, however, he stepped outside, stationing himself in the shade of the overhang.
Two museum staff exited, carrying a painting between them.
Mr. Spalding stopped them to check their identification and mark something on his clipboard.
He glanced at his watch, then toward the museum staff returning to the stair tower. They nodded politely as they passed, sweat beading their brows.
“Any of those paintings Aunt Birdie donated could have gone to the family,” he muttered once they were gone, “and we could have sold them to the museums—at a bargain rate, too—and made a pretty profit. I have no idea why she insisted on being generous to institutions and not to her own people. Now, do excuse me. You have work to do, and as soon as I check out the rest of the paintings slated for the museums, I’ll head back to the office. ”
“Of course. I apologize.” She turned to go but paused in the doorway.
“Where is your office?” she dared to ask, wondering what kind of a living he made.
Perhaps she’d been wrong to trust he wanted the aviary only to give it to the rightful owners.
Knowing where he worked might help her understand his financial situation.
“Oh no. Just what I need today.” Lowering the clipboard, Mr. Spalding squinted at a dark green Ford Model T that had turned into the drive and was slowly progressing toward the house.
When it rolled to a stop beside one of the museum vehicles, Mr. Spalding marched out to it, holding out his hand like a traffic cop.
At the driver’s side of the auto, he paused, likely waiting for the window to open.
“Not today, cousin,” Mr. Spalding said loudly enough for Elsa to hear.
“As you can see, the museums are here collecting their acquisitions according to the will. No relatives except for myself are to be here until they’re through.
Be a sport and stay out of the way, will you? Play by the rules like the rest of us.”
“Play by the rules? That’s rich, considering Uncle Linus never did.” The glare off the windshield prevented Elsa from seeing the man inside, but it was easy enough to hear him. “If only museum staff are to be present, who is that and why is she here?”
Elsa bristled as Mr. Spalding glanced her way. “She is museum staff. She’s supposed to be here. You aren’t.” Exhaust fumes plumed from the rattling Tin Lizzie.
“It would have been nice to learn of Aunt Birdie’s passing from you, Guy.
Instead, I had to hear of it from the executor of her will.
You couldn’t spare the time for a phone call?
A stamp? The executor never said anything about waiting to come, and I’ve driven all the way from Philadelphia to be here. ”
“A day, Hugh. That’s all I ask. Find a room in the village and come back tomorrow, all right?”
Muttering followed. Mr. Spalding backed up, and the auto sputtered around the circle drive and back out to the main road.
A long-suffering sigh blustered from Mr. Spalding as he rejoined Elsa. “Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island.”
“Pardon me?”
“I work at the Eugenics Records Office. Second floor, third office on the right, if you wanted to know that, too. Anything else I can tell you?”
Elsa suspected there was. But for now, she took her leave.
The next few hours passed slowly. Before Elsa could go through the field notebooks Luke had located, she still had to finish putting the loose pages she’d found yesterday in the correct order. When at last she finished that job, her leg felt stiff and could do with a little stretching.
Circling around to the other end of the dining hall table, she uncovered the green birds they’d moved there from the library.
The closest bird to her was Cyanocorax luxuosus, a green jay from the woodlands of Central America.
He wore a distinctive black mask and had a blue patch on his forehead.
She was sure she’d already copied the details for this one into her own ledger.
Now, where was it?
She hadn’t been able to alphabetize her entries yet—that would have to be done after she finished filling it in entirely—so she had to rely on her memory or flip through every page in her notebook to find the right species. It would help to recall the year of the expedition.
Oh dear. Elsa’s memory was good, but not photographic. This bird came from Guatemala, but Mr. Van Tessel had been to Central America three times. During which of those expeditions had he caught this one?
Sinking into the nearest chair, she turned the pages until she found it. She checked her watch. It had taken her three minutes to scan all those columns and locate the one she wanted.
“No bueno, birdie,” she muttered, shaking her head at the waste of time. She filled out a tag for him anyway, leaving blank the space for his catalog number, which would have to be assigned later. She tied it to his left leg.
This little exercise only confirmed what she already knew.
She couldn’t operate like this. There was only one way to have any hope of efficiency, and that was to finish going through all the notebooks, copying the details into her own, and then cut up the pages and alphabetize the rows.
Then she’d simply copy everything onto new pages in a fresh catalog ledger.