Chapter 13 #3
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “I found these on the table in the dining hall this morning. I recognized one of the ERO documents peeking out from one of the folders, so I took a look. I confess there isn’t much in that old house I’m interested in for myself, but these papers of Uncle Linus’s intrigue me greatly.
Thanks for finding them. Since they don’t pertain to your ornithological work, I’m taking them. ”
It was certainly his right, and so Elsa could make no objection. Still, she felt uneasy that Mr. Spalding now carried a file that called Danielle feebleminded.
“I thought I heard someone say George a moment ago,” he said. “Is there someone else about?”
“George is the crow,” Danielle told him.
Mr. Spalding peered at George, who stared right back. “I see. At any rate, Mrs. Petrovic, I’ve come looking for you on a matter that concerns you. As you know, I’m donating the entire estate to the county. I’ve had a meeting yesterday with a Mr. Nigel Field from the county.”
Paling, Tatiana stood. “I’ve been waiting to hear from him myself. Our cottage still belongs to us.”
Mr. Spalding huffed a small laugh. “He has no interest in your cottage, I assure you.”
Danielle sat on the bench again, Barney’s head resting on her knee. She watched the birds, but Elsa could tell she was listening to every word Mr. Spalding said.
“In fact, in looking over a map of the estate, he’s quite interested in making these sixty-seven acres a public park and thinks this spot would be ideal for a visitors center.”
“But what does a park mean for their living arrangement? You can’t expect them to leave their home,” Elsa said.
Mr. Spalding tilted his head, regarding her from under the brim of his hat. “That’s entirely out of my hands.”
Danielle started rocking again, moaning at the same time. “We can’t leave. We can’t leave. I won’t go,” she repeated over and over.
George cawed again until more crows joined him in the tree.
Elsa planted a fist on her hip. “What do you propose the Petrovics do now?”
He held up his hands and took a step backward. “That’s none of my concern.”
“It should be your concern, if you have any respect for your aunt’s wishes,” she fired back. “You can’t just leave them without any recourse.”
“I told you, this is out of my hands. Take it up with the county, not me.”
“She’s been trying, but no one from their office has responded to her.” The angst in Elsa’s tone seemed to upset Danielle even more.
“All I can tell you is that you have until the end of the month. At that point, the county will have complete control of the land.”
Danielle’s rocking and moaning grew louder. Barney whined beside her, and the cawing multiplied. “You’re making George angry,” Danielle shouted. She pulled hair from her braids and twisted the strands around her fingers.
Mr. Spalding blinked, brow furrowed. “Are you referring to the crow?”
“George and his friends are angry! They do not want to leave their home. They do not.” The girl hunched over, her hair sticking out between her fingers as she covered her ears.
“Danielle, my dear.” Tatiana touched her shoulders, only to be swatted away by her daughter.
Danielle jumped up, paced to the edge of the garden and back, then began another circuit. She beat the heel of her hand to the side of her head.
“Danielle,” the man murmured, then looked at the file folder he carried.
He’d read her card. He knew who she was. He knew what his uncle had written about her.
Mr. Spalding lowered his voice. “My aunt was clearly not in her right mind when she willed a medieval manuscript to that child.”
“You should go,” Elsa told him, unwilling for him to witness one more moment of the girl’s breakdown.
He opened his mouth, but the murder of crows exploded from the tree and fairly chased him from the garden.
Leaving Tatiana to try to soothe Danielle, Elsa marched back to the mansion in Mr. Spalding’s wake. Heat flared through her. Birdie would be livid if she knew what was going on.
No, Birdie would be heartbroken. Elsa was livid.
They’d already known the estate would go to the county.
But Spalding and Field were making plans that drastically altered the Petrovics’ lives without even letting Tatiana be part of the conversation.
And now they expected them to relocate by the end of the month?
Elsa crossed the drive and entered the vestibule. Piano music drifted from the parlor but ended in a discordant crash at the commanding tone of Mr. Spalding. She stepped into the golden room.
Jane leapt from the chaise lounge. “There you are, Elsa! I was so disappointed not to see you when we arrived this morning. Don’t tell me you were with the gardener and her daughter again.”
Speech fled. Jane couldn’t really have a reason to be jealous of her time.
“Bravo, Jane,” Wesley called from the piano bench. “One might almost believe you’re genuine.”
Releasing Elsa, Jane spun toward her brother with a scowl, then turned a pleading pout upon her father, who stood with arms crossed, blocking the doors to the courtyard. “You see? He provokes for no reason.”
A throat clearing drew Elsa’s attention to a sharp-eyed elderly woman tucked into a velvet armchair.
A doily topping the back of the chair made a lacy corona about her white hair.
“In my day,” she said, “introductions were customary.” She lifted thin brows at Mr. Spalding, then sent a sideways smile at Elsa, deepening the pleasant lines in her face.
“Mother, this is Miss Reisner, the ornithologist I told you about,” Mr. Spalding muttered. “Miss Reisner, this is my mother. Agnes Spalding. She was my uncle Linus’s sister.”
Elsa’s breath hitched. Could this bombazine-draped woman in mourning be the Agnes that Birdie had written of in her diary?
Shock parted her anger, followed by a hope that maybe Agnes could shed some light on .
. . something. Anything. Schooling her composure, Elsa came forward to shake the woman’s delicate hand.
“Mrs. Spalding, it’s so nice to meet you. ” She added her sincere condolences.
“Call me Agnes, dear. There’s another Mrs. Spalding, and she hates for us to get confused.”
“Mother isn’t here, Granny,” Jane called on a sigh.
“No, she is not.” Agnes brushed a stray feather from her stiff black skirt. “Even so, I wish to be called Agnes by this smart young woman, so don’t cross me. I’m too old for that.”
“Yes, Granny.” Jane returned to the chaise lounge, where she inspected her cuticles.
“I apologize if I’ve interrupted a family meeting,” Elsa said.
“Oh no.” Wesley closed the lid over the keys and lit up a Chesterfield. “We’re only all here in one room by chance. Normally we’re far more careful. I was here first, by the way.”
“I was looking for Elsa,” Jane said.
“Right.” Wesley turned to Elsa. “And what have you been looking for?” He blew smoke her way.
“Stop this foolishness at once,” Mr. Spalding scolded.
Agnes tsked. The chair’s upholstery shone where it had been crushed from years of handling, and stuffing tufted from a spot where a mouse had chewed through. But the way she presided from it, the armchair may as well have been a throne. “What has you all in a dither, Guy?”
“I told the gardener some news from the county, and her daughter threw a fit.”
Agnes’s keen blue eyes narrowed. “You mean a child reacted strongly to the news that she was about to be homeless? How strange.” Irony dripped from her tone.
“You didn’t see her. This was a tantrum like I’ve never seen.” At least he hadn’t mentioned her friend the crow.
Elsa folded her arms, ready to defend Danielle, but Agnes spoke up first.
“Really? Are you not aware of the royal tantrum thrown in this very room by your own daughter?” She lifted her cane and pointed at the young woman across the room. She swung it toward Elsa and then to a nearby chair in unspoken command.
Elsa sat.
Sticking the cigarette between his lips, Wesley flipped open the lid of the piano and pounded the opening measures of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, grinning like the Cheshire cat. “Do remind us, won’t you? I can’t recall.”
Good heavens. This pair. Elsa remained where she was, spellbound by the unfolding tableau. It was not unlike reading a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It wasn’t pleasant, but neither could one look away.
“I love you, Jane. You are my only granddaughter. But you have always been jealous of Danielle. It’s unseemly, considering your privilege is so far beyond hers.”
Through the parlor doorway, Elsa could see Luke and Tom removing the chandelier in the entry hall.
Tom had his back to her, but Luke sent her a look from his place on the ladder that told her he could hear everything.
She hadn’t seen Crawford yet this morning, but if he was anywhere nearby, he’d be getting an earful, too.
“Yes, yes, and the fit, Granny? Leave out no details, please.” Still speaking around the cigarette, Wesley played the next measures of Beethoven’s Fifth with equal passion. Would he provide a score for the entire story?
Agnes pursed her lips together, perhaps to hide a chuckle at her grandson’s antics. “Wesley, please. I don’t fancy being interrupted. This family has enough drama without your music.”
Wesley stretched out his arm and tapped ash onto the threadbare rug.
“Wesley!” Mr. Spalding barked.
The young musician tucked his hair behind an ear. “What? Great-Aunt Birdie doesn’t care, I assure you.”
“Just because no one lives here anymore doesn’t mean you can treat the entire place as your personal ashtray. Show some respect!”
Elsa watched the carpet for smoke, but the ash didn’t spark in the fibers. By the time she released the breath she’d been holding, Agnes had begun her story.
“It was only five years ago. Jane was twelve, and I brought her here to visit her great-aunt Birdie and great-uncle Linus. When we arrived, we were brought into this parlor, and Jane was elated to see that a table had been set for a tea party.”
“But it wasn’t for me,” Jane added. “The dishes had all been used, and there were crumbs everywhere.”
“That’s right. When Birdie came in to greet us, she explained that she had just finished having a tea party with Danielle, who was seven at the time.
I hadn’t told Birdie we’d be dropping by that day, so we took her quite by surprise.
Jane was upset that the party hadn’t been for her.
Poor Birdie tried to appease you, offering to have a fresh party arranged on the spot, but you refused.
Oh, the stomping and crying and carrying on, child! The racket! The self-indulgence!”
“Can you blame me?” Jane sat up straighter and centered the pendant on her necklace.
“She’d always told me I was her favorite niece.
I thought it would be grand to surprise her, but I was the one who was shocked to my core that she’d been having a fine time indeed with a servant’s child who had no manners or upbringing at all. I thought I was special. I am special.”
Wesley tickled the ivories at a pitch to match his sister’s rising tone.
“That you are.” Agnes lifted an eyebrow.
“And so was your fit. It was such a special fit, in fact, that it brought Linus thundering in to see what was going on. Birdie and I tried to explain things calmly, but it was impossible to be heard without yelling over your sobs. And then Linus blew up at Birdie for having—and I quote—‘that immigrant gardener’s feebleminded child’ in the house.
My domineering brother humiliated and shamed his wife in front of an audience. ”
“Well, Danielle didn’t deserve to be here.
She didn’t deserve to spend time with Aunt Birdie, let alone use the good china like she was somebody.
And she doesn’t deserve the aviary.” Jane turned on Elsa with a pointed finger.
“I can tell you’re a kind soul, but if you’ve been trying to find the aviary for her—don’t.
I’m glad it’s missing and hope it stays that way.
If it goes to anyone, it ought to be family. ”
Elsa stood. “That choice isn’t yours to make.
It isn’t any of ours.” She paused to gather her composure.
The more she learned about Birdie, the more she realized how many choices had been taken away from her, either by her husband, circumstances, or her declining health.
“If the aviary is found, it belongs to the people your aunt decided to give it to, whether you like it or not.”
“Hear, hear.” Agnes thumped her cane on the carpet, adding an emphatic nod for good measure.
Elsa sent a subtle smile to her new ally. “Now, if you’ll all excuse me. I do have work to do.”